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PHILOSOPHY  AND  BELIGION 


PHILOSOPHY   AND   RELIGION 

A 

SERIES    OF    ADDRESSES,    ESSAYS    AND    SERMONS 

DESIGNED   TO    SET  FORTH   GREAT  TRUTHS 

IN    POPULAR   FORM 


BY 

AUGUSTUS  HOPKINS  STKONG,  D.  D. 

PRESIDENT    AND    PROFESSOR    OF    BIBLICAL    THEOLOGY    IN    THE 
ROCHESTER    THEOLOGICAL    SEMINARY 


NEW  YORK 

A.   C.   ARMSTRONG   AND   SON 
714  BROADWAY 

1888 


COPYRIGHT, 

BY   AUGUSTUS   HOPKINS   STRONG, 

1888. 


PRINTED   BY 

EZRA    R.    ANDREWS, 
ROCHBSTKB,  H.  T. 


TO 

JOHN  D.  KOCKEFELLEK,  ESQ., 

THE  FRIEND  AND  HELPER  OF  EVERY  GOOD  CAUSE, 

THROUGH    WHOSE    LIBERALITY    THE    AUTHOR    IS    ENABLED 

TO     PUT     THESE     ESSAYS    INTO     PRINT, 

THE  VOLUME  IS  GRATEFULLY 

INSCRIBED. 


PKEFACE. 


THIS  book  is  printed  by  way  of  testimony.  It  is  a  confession  of 
faith  — a  long  one  indeed,  yet  none  the  less  sincere.  The  author 
can  say:  "I  believed, —  therefore  have  I  spoken."  In  this  day 
when  skepticism  is  so  rife,  and  when  even  Christian  teachers  so 
frequently  pride  themselves  that  they  believe,  not  so  much,  but  so 
little,  it  seems  to  him  that  nothing  is  more  needed  than  uncom- 
promising assertion  of  faith  in  the  existence  of  God,  the  world,  and 
the  soul.  "When  the  Son  of  man  cometh,  shall  he  find  faith  on 
the  c-arth  ?"  For  himself,  and  for  more  than  seven  thousand  others 
who  have  not  bowed  the  knee  to  the  Baal  of  brute  force  and  imper- 
sonal law,  the  author  desires  to  answer  in  the  affirmative. 

The  volume  takes  its  title  from  the  first  Essay. —  and  the  title  is 
fairly  descriptive  of  the  book.  It  aims  to  present  truth  in  popular 
form  ;  most  of  the  Essays  contained  in  it  have  been  written  for 
public  address  ;  some  of  them  .date  back  to  a  time  when  the  author's 
rhetoric  was  more  exuberant  than  now, —  for  all  this  he  makes  no 
apology.  He  would  fain  hope  that  what  Fox  said  of  Burke's  exuber- 
ance of  fancy  may  be  counted  true  of  himself  :  "  Reduce  his  language, 
withdraw  his  images, —  and  you  will  find  that  he  is  more  wise  than 
eloquent ;  you  will  have  your  full  weight  of  metal,  though  you 
melt  down  the  chasing."  Yet,  if  any  reader  still  demand  abstract 
statement  instead  of  the  oratorical  method,  the  author  takes  the 
liberty  of  referring  him  to  the  "Systematic  Theology"  of  which 
this  is  the  companion-volume,  where  he  will  find  much  of  the  same 
truth  put  in  more  philosophical  form. 

It  needs  to  be  stated,  however,  that  much  of  the  present  book  is 
new,  or  at  least  has  never  before  appeared  in  print.  The  Essays  on 


yiii  PREFACE. 

"  Modern  Idealism"  and  on  "  The  New  Theology,"  on  " Dante  and' 
the  Divine  Comedy,"  and  on  "Poetry  and  Kobert  Browning,"  have- 
been  written  for  this  volume.  The  author  has  included  in  it  certain 
tributes  to  the  memory  of  the  dead,  not  only  because  the  departed 
were  his  friends,  but  because  in  speaking  of  them  he  could  also- 
express  his  views  of  the  work  they  sought  to  do.  The  personal 
element  is  not  wholly  lacking, — in  many  cases  its  elimination  would 
have  required  the  entire  reconstruction  of  the  discourse, —  in  general, 
the  author  would  have  the  several  addresses  judged  in  the  light  of 
the  special  occasions  for  which  they  were  prepared. 

The  author  would  disclaim  any  expectation  that  his  book  will  be 
widely  read.  It  is  not  published  at  the  request  of  friends, — indeed, 
the  author  is  not  aware  that  any  friends  desire  to  read  what  he  has 
written.  His  chief  aim  has  been  to  put  himself  on  record.  If  any 
choose  to  read,  well, —  here  is  opportunity  for  the  curious  investi- 
gator to  say  :  "Sic  cogitavit."  But  if  none  choose  to  read,  it  is  also 
well, —  the  author,  at  least,  has  delivered  his  soul.  He  commits  his 
work  to  God  and  to  his  providence  —  sowing  his  seed  and  withholding 
not  his  hand,  though  he  knows  not  which  shall  prosper,  whether 
this  or  that.  He  prays  that  his  errors,  if  he  has  erred,  may  be 
uprooted  and  exposed  ;  and  that  any  truth  he  has  discovered  or 
uttered  may  somewhere,  and  at  some  time,  be  made  fruitful  for 
good.  But,  whatever  may  befall  him  or  his  work,  CHRISTO  DEO 
GLORIA,  SALVATORI  OMNIPOTENTI  ! 

It  remains  only  to  say  that  the  author's  grateful  acknowledge- 
ments are  due  to  the  Eeverend  Robert  Kerr  Eccles,  M.  D.,  of  Salem, 
Ohio,  for  the  care  and  faithfulness  which  he  has  shown  in  correct- 
ing errors  of  the  press  and  in  preparing  the  Index.  It  is  certain 
that  in  this  case,  as  in  the  case  of  the  author's  Systematic  Theology^ 
every  thoughtful  reader  will  regard  himself  as  Dr.  Eccles's  debtor. 

ROCHESTER  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY, 
ROCHESTER,  APRIL  1,  1888. 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 


I. 

PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION, 

An  Address  before  the  Alumni  of  the  Rochester  Theological  Seminary, 
at  their  annual  meeting,  May  20th,  1868,  and  printed  in  the  Baptist 
Quarterly,  2  :  393  sq., .._  1-18 

n. 

SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION, 

An  Address  delivered  at  the  Commencement  of  the  Medical  College, 
Cleveland,  Ohio,  February  18, 1867, 19-30 

in. 

MATERIALISTIC  SKEPTICISM, 

An  Essay  printed  in  the  Examiner,  New  York,  October  2, 1873, 31-38 

IV. 
THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EVOLUTION, 

An  Address  delivered  before  the  Literary  Societies  of  Colby  University, 
Waterville,  Maine,  Tuesday  evening,  July  23, 1878, 39-57 

V. 

MODERN  IDEALISM, 
Printed  in  the  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  January,  1888, 58-74 

VI. 

SCIENTIFIC  THEISM, 
An  Essay  read  before  "  The  Club,"  Rochester,  February  16,  1875, . .          75-89 

vn. 

THE  WILL  IN  THEOLOGY, 

OR,    AN   EARLIER  VIEW   OF   THE   WILL, 

Printed  in  the  Baptist  Review,  1880  :  527-550,  and  1881  :  30-47,..  90-113 

vni. 

MODIFIED  CALVINISM, 

OR,   REMAINDERS   OF  FREEDOM  IN  MAN, 

Printed  in  the  Baptist  Review,  April,  1883, -  -  114-128 


x  TABLE   OF   CONTENTS. 

IX. 
THE  CHRISTIAN  MIRACLES, 

OB,    MIRACLES   AS  ATTESTING   A  DIVINE   REVELATION, 

An  Essay  read  before  the  Baptist  Pastors'  Conference  of  the  State  of 
New  York,  Bingharapton,  October  23,  1878,  and  printed  in  the 
Baptist  Review,  April,  1879, - .  129-147 

X. 

THE  METHOD  OF  INSPIRATION, 

Printed  in  the  Examiner,  New  York,  October  7,  and  October  14, 1880,     148-155 

XI. 
CHRISTIAN  INDIVIDUALISM, 

Preached  at  Vassar  College,  February  28,  1886,  as  a  Sermon  on  the 
text,  John  21  :  21,  22—"  What  shall  this  man  do  ?  ....  What  is 
thattothee?  Follow  thou  me, " 156-163 

XII. 

THE  NEW  THEOLOGY, 
Printed  in  the  Baptist  Quarterly  Review,  January,  1888, 164-179 

XIII. 
THE  LIVING  GOD, 

Originally  prepared  as  a  Sermon  upon  the  text,  Jer.  10  :  10 — "The 
Lord  is  the  true  God  ;  he  is  the  living  God,  and  an  everlasting 
King,". 180-187 

XIV. 
THE  HOLINESS  OF  GOD, 

Originally  prepared  as  a  Sermon  upon  the  text,  Ex.  15  :  11  — "  Glorious 
in  holiness,"  and  preached  in  the  Chapel  of  the  University  of  Roch- 
ester, on  the  Day  of  Prayer  for  Colleges,  January  31,  1878  ;  subse- 
quently printed  as  an  article  in  the  Examiner,  January  26,  February 
9,  and  February  22,  1882, 188-200 

XV. 
THE  TWO  NATURES  OF  CHRIST, 

Preached  in  Sage  Chapel,  Cornell  University,  May  25,  1884,  as  a  Ser- 
mon on  the  text,  Matt.  22  :  42— "What  think  ye  of  the  Christ  ? 
Whose  son  is  he  ?" 201-212 

XVI. 
THE  NECESSITY  OF   THE  ATONEMENT, 

A  Sermon  upon  the  text,  Luke  24  :  26—"  Behoved  it  not  the  Christ 
to  suffer  these  things  ?  " 213-219 


TABLE   OF    CONTENTS.  xj 

XVII. 

THE  BELIEVER'S  UNION  WITH  CHRIST, 
Printed  in  the  Examiner,  June  12,  1879, 220-225 

xvni. 

THE  BAPTISM  OF  JESUS, 

Originally  prepared  as  a  Sermon  upon  the  text,  Matt.  3  :  15—"  Thus 
it  becometh  us  to  fulfill  all  righteousness,"  and  preached  before  the 
Cincinnati  Baptist  Union  ;  printed  in  the  Examiner,  February  12, 
and  February  19,  1880, 226-237 

XIX. 
CHRISTIAN  TRUTH  AND  ITS  KEEPERS, 

An  Address  delivered  before  the  American  Baptist  Publication  Society, 
at  its  annual  meeting  in  New  York  City,  May,  1868, 238-244 

XX. 

UNCONSCIOUS  ASSUMPTIONS  OF  COMMUNION  POLEMICS, 
Printed  in  the  Examiner.  January  21 ,  1875, 245-249 

XXI. 
THE  TEACHER'S  GUIDE  AND  HELPER, 

A  Sermon  preached  before  the  Sunday  School  Convention,  Boston, 
May  20,  1877,  on  the  text,  2  Cor.  3  :  6  —"Able  ministers  of  the  New 
Testament,  not  of  the  letter,  but  of  the  Spirit," 250-258 

XXII. 

COUNCILS  OF  ORDINATION:  THEIR  POWERS  AND  DUTIES, 
Printed  in  the  Examiner,  January  2,  and  January  9,  1879 259-268 

xxm. 

THE  CLAIMS  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MINISTRY 

ON   YOUNG   MEN    IN   COURSES   OF   PREPARATORY  STUDY, 

An  Address  written  for  the  Anniversary  of  Peddie  Institute,  Rights- 
town,  N.  J.,  June  17, 1875, 

XXIV. 
SOURCES  OF  SUPPLY  FOR  THE  MINISTRY, 

An  Address  before  the  Rhode  Island  Baptist  Social  Union,  Provi- 
dence, May,  1877  ;  printed  in  the  Watchman,  Boston,  October,  1878,  281 


xii  TABLE   OF   CONTENTS. 

XXV. 
THE  LACK  OF  STUDENTS  FOB  THE  MINISTRY, 

An  Address  delivered  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  New  York  Baptist 
State  Convention,  Buffalo,  October  25,  1883, 289-293 

XXVI. 

EDUCATION  FOR  THE  MINISTRY :  ITS  PRINCIPLES  AND  ITS 

NECESSITY, 

An  Address  delivered  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Monroe  Baptist 
Association,  West  Henrietta,  N.  Y. ,  October  2,  1872, 294-301 

XXVII. 

EDUCATION  FOR  THE  MINISTRY:  ITS  IDEA  AND  ITS 
REQUISITES, 

An  Address  delivered  at  the  Dedication  of  RockfellerHall,  Rochester 

Theological  Seminary,  May  19,  1880, 302-313 

xxvni. 

TRAINING  FOR  LEADERSHIP, 

An  Address  delivered  at  the  Dedication  of  the  Theological  Hall, 
Hamilton  Theological  Seminary,  Hamilton,  N.  Y.,  June  16,  1886,  314-318 

XXIX. 

ARE  OUR  COLLEGES  CHRISTIAN? 
Printed  in  the  Examiner,  New  York,  July  19,  1883, 319-323 

XXX. 
NEW  TESTAMENT  INTERPRETATION, 

A  Charge  to  the  Candidate,  at  the  Ordination  of  Mr.  Ernest  D.  Burton, 
Acting  Professor-elect  in  Newton  Theological  Institution,  Roch- 
ester, June  22,  1883, 324-329 

XXXI. 
A  GREAT  TEACHER  OF  GREEK  EXEGESIS, 

An  address  at  the  Funeral  of  Professor  Horatio  B.  Hackett,  D.  D., 
in  the  Second  Baptist  Church,  Rochester,  November  5,  1875, 330-336 

xxxn. 

CHURCH  HISTORY,  AND   ONE  WHO  TAUGHT  IT, 

An  Address  at  the  Funeral  of  Professor  R.  J.  W.  Buckland,  D.  D., 
in  the  Second  Baptist  Church,  Rochester,  February  1,  1877,..  337-343 


TABLE    OF   CONTENTS.  Xlii 

XXXIII. 
LEAKNING  IN  THE  PROFESSOR'S  CHAIE, 

Remarks  at  the  Funeral  of  the  Rev.  V.  R.  Hotchkiss,  D.  D.,  in  the 
First  Baptist  Church,  Rochester,  January  7, 1882, 344-346 

XXXIV. 
THE  DEATH  OF  THE  PRESIDENT, 

A  Sermon  on  the  death  of  President  Garfield,  preached  at  the  Central 
Presbyterian  Church,  Rochester,  Sunday  morning,  September  25, 
1881,  on  the  text,  2  Samuel  2  :  23 — "And  it  came  to  pass  that  as 
many  as  came  to  the  place  where  Asahel  fell  down  and  died,  stood 
still," 347-357 

XXXV. 
THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  AND  ITS  COMING, 

A  Sermon  before  the  Judson  Society  of  Missionary  Inquiry,  Brown 
University,  Providence,  R.  I. ,  August  31 ,  1869, 358-367 

XXXVI. 
LEAVING  THE  NINETY  AND  NINE, 

A  Sermon  before  the  American  Baptist  Missionary  Union,  at  its  annual 
meeting,  Indianapolis,  May  22,  1881,  on  the  text,  Matt.  18  :  12  — 
"Doth  he  not  leave  the  ninety  and  nine?"... 368-377 

XXXVII. 

THE  ECONOMICS  OF  MISSIONS, 
An  Address  before  the  Baptist  Congress,  Brooklyn,  November  14, 1882,    378-386 

XXXVIH. 
THE  THEOLOGY  OF  MISSIONS, 

An  Address  of  Welcome,    at  the  meeting  of  the  Inter-Seminary 

Missionary  Alliance,  Rochester,  October,  1885,  ..  387-390 

XXXIX. 
THE  NATURE  AND  PURPOSE  OF  THE  CHERUBIM, 

A  Sermon  upon  the  text,  Genesis  3  :  24  — "  So  he  drove  out  the  man, 
and  he  placed  at  the  east  of  the  garden  of  Eden  cherubim,  and  a 
flaming  sword  which  turned  every  way,  to  keep  the  way  of  the  tree 

oflife/'.- ..--  391-3" 

XL. 

WOMAN'S  PLACE  AND  WORK, 

A  Sermon  preached  in  the  First  Baptist  Church,  Rochester,  July  21, 
1878,  on  the  text,  Genesis  2  :  18— "And  the  Lord  God  said  :  It  is 
not  good  that  the  man  should  be  alone  ;  I  will  make  him  an  help 

,     , .      „  400-409 

meet  for  him,   -  - 


Xiv  TABLE   OF   CONTENTS. 

XLI. 
WOMAN'S  WORK  IN  MISSIONS, 

An  Address  before  the  Annual  Convention  of  the  American  Women's 
Baptist  Missionary  Society,  delivered  in  the  First  Baptist  Church, 
Rochester,  April  18,  1883, 410-417 

XLII. 
THE  EDUCATION  OF  A  WOMAN, 

An  Address  delivered  at  the  Annual  Commencement  of  the  Granger 
Place  School,  Canaudaigua,  N.  Y. ,  Tuesday  morning,  June  20, 1882,  418-430 

XLIII. 
RE-MARRIAGE  AFTER  DIVORCE: 

THE  LAW  OF  THE  STATE  AND  THE  LAW  OF  SCRIPTURE, 

Printed  in  the  Examiner,  February  17,  and  February  24,  1881, 431-442 

XLIV. 
CHRISTIANITY  AND  POLITICAL  ECONOMY, 

A  Lecture  before  the  Pennsylvania  Ministers'  Institute,  Chester,  Pa., 
June,  1871, 443-460 

XLV. 
GETTING  AND  SPENDING, 

An  Address  at  the  "Ladies'  Meeting"  of  the  Baptist  Social  Union, 
Delmonico's,  New  York,  November  1 ,  1883, 461-467 

XL  VI. 
RECOLLECTIONS  OF  THE  EAST, 

A  Lecture  before  the  Robinson  Rhetorical  Society  of  the  Rochester 
Theological  Seminary,  February  25,  1878, ...  468-483 

XL  VII. 

THE  CRUSADES, 
An  Essay  read  before  " The  Club,"  Rochester,  February  15,  1876,...    484-500 

XLvm. 

DANTE  AND  THE  DIVINE  COMEDY, 

A  Lecture  delivered  at  Vassar  College,  February  21  and  22,  1888  ; 
printed  in  the  Standard,  Chicago,  November,  1887, 501-524 

XLIX. 
POETRY  AND  ROBERT  BROWNING, 

A  Lecture  delivered  at  Wellesley  College,  May,  1886  ;  printed  in  the 

Examiner,  December,  1887, 525-543 


1873 
1874 
1875 
1876 
1877 
1878 
1879 
1880 
1881 
1882 
1883 
1884 
1885 
1886 
1887 


TABLE    OF   CONTENTS.  XV 

L. 
ADDRESSES  TO  SUCCESSIVE  GRADUATING  CLASSES 

OF    THE   ROCHESTER   THEOLOGICAL    SEMINABY, 

1 '  The  Three  Onlies  ", 544-546 

Truth  and  Love, 546-548 

Manhood  in  the  Ministry, 548-551 

Work  and  Power, 552-554 

Courage,  Passive  and  Active, 554-557 

True  Dogmatism, 557-560 

God's  Leading*     560-562 

Self-Mastery, 562-566 

Mental  Qualities  Requisite  to  the  Pastor, 566-569 

Adaptation, 569-572 

Faith  the  Measure  of  Success, 572-575 

Habits  in  the  Ministry,.... 575-577 

The  Preacher's  Doubts, 578-580 

High-Mindedness, 580-583 

Zeal  for  Christ. .  583-586 


"Wo  ZWEI  HYPOTHESEN  GLEICH  MOGLICH  BIND,  DIE  EINE  UBEREINSTIM- 
MEND  MIT  MORALISCHEN  BEDtJRFNISSEN,  DIE  ANDERE  MIT  IHNEN  STREITEND, 
KANN  NICHT8  DIE  WAHL  ZU  GUN8TEN  DER  LETZERN  LENKEN." 

LOTZE,  MEDICIN.  PSYCH.,  36. 


Blensrs  py  rtz  b/mz  larac  b  aoXafcofajv  dta  rrfi  (pdoffcupiaz  xae 
z  dndryz  xara  ryv  napd&WHV  ra>v  dvdpamfov,  xara  ra  aroiyzia. 
roD  xofffjtou  xac  ou  xara  Xfuarbv  ore  Iv  abrw  xarotxe?  nav  TO 
xtojp&fta  rrfi  SSOTT^TO^  Gtoimrtxcoz,  xat  Iffre  Iv  aurw  ne7rtypaffjt&we9 
8?  larw  jj  xs<f>afy  xdayz  dto%yz  xai  iqouaia^. 

PAUL,  COLOSS.,  2:  8-10. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION/ 


On  the  last  page  of  "  Tom  Brown  at  Rugby  "  there  is  a  vivid  and  soulful 
picture  of  Tom's  return,  years  after  his  school-days  are  ended,  to  the  scene 
of  his  early  scrapes  and  triumphs.  He  enters  the  chapel  and  once  more  takes 
his  seat  on  the  lowest  bench,  in  the  very  place  he  occupied  as  a  little  boy  on 
his  first  Sunday  at  Rugby.  On  the  oaken  paneling  he  sees  scratched  the 
name  of  the  youngster  who  sat  that  day  by  his  side.  Upon  the  great  painted 
window  the  same  shadows  of  the  trees  seem  dancing  that  drew  his  thoughts 
from  service  and  sermon  long  ago.  The  chapel  is  empty  now.  No  rows  of 
boys  fill  the  benches.  The  solid  English  face  that  burned  with  such  inten- 
sity of  love  for  truth  and  such  noble  scorn  of  moral  cowardice  looks  down 
no  longer  from  the  pulpit.  "The  Doctor,"  the  great  Arnold,  sleeps  now 
under  the  stone  pavement  of  the  chapel-floor.  As  Tom  Brown  meditates, 
there  seem  to  rise  before  him  the  forms  of  the  living  and  the  dead  whom 
lie  once  met  there  —  many  of  them  braver  and  purer  than  he,  yet  scarcely 
known  till  now.  Now,  for  the  first  time,  he  comprehends  his  debt  to  them 
and  to  him  whose  commanding  spirit  bound  them  all  together.  The  lofty 
teachings  of  that  sacred  place  assume  an  aspect  of  ideal  grandeur  that  awes, 
inspires  and  rebukes  him.  Humbled  in  spirit,  and  melted  to  grateful  tears, 
he  kneels  before  the  altar,  at  the  grave  of  Arnold,  and  renews  his  vows  of 
consecration  to  that  greater  Master  to  whom  Arnold  led  him. 

The  day  of  our  return  to  these  haunts  of  our  early  learning,  brethren  of 
the  Alumni,  is  in  like  manner  a  day  of  mingled  sorrow  and  joy.  There  is 
a  reverent  regard  for  those  at  whose  feet  we  sat  which  makes  these  scenes 
sacred  to  us,  though  in  the  presence  of  the  living  it  finds  only  a  faint 
expression  in  words.  There  is  thankfulness  of  spirit,  as  we  gather  from 
different  parts  of  the  great  harvest-field  and  rejoice  together  over  the  bless- 
ing that  has  followed  our  labors.  Though  the  sheaves  we  bring  are  not  so 
many  nor  so  large  as  we  had  hoped,  and  "old  Adam  has  proved  too  strong 
for  young  Melancthon,"  yet  there  is  a  confidence  within  us,  which  we  never 
could  have  had  without  these  years  of  experience,  that  old  Adam  is  not  too 
strong  for  Christ.  Before  us  too  there  rise  the  faces  of  some  whose  work 
is  all  complete  and  whose  souls  have  entered  into  rest.  A  little  musing,  a 
little  forgetfulness  of  the  sights  and  sounds  around  us,  and 

"  The  forms  of  the  departed 
Enter  at  the  open  door; 
The  beloved,  the  true  hearted, 
Come  to  visit  us  once  more. 

*  An  Address  before  the  Alumni  of  the  Rochester  Theological  Seminary,  at  their 
-annual  meeting,  May  20th,  1868,  and  printed  in  the  Baptist  Quarterly,  2  :  393  sq. 


2  PHILOSOPHY   AND    RELIGION. 

They,  the  young  and  strong,  who  cherished 

Noble  longings  for  the  strife, — 
By  the  roadside  fell  and  perished, 

Weary  of  the  march  of  life." 

In  the  presence  of  these  memories  we  are  subdued  and  yet  exalted.  Our 
noblest  resolves  are  strengthened  by  the  thought  that  ' '  such  as  these  have 
lived  and  died."  But  a  more  than  mortal  presence  is  here  also.  Christ  is 
here  —  the  same  Christ  into  whose  hands  we  gave  our  lives  as  we  went  out 
into  the  world's  great  strife.  His  truth  remains  —  the  same  truth  of  which 
we  gained  glimpses  during  those  early  years  of  preparation,  but  which  now 
fills  a  larger  arc  of  our  vision.  It  would  seem  that  the  only  fitting  employ- 
ment for  such  an  hour  as  this  must  be  the  consideration  of  some  one  of 
those  great  relations  which  affect  our  success  as  ministers  of  Christ,  and 
which  have  to  do  with  the  defense  and  propagation  of  the  faith.  I  am 
sure  that  no  preacher  who  has  received  his  training  here  will  deem  me 
unpractical  when  I  propose  as  the  theme  of  the  evening  :  PHILOSOPHY  AND 
RELIGION.  I  ask  your  attention  to  three  separate  divisions  of  my  subject : 
first,  the  debt  of  religion  to  philosophy;  secondly,  the  dangers  of  philosophy 
the  dangers  of  religion  also;  and  thirdly,  an  impartial  philosophy  essential 
to  the  perfect  triumph  of  religion. 

Religion  may  be  viewed  in  two  aspects,  according  as  we  look  upon  its 
speculative  or  its  practical  side.  It  may  exist  in  the  mind  of  a  child,  in  the 
shape  of  reverence,  love,  and  trust  towards  God,  long  before  the  child  has 
given  any  conscious  account  to  itself  of  its  faith.  It  may  exist,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  the  mind  of  the  scientific  theologian,  in  the  shape  of  a  thoroughly 
digested  doctrinal  system,  though  the  system  may  not  yet  have  melted  the 
heart  and  run  the  activities  of  the  life  into  its  moulds.  Let  it  never  be 
forgotten,  however,  that  either  one  of  these  sides  of  religion  tends  to 
complete  itself  by  the  production  of  the  other.  Like  positive  and  negative 
electricity,  the  one*  attracts  the  other,  and  without  the  other  cannot  be  made 
perfect.  The  child,  for  example,  grows  to  maturity  of  years.  Every  step 
of  that  growing  maturity  is  marked  by  an  increasing  habit  of  introspection. 
The  faith  that  once  seemed  intuitive  assumes  definite  form  and  order  to 
the  reason.  The  truths  once  held  by  the  intellect  in  a  state  of  solution  are 
precipitated  and  crystallized  about  some  centre.  As  the  nebular  hypothesis 
supposes  a  revolving  fire-mist  diffused  throughout  the  universe,  which  con- 
denses as  it  whirls,  until  the  worlds  are  thrown  off  with  their  harmonious 
movements  and  their  perfect  beauty,  so  the  child's  faith,  once  vague  and 
unreasoning,  cannot  exist  forever  in  the  form  of  nebula,  but  turns  and 
seethes  and  solidifies,  until  it  comes  to  be  a  little  solar  system  for  interde- 
pendence and  order.  And,  in  like  manner,  the  student  of  scientific  theology 
must  shut  his  ears  continually  to  the  voices  that  fill  the  air  of  that  lofty 
region  of  thought,  if  he  would  prevent  the  religion  of  the  intellect  from 
becoming  a  religion  of  the  heart.  Both  Chalmers  and  De  Wette  were  men 
with  whom  the  scientific  interest  became  at  last  a  practical  interest,  and  who 
found  theology  a  school-master  to  lead  them  to  Christ. 

Now  religion,  as  a  scientific  system,  rests  upon  a  basis  of  philosophy. 
The  inevitable  tendency  of  the  mind  to  form  to  itself  a  definite  and  con- 
nected scheme  of  knowledge  impels  it,  not  only  to  bring  its  religious  beliefs 
into  connection  and  order,  but  to  search  for  the  foundations  of  those  beliefs. 


PHILOSOPHY    AND    RELIGION.  3 

It  cannot  content  itself  with  theology  proper.  Besides  giving  to  the  truths 
of  revelation  a  scientific  form,  it  desires  to  know  what  are  the  proofs  of  reve- 
lation, and  what  are  the  evidences  that  a  God  exists  from  whom  a  revelation 
might  come.  There  can  be  no  peace  to  the  logical  understanding  until  these 
questions  are  answered  ;  but  the  answer  to  them  is  impossible  without  phi- 
losophy. For,  this  is  the  difference  between  theology  and  philosophy  : 
Theology  begins  with  the  revelation  of  God  and  the  consciousness  of  God, 
and  from  these,  by  a  synthetic  method,  constructs  her  system.  Philosophy, 
on  the  other  hand,  begins  with  those  underlying  facts  of  mind  and  matter 
from  which  we  argue  the  existence  of  a  God,  and  the  authority  of  revelation. 
Pursuing  an  analytic  method,  it  asks  whether  we  have  any  real  knowledge 
of  these  facts ;  it  seeks  to  give  an  accurate  and  complete  account  of  these 
facts ;  it  aims  to  determine  whether  these  facts  warrant  the  erection  upon 
them  of  so  vast  a  superstructure.  Any  one  who  has  traveled  in  Holland  will 
remember  those  marvelous  cities  that  have  risen  from  the  beds  of  ancient 
marshes,  supported  upon  myriads  of  piles  driven  into  the  yielding  soil. 
Many  a  church  is  towerless  there,  because  the  foundations  cannot  be  trusted 
to  bear  a  greater  weight.  Many  a  wall  on  private  streets  is  cracked  from  top 
to  bottom  by  the  settling  of  the  piles  beneath  it.  Many  a  grain-merchant, 
with  tons  of  golden  corn  stored  in  his  granary,  passes  his  days  and  nights 
in  fear,  lest  some  unusual  weight  may  reveal  a  weakness  in  the  supports 
beneath.  Let  it  be  whispered  that  the  foundations  of  the  Town-Hall  of 
Amsterdam  are  sinking,  and  there  is  no  quieting  the  town  until  men  of 
experience  have  examined  those  foundations,  and  found  them  sure.  Now 
it  is  a  most  serious  question  whether  religion,  so  far  as  it  is  a  scientific 
system,  is  like  one  of  those  immense  structures  in  the  Netherlands  that  are 
built  upon  the  sand,  and  may,  some  years  from  now,  give  way  and  tumble 
to  the  ground;  or  whether,  like  St.  Peter's  at  Borne,  its  foundations  go  down 
to  the  everlasting  rock.  And  philosophy  is  the  science  of  foundations.  It 
busies  itself  with  the  examination  of  the  grounds  of  faith.  It  seeks  to 
determine  whether  religion  has  a  safe  basis  and  support  in  the  facts  of 
con  sciousness. 

There  is  still  another  service  which  philosophy  renders  to  religion,  namely, 
that  of  defining  and  correlating  the  great  primary  conceptions  of  revelation. 
The  ideas  of  conscience,  virtue,  liberty,  providence,  God,  are  given  to  us 
by  revelation  in  the  concrete.  Philosophy  seeks  either  to  analyze  them  or 
to  show  that  they  are  incapable  of  analysis,  and  having  ascertained  their 
intrinsic  significance,  aims  to  set  them  in  reconciliation  with  the  remaining 
facts  of  our  mental  constitution,  and  with  our  observation,  of  the  world.  So 
far  as  theology  argues  from  the  mental  constitution  of  man,  indeed,  she 
must  get  her  facts  from  philosophy.  Her  doctrine  of  the  will,  and  her 
determination  of  the  limits  of  the  human  faculties,  her  application  of  realism 
to  the  unity  of  the  race,  and  her  theory  of  the  true  end  of  being,  must  all  be 
ultimately  given  her  by  the  prior  philosophy  with  which  she  sets  out  in  her 
investigations.  Both  in  her  account  of  the  universe  and  in  her  account  of 
God,  theology  is  obliged  to  combine  with  the  facts  of  revelation  the  facts 
of  consciousness,  since  only  through  consciousness  have  we  any  personal 
knowledge  of  either.  We  stand  between  God  and  the  world.  We  must 
interpret  matter  by  mind,  and  God  by  mind,  and  that  interpretation  is 


4  PHILOSOPHY   AND   RELIGION. 

impossible  without  a  philosophy  of  mind.  Upon  the  front  of  the  temple 
of  Apollo  at  Delphi,  Plutarch  declares  that  the  two  Greek  letters  Epsilon 
Iota  were  inscribed.  It  was  the  word  "  Thou  art !"—  and  this,  John  Howe, 
in  his  preface  to  the  "Living  Temple,"  interprets  to  be  an  assertion  of  the 
eternal  existence  of  the  god.  But  upon  that  same  temple-front,  according 
to  an  old  tradition,  was  another  inscription, — this  namely:  "  Know  thyself  !" 
May  it  not  be  that  the  Puritan  divine  gave  the  Epsilon  Iota  a  wrong  inter- 
pretation, and  that  both  the  inscriptions  had  one  common  object  —  to 
admonish  him  who  entered  the  sacred  fane  that  all  knowledge  of  divinity 
must  proceed  from  self-knowledge  ?  "  Thou  art,  O  soul !  Know  then  thy- 
self !  Understand  first  thine  own  existence  and  attributes,  so  shalt  thou 
best  know  the  divine,  of  which  thou  art  the  image."  So  at  the  gate  of  the 
temple  of  Theology  the  inscription  might  well  be  placed  :  ' '  Thou  art ! 
Know  thyself  !"  for  a  true  knowledge  of  mind  is  indispensable  to  a  scientific 
exposition  of  religion. 

I  do  not  forget,  however,  that  something  more  than  abstract  reasoning  is 
needed,  to  set  forth  convincingly  the  debt  which  religion  owes  to  philosophy. 
Let  me  ask  you  for  a  moment  to  look  at  the  matter  in  the  light  of  history. 
Have  you  ever  reflected  upon  the  remarkable  difference  in  form  that  exists 
between  Augustine  and  Calvin, —  between  the  massy  ore  of  Augustine's 
theologizing  and  the  stamped  and  minted  coin  of  Calvin's  Institutes  ?  Both 
held  the  same  great  fundamental  doctrines,  but  Calvin  has  put  them  into  a 
scientific  order  and  organized  them  into  a  comprehensive  system  which 
would  have  been  utterly  impossible  in  Augustine's  day.  No  one  can  fail  to 
see  that  between  the  fourth  and  the  sixteenth  centuries  theology  has  made 
a  great- advance  in  arrangement,  in  compactness,  in  logical  force,  in  practical 
power.  And  to  what  shall  we  attribute  this  advance  ?  To  nothing  more  or  less 
than  the  influence  of  that  Aristotle,  whom  Luther  called  "an accursed,  mis- 
chief-making heathen. "  It  was  the  study  of  Aristotle  which  first  made  theol- 
ogy a  science,  and  rendered  possible  a  Calvin.  That  mighty  movement  of 
the  human  mind  which  we  call  Scholasticism,  with  its  noble  attempts  to 
define  and  prove  every  doctrine  of  religion  on  principles  of  reason,  and  its 
rich  results  for  modern  philosophical  theology,  was  a  child  of  Aristotle's 
logic.  By  it,  the  matter  of  theology,  received  from  Augustine,  and  full 
therefore  of  his  Platonic  realism  and  soaring  contempt  for  matter,  was  worked 
up  into  new  shape  for  the  uses  of  the  coming  times.  Thus  both  the  Platonic 
and  Aristotelian  philosophies,  one  at  heart  though  different  in  method,  have 
disciplined  the  forces  of  theology  and  made  them  available.  And  their  influ- 
ence is  felt  the  moment  we  compare  Augustine,  in  whose  works  the  truths  of 
religion  lie  scattered  about  like  raw  recruits  bivouacked  for  the  night,  with 
Calvin,  who  draws  up  those  same  truths  like  soldiers  in  line  of  battle,  ready 
on  the  instant  for  attack  or  defense.  Men  may  decry  philosophy,  but  it  is 
only  by  ignoring  what  philosophy  has  wrought.  Still  those  sceptred  kings 
of  abstract  thought  control  the  minds  of  living  men,  and  rule  us  from  their 
urns.  Take  away  the  influence  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and  you  put  a  scien- 
tific theology  where  John  of  Damascus  found  it  eleven  centuries  ago. 

There  is  little  time  to  mention  the  services  of  modern  philosophical 
thinkers  to  religion.  Who  can  overestimate  the  magnificent  contribution  to 
our  knowledge  of  the  ethical  nature  of  God  which  Bishop  Butler  made,  when 


PHILOSOPHY   AND    RELIGION.  5 

lie  propounded  and  demonstrated  his  celebrated  doctrine  of  the  supremacy 
of  conscience  in  the  moral  constitution  of  man  ?  What  but  the  works  of 
Coleridge,  splendid  even  in  their  incompleteness,  rescued  the  theological 
thinking  of  England  from  the  slough  of  utilitarianism  and  materialism  into 
which  Locke  and  Paley  had  led  it,  and  by  setting  it  upon  the  rock  of  a  true 
spiritual  philosophy,  gave  it  a  foothold  and  vantage-ground  from  which  to 
contend  against  the  incoming  flood  of  German  pantheism  ?  The  mere  men- 
tion of  these  facts  is  sufficient  to  show  that  there  is  no  possibility  of  under- 
standing the  history  of  theology  without  a  previous  study  of  philosophy. 
Nor  is  the  effect  of  philosophy  confined  simply  to  the  modification  of  systems 
of  abstract  theology.  Whatever  affects  theology  comes  ultimately  to  affect 
the  practical  experience  and  working  of  Christianity.  Through  its  influence 
on  theology,  philosophy  exercises  the  most  potent  influence  upon  the  whole 
religious  life  of  the  church.  I  find  Bancroft,  himself  no  theologian,  depict- 
ing in  these  words  the  influence  of  Jonathan  Edwards'  speculations  with 
regard  to  the  nature  of  virtue  and  the  freedom  of  the  will.  "Edwards,"  he 
says,  "  makes  a  turning-point  in  the  intellectual,  or  as  he  would  have  called 
it,  the  spiritual,  history  of  New  England.  The  faith  condensed  in  the 
symbols  of  Calvinism  demanded  to  be  subjected  to  free  inquiry,  and  '  without 
dodging,  shuffling,  hiding,  or  turning  the  back,'  to  be  shown  to  be  in  har- 
mony with  reason  and  common  sense.  In  the  age  following,  the  influence 
of  Edwards  is  discernible  upon  every  leading  mind.  He  that  will  trace  the 
transition  of  Calvinism  from  a  haughty  self-assertion  of  the  doctrine  of 
election  against  the  pride  of  oppression,  to  its  adoption  of  love  as  the  central 
point  of  its  view  of  creation  and  the  duty  of  the  created, — he  that  will  know  the 
workings  of  the  mind  of  New  England  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  and 
the  throbbings  of  its  heart,  must  give  his  days  and  nights  to  the  study  of 
Jonathan  Edwards."  Thus  a  single  philosophic  mind  may  change  for  the 
better  the  style  of  religion  for  a  whole  generation,  or  a  whole  century.  The 
number  influenced  consciously  and  directly  by  him  may  be  few  ;  the  great 
mass  of  men  who  come  after  him,  may  be  quite  unaware  of  his  existence ; 
still  his  power  over  them  is  no  less  sure.  There  is  a  slow  movement  of  the 
glaciers  in  the  Alps  by  which  the  snow  that  fell  years  ago  upon  the  summit 
of  Mont  Blanc  or  the  Jungfrau  comes  down  at  last  in  the  shape  of  solid  ice 
to  the  valleys  far  below,  and  by  its  melting  furnishes  a  refreshing  draught 
to  the  tired  laborer  in  the  meadows  as  he  throws  himself  upon  the  earth  for 
his  noonday  meal.  It  is  so  with  the  speculations  of  abstract  thinkers.  Con- 
ceived upon  the  very  mountain-tops  of  thought  they  may  be,  yet  by  a  law  as 
irresistible  as  that  of  gravitation  they  find  their  way  downwards,  through 
subordinate  interpreters,  and  by  a  thousand  channels  of  the  printed  page  and 
the  spoken  word,  until  they  reach  the  homes  and  hearts  of  common  men. 

I  have  thus  indicated  the  debt  which  religion,  both  as  a  system  and  a  life, 
owes  to  philosophy.  It  cannot  have  escaped  your  notice  that  the  same  weapon 
which  has  struck  such  stout  blows  for  Christianity  has  often  been  used 
against  her.  And  this  brings  me  to  the  second  division  of  my  theme,  namely 
this  :  The  dangers  of  philosophy  are  the  dangers  also  of  religion.  I  say  the 
dangers  of  philosophy,  for  I  cannot  conceal  from  myself  the  fact  that  through 
the  whole  history  of  speculation  there  has  been  a  constant  tendency  to  one 
or  the  other  of  two  extremes.  The  great  principle,  which  Eobertson  so 


6  PHILOSOPHY   AND   RELIGION. 

remarkably  illustrated  in  the  better  portion  of  his  teachings,  that  truth  is 
made  up  of  two  opposite  propositions  and  is  not  found  in  the  via  media 
between  the  two,  is  a  principle  which  both  philosophy  and  theology  have 
quite  too  often  neglected.  Theology,  for  example,  has  two  factors  given  to 
her,  both  indisputably  true,  yet  logically  irreconcilable  with  one  another  — 
I  mean,  divine  sovereignty  and  human  freedom.  Between  these  two  poles 
the  world  of  theologic  thought  has  been  swinging  for  ages  like  a  pendulum. 
And  yet  how  often  has  an  inveterate  and  unregulated  passion  for  unity  led 
the  theologian  to  construct  his  system  about  one  of  these  poles  as  its  centre, 
while  the  other  was  virtually  ignored  or  forgotten.  So,  in  philosophy,  all 
consciousness  involves  duality.  There  are  two  things  different  in  kind 
—  matter  and  spirit.  To  accept  the  veritable  existence  of  the  one,  and  to 
deny  the  other,  is  to  falsify  the  most  palpable  of  facts.  Yet  an  overweening 
logic  has  sought,  in  every  age,  to  build  a  scheme  of  knowledge  upon  a  single 
one  of  these  two  elements,  while  the  other  has  been  pared  down  to  fit  into 
some  odd  niche  in  the  temple  where  its  twin-brother  was  the  sole  object  of 
worship.  Thus  have  risen  systems  of  Idealism,  declaring  virtually  that  matter 
is  spirit ;  systems  of  Materialism,  declaring  that  spirit  is  matter ;  and  then  for 
those  who  could  not  find  either  of  these  schemes  to  their  taste,  systems  of 
Absolute  Identity,  declaring  that  both  matter  and  spirit  are  but  forms  of  one 
substance  which  underlies  both,  a  sort  of  substantia  una  et  unica.  All  of 
these  systems,  as  has  been  well  said,  are  seductive  from  their  seeming  sim- 
plicity, but  are  simple  only  through  mutilation.  Let  us  acknowledge  that 
there  is  not  only  a  passion  for  unity,  which  is  native  to  the  mind,  but  that 
there  must  be  in  all  science  a  real  unity  of  which  that  same  mind  furnishes  us 
the  type  ;  but  let  us  never  fail  to  allow  the  facts  of  consciousness  to  decide 
the  nature  of  that  unity.  Let  the  modern  chemist,  like  Youmans,  believe  if 
he  will  that  all  the  elements  of  matter  which  have  hitherto  been  considered 
simple  are  merely  modifications  of  some  one  ultimate  substance  which  exists 
in  forms  even  more  unlike  each  other  than  the  black  charcoal  and  the  glit- 
tering diamond  ;  let  him  insist,  as  much  as  he  pleases,  that  science  already 
proclaims  this  to  be  her  belief  by  expressing  the  atomic  weights  of  all  her 
elements  in  multiples  of  hydrogen,  and  by  her  hypothesis  that  heat,  motion, 
light  and  electricity  are  all  forms  of  some  one  ultimate  force  into  which 
they  are  mutually  convertible,  —  but  there  let  him  stop.  When  he  goes 
further  and  asserts  that  mind  is  but  this  same  force  liberated  and  transformed 
by  chemical  changes  in  the  brain  ;  when  he  declares  that  this  search  for 
unity  is  so  irresistible  a  feature  of  our  mental  constitution  that  we  cannot 
believe  in  the  existence  of  spirit  and  matter,  but  must  by  a  necessity  of 
mind  resolve  one  into  the  other,  or  both  into  one,  he  is  simply  throttling 
the  facts  of  mind,  with  the  hope  that,  as  dead  men  tell  no  tales,  he  can  build 
up  a  complete  system  solely  upon  the  facts  of  matter.  Such  a  manipulation 
of  facts  to  suit  a  preconceived  theory  falsifies  the  very  principle  of  induc- 
tion upon  which  all  science  is  based.  To  dispose  of  half  the  facts  of  con- 
sciousness by  denying  that  mind  is  essentially  distinct  from  matter  is  to 
achieve  unity  at  the  sacrifice  of  all  our  knowledge.  Such  a  method  of  solv- 
ing the  great  problem  of  the  universe  reminds  us  of  that  grim  familiar  tale 
of  the  cannibal-chief  who  professed  conversion,  but  was  informed  by  the 
missionary  that  he  must  renounce  polygamy  by  giving  up  his  second  wife, 


PHILOSOPHY   AND   RELIGION.  7 

before  he  could  receive  the  ordinance  of  baptism.  On  the  return  of  the 
missionary  the  following  year,  the  chief  presented  himself  with  smiles  for 
the  holy  rite,  and  on  being  interrogated  as  to  what  he  had  done  with  his 
wife,  he  replied  with  a  glow  of  satisfaction  :  "  Me  eat  her  !  " 

Any  theory  of  philosophy  which  is  based  upon  a  monistic  hypothesis,  and 
which  denies  the  facts  of  either  matter  or  mind,  must  exert  a  deadly  influ- 
ence upon  theology  and  religion.  The  ultimate  conclusion  must  be  that 
<3k>d  is  the  universe  or  that  the  universe  is  God  —  in  other  words,  there  is 
no  God  separate  from  the  soul  or  the  world.  And  in  the  precise  propor- 
tion to  which  the  view  of  mind  leans  to  one  or  the  other  extreme,  will  the 
religious  thinking  of  the  individual  and  the  age  lean  towards  Materialism  or 
Pantheism.  There  are  two  men  who  have  figured  largely  in  theological  con- 
troversy whose  opposite  conclusions  may  illustrate  this  two-fold  danger. 
There  is  John  Henry  Newman — apparently  concerning  himself  but  little  with 
philosophy,  yet  having  his  whole  theology  and  life  dominated  by  a  purely 
metaphysical  notion.  In  his  "  Apologia  Pro  Vita  Sua,"  he  tells  us  that  from 
his  very  boyhood  he  carried  with  him  a  certain  constitutional  frame  of  mind 
resembling  the  Berkeleian  Idealism.  "  All  the  external  universe"  (I  quote 
from  a  late  writer),  "  seemed  to  him  a  deception,  an  angelic  extravaganza,  a 
spangled  phantasmagory  of  zodiacal  signs  and  hieroglyphics,  a  vivid  envi- 
ronment of  sacramental  symbolisms  and  picture-writings,  speaking  to  him 
of  a  Great  Being,  besides  whom  and  his  own  soul  there  was  no  other. 
Dwelling  long  within  the  blazing  cabalistic  ether  of  this  cosmological  con- 
ception, till  his  soul  had  learned  its  language  and  could  think  in  no  other, 
but  tenacious  of  a  principle  which  had  also  strongly  possessed  him  from  an 
early  age,  that  of  the  necessity  of  dogma,  Dr.  Newman  passed  on  gradually  but 
logically  to  his  peculiar  ecclesiasticism,  and  became  what  he  has  become  " — 
one  of  the  most  unquestioning  adherents  and  advocates  of  the  Romish  faith. 
And  there,  on  the  other  hand,  is  Joseph  Priestley —beginning  with  a  tendency 
precisely  the  opposite,  fixing  his  faith  on  nothing  which  had  not  the  evi- 
dence of  sense  impressed  upon  it,  and  unable  even  to  conceive  of  a  spiritual 
idea  until  he  had  cast  it  into  a  material  mould.  As  you  watch  his  mental 
progress  you  perceive  him  getting  his  notions  of  mind  from  retorts  and 
electrical  machines,  until  Hartley's  theory  of  vibrations,  with  slight  modifi- 
cations, seems  to  include  and  explain  all  the  facts  of  our  mental  constitution. 
And  from  this  sensational  philosophy  what  theology  was  evolved  ?  Nothing 
more  nor  less  than  a  bald  Socinianism  which  ignored  all  the  profounder 
truths  of  revelation,  left  nothing  in  Christ  which  could  be  worshiped,  and 
reduced  Christian  experience  to  a  mere  matter  of  the  reason.  Newman  and 
Priestley  are  examples  of  the  pernicious  influence  upon  theology  of  a  phi- 
losophy which,  without  avowing  it,  leans  to  one  of  the  two  extremes  of 
Idealism  or  Empiricism.  I  surely  do  not  need  to  point  you  to  the  malign 
influences  which  have  been  exerted  on  a  wider  scale  by  whole  systems  of 
philosophy.  The  Sensationalism  of  Locke,  developed  and  carried  to  its 
extremest  results  by  Condillac  and  the  French  Encyclopaedists,  poured  over 
France  like  a  torrent,  sweeping  away  all  belief  in  man's  spiritual  dignity, 
and  with  the  conviction  of  human  accountability  and  immortality,  burying 
beneath  the  flood  all  idea  of  a  God,  until  the  Eevolution  came  to  clear  away 
the  rubbish  and  make  room  once  more  for  the  faiths  that  had  been  destroyed. 


8  PHILOSOPHY    AND    RELIGION. 

And  on  the  other  hand  the  Kantian  philosophy,  with  its  extreme  subjective- 
tendencies  developed  by  Schelling  and  Hegel,  declared  that  man  could 
know  all  by  being  himself  the  All  in  miniature,  even  as  the  drop  of  water 
can  reflect  upon  its  surface  the  earth  beneath  and  all  the  constellations  of 
the  cope  of  heaven.  While  Empiricism  ended  in  the  absolute  denial  of  a 
God,  Idealism  found  its  consummation  in  a  Pantheistic  scheme  which  con- 
founded the  universe  with  God,  and  made  all  human  lives  and  actions  but 
the  brilliant  bubbles  that  rise  for  a  moment  and  then  disappear  upon  the 
endless  current  of  impersonal  and  unconscious  being. 

With  these  systems  before  us,  and  with  the  practical  evidence  of  their 
power  for  evil  in  the  pervading  tendency  and  tone  of  modern  Continental 
theology  and  religion  and  in  the  general  skepticism  of  the  French  and  Ger- 
man mind,  it  is  vain  to  ignore  the  dangers  which  rise  from  a  false  philosophy. 
Yet  I  suspect  another  danger  is  before  us,  as  great  or  even  greater  than  any 
which  Christianity  has  met  and  conquered.  There  is  a  philosophy  now 
rising  to  power  which  seems  to  me  more  deadly  than  any  other,  because  it 
consists  in  the  denial  of  all  philosophy.  A  philosophy  of  Nescience  is  worse 
than  a  philosophy  of  Omniscience.  The  one  still  leaves  us  the  reality  of 
mind  from  which  to  argue  the  existence  of  a  God.  The  other,  like  Nero, 
when  he  wished  that  all  the  people  of  Rome  had  one  neck  that  he  might  at 
one  blow  behead  them  all,  gathers  all  the  facts  of  mental  consciousness 
together  and  by  a  single  stroke  puts  them  out  of  existence.  By  that  same 
stroke  that  destroys  all  knowledge  of  the  human  mind  you  have  destroyed 
all  knowledge  of  Him  who  made  the  mind.  In  every  production  of  writers 
of  this  class,  as  Lewes  and  Draper,  you  seem  to  hear  the  jubilant  refrain  : 
"  Great  Pan  is  dead.  The  age  of  Metaphysics  has  happily  ended.  Philos- 
ophy is  forever  impossible. "  A  spontaneous  vegetative  life  is  substituted 
for  the  apprehension  of  spiritual  realities.  Mind  is  but  a  product  of  organ- 
ization and  thought  is  only  cerebration.  Thus  in  effect  man  is  bidden  to 
act  the  part  of  the  wretched  miser  of  Bunyan's  dream  who  bends  ever 
toward  the  earth,  gathering  straws  with  his  muck-rake,  while  all  the  while 
a  golden  crown  hangs  suspended  just  above  him,  unseen  and  unregarded. 
God,  heaven,  freedom,  conscience,  immortality,  are  all  the  diseased  imagin- 
ations of  an  unscientific  age.  These  are  the  logical  results  of  a  philosophy 
which  starts  with  the  denial  of  any  direct  knowledge  of  the  mind.  But  there 
are  thousands  who  accept  its  principles  without  foreseeing  these  results. 
The  array  of  investigators  and  followers  who  may  be  classed  as  Positivists 
in  philosophy  is  very  great.  There  are  great  names  among  them.  Mill 
and  Bain  and  Spencer  in  England  are  minds  of  rare  erudition  and  acumen. 
But  there  are  lesser  satellites  that  revolve  about  these  suns  of  the  system  and 
reflect  their  light.  The  youthful  writers  for  the  London  Times  quote  John 
Stuart  Mill  as  the  only  authority  in  philosophy.  There  are  itinerant  lecturers 
among  us  who  winter  after  winter  deliver,  to  audiences  innocent  of  all  sus- 
picion of  their  drift,  lengthy  tirades  against  metaphysics,  and  arguments  to 
show  that  the  observation  of  our  own  mental  states  is  as  impossible  and 
absurd  as  to  stand  still  and  walk  around  one's  self.  There  are  in  all  our 
Sabbath  congregations  men  who  drink  in  this  philosophy  of  Nescience  from 
magazines  and  scientific  periodicals,  and  who  are  prepared  thereby  to  look 
upon  the  sermon  from  the  pulpit  as  so  much  pleasant  moonshine  for  purblind 


PHILOSOPHY   AND   RELIGION.  9 

intellects  that  cannot  bear  the  sunlight.  There  are  few  of  us,  I  am  per- 
suaded, who  realize  to  what  extent  this  godless  philosophy  has  taken  hold 
of  the  educated  minds  of  the  generation,  and  has  warped  their  views  of 
religion.  You  see  the  results  of  it  in  the  disposition  of  certain  divines  to 
accept  Mr.  Huxley  as  an  authority  with  regard  to  the  creation,  and  to  sit  at 
the  feet  of  Baden  Powell  for  teaching  with  regard  to  the  possibility  of  a 
literal  destruction  of  the  world  by  fire.  Outside  the  ministry  it  appears  in 
the  popular  hue  and  cry  against  metaphysics,  and  in  the  increasing  lack  of 
sympathy  with  the  Christian  church  on  the  part  of  those  whose  pursuits 
bring  them  most  in  contact  with  physical  science.  There  has  been  a  vast 
change  in  this  respect  in  twenty  years.  Time  was  when  philosophy  and 
history  brought  the  results  of  their  investigations  and  laid  them  upon  the 
altar  of  religion.  The  tendency  now  is  to  deny  that  there  exists  such  a 
thing  as  metaphysical  or  moral  science,  and  to  treat  as  a  weakness  of  intellect 
any  attempt  to  interpret  the  world  of  matter  by  the  world  of  mind. 

I  do  not  need  to  tell  you  that  the  coryphaeus  of  this  new  philosophy  of 
Nescience  is  Auguste  Comte.  Scarcely  recognized  as  a  thinker  during  his 
lif etime,  he  promises,  now  that  he  is  dead,  to  be  the  master  of  the  scientific 
thought  of  the  next  twenty  years.  His  classification  of  the  sciences,  though 
chargeable  with  many  errors,  proves  him  to  be  one  of  the  leading  minds  of 
the  age.  Every  one  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  his  philosophy,  how- 
ever, is  at  war  with  a  sound  psychology.  As  a  notable  illustration  of  the 
necessity  of  beginning  our  theological  thinking  with  correct  principles  of 
mind,  let  me  point  out  to  you  two  of  the  fundamental  errors  of  Positivism, 
and  the  results  to  which  they  logically  lead  in  our  notions  with  regard  to 
religious  truth.  Take  for  example  his  postulate  that  we  know  nothing  but 
the  phenomena  of  matter,  and  that  mind,  if  there  be  such  a  thing,  lies 
wholly  out  of  reach  of  direct  observation.  Nothing  could  more  plainly  than 
this  contradict  the  consciousness  of  men.  In  the  same  act  by  which  I  know 
matter,  I  know  myself  as  distinct  from  matter  and  as  knowing  matter.  I 
can  see  two  things  at  a  time,  namely,  self  and  not-self.  I  have  knowledge  of 
my  own  mental  states  by  memory.  I  know  what  I  was,  as  well  as  what  I 
am.  To  deny  these  deliverances  of  consciousness  is  to  declare  that  I  know 
nothing  ;  for  I  have  the  same  evidence  for  the  existence  of  my  own  mental 
states  that  I  have  for  the  existence  of  outward  phenomena.  The  mind  is 
just  as  open  to  inspection  as  the  world  around  me.  The  same  rule  that 
excludes  as  invalid  my  knowledge  of  myself  must  exclude  as  invalid  my 
knowledge  of  matter.  It  is  singular,  as  Mr.  Martineau  has  somewhere  said, 
that  certain  philosophers  take  such  unconscious  delight  in  knocking  out 
their  own  brains.  Comte  seems  quite  unaware  that  the  same  scythe  with 
which  he  mows  down  the  psychologists  cuts  off  his  own  legs  also.  For  how 
can  science  be  built  up  of  the  phenomena  of  matter  ?  Observation  of  facts 
is  not  science.  The  mere  grouping  of  facts  is  not  science.  Science  is  a 
thing  of  the  mind,  and  not  of  matter  only.  Unless  there  be  a  mental 
potency  prior  to  all  experience,  no  experience  is  possible.  A  structural 
pre-equipment  of  mind  is  necessary  in  order  to  correlate  and  arrange 
phenomena.  The  very  idea  of  unity  by  which  we  classify  facts  must 
come  to  us  from  the  unity  of  our  own  self-consciousness.  Unless  the 
primitive  beliefs  of  substance,  resemblance,  power,  which  are  a  part  of  the 


10  PHILOSOPHY    AND    RELIGION. 

original  endowment  of  the  mind,  and  which  flash  out  from  latency  into  liv- 
ing energy  the  moment  we  are  brought  in  contact  with  the  phenomena  of 
the  outer  world, —  unless  these  primitive  beliefs  by  which  we  mould  external 
facts  into  shape  and  clothe  them  with  meaning  are  just  as  much  objects  of 
knowledge,  and  have  as  much  validity,  as  the  outward  facts  which  we  know 
through  the  testimony  of  the  senses, —  all  science  is  forever  impossible. 
You  might  as  well  collect  together  a  heap  of  arms  and  legs  and  heads  from 
a  dissecting  room  and  call  them  living  men,  as  to  collect  together  mere  facts 
and  call  them  science.  Science  is  made  up  of  facts  and  ideas.  If  we  can- 
not know  anything  but  facts,  if  there  be  no  such  thing  as  phenomena  of 
mind,  if  the  mind  be  not  an  organism  whose  workings  can  be  observed  in 
consciousness,  then  the  foundations  of  all  knowledge  are  swept  away,  and 
the  whole  structure  sinks  "deeper  than  plummet  ever  sounded."  In  the 
Arabian  Nights,  there  is  a  curious  story  of  a  mountain  of  loadstone,  which 
the  sailors  greet  with  delight  as  the  sign  of  some  hospitable  shore,  where 
they  may  rest  from  the  tempests  of  the  deep.  But  as  they  draw  near,  the 
mighty  mass  of  loadstone  exerts  its  magnetic  attraction  upon  every  particle 
of  iron  in  the  vessel,  until  every  nail  and  bolt  is  drawn  from  its  place,  and 
the  ship  goes  to  pieces,  a  miserable  wreck.  M.  Comte  has  discovered  a 
mountain  of  loadstone  in  this  principle  that  all  our  knowledge  is  confined  to 
the  phenomena  of  matter, —  it  draws  every  fastening  from  his  bark,  and 
brings  his  new  philosophy  to  total  dissolution. 

A  similar  absurdity  is  involved  in  another  great  principle  of  this  philoso- 
phy, namely,  the  denial  of  causes,  both  efficient  and  final.  What  we  call  cause 
and  effect  is,  it  seems,  only  regularity  of  sequence.  Dr.  Hickok  has  given 
us  an  ingenious  illustration  of  the  principle  of  causality  which  may  serve  to 
set  forth  the  precise  nature  of  Comte's  denial.  Suppose  two  cog-wheels, 
with  interlocking  teeth.  Each  of  these  wheels  is  connected  with  a  steam 
engine,  which  moves  it.  Both  engines  are  working  at  the  same  rate  of  speed, 
so  that  the  wheels  revolve  without  interfering  with  each  other.  Each  wheel 
obeys  the  impulse  of  its  own  engine,  and  neither  is  moved  by  the  other. 
Interlocked  though  the  cogs  are,  the  relation  between  their  motions  is  simply 
one  of  resemblance.  But  let  one  of  these  wheels  be  detached  from  the 
engine  that  just  now  moved  it.  To  all  appearance,  the  wheels  move  as 
before,  yet  it  is  plain  that  there  is  a  new  relation  between  their  motions, — a 
principle  of  causality  has  come  in, —  the  motion  of  the  one  is  now  the  cause 
of  the  motion  of  the  other.  Now  Comte  denies  the  reality  of  any  such  notion 
as  cause.  He  declares  that  the  wheels  move  together  in  the  one  case  just  as 
they  do  in  the  other  —  there  is  no  new  relation  established  between  them 
when  one  engine  ceases  its  motion.  The  simultaneous  movement  of  the 
wheels  in  the  first  case,  as  in  the  last,  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  whole. 
What  can  be  meant  by  law  —  where  is  the  place  for  law  upon  this  theory  ? 
Law  must  be  something  fixed  and  not  phenomenal  —  something  behind  phe- 
nomena which  produces  phenomena.  But  the  only  law  which  such  a  theory 
as  this  admits  is  the  arbitrary  succession  of  phenomena,  without  method  or 
cause.  In  other  words,  instead  of  accepting  the  old  axiom,  ex  nihilo  nihil 
Jit,  he  seems  to  insist  that  ex  nihilo  omnia  fiunL  And  so  the  causal  judg- 
ment which  we  form  the  moment  we  observe  phenomena,  and  which  is  just 
AS  strong  in  the  mind  of  the  child  as  in  the  mind  of  the  mature  man,  is 


PHILOSOPHY    AXD    RELIGION.  11 

resolved  into  a  persuasion  that  because  we  have  observed  that  each  event 
follows  some  other  event,  it  will  probably  be  so  again.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  this  confounding  of  the  necessary  with  the  customary  is  contra- 
dicted by  the  consciousness  of  every  man  and  child  upon  the  planet.  By  an 
irresistible  law  of  thought,  every  change  whatsoever  is  recognized  to  be  the 
result  of  some  power  that  effects  the  change  —  a  power  behind  the  phe- 
nomena and  separate  from  them, —  a  power  of  which  we  have  the  type  and 
proof  in  every  effect  which  our  own  wills  produce  upon  our  own  organism 
or  upon  the  outward  world.  The  natural  result  is  that  Comte  has  no  such 
thing  as  an  Inductive  Logic,  and  can  have  none.  Where  there  is  no  Causa- 
tion, there  can  be  no  law  ;  where  there  is  no  law,  there  can  be  no  logic.  And 
this  is  not  all.  By  this  same  rule  which  excludes  the  idea  of  Causation,  all 
the  grandest  intuitions  of  the  soul  are  immolated,  for  they  all  rest  upon  the 
same  evidence.  We  lose  all  proof  that  either  spirit  or  matter  exists  back  of 
the  phenomena  open  to  the  senses.  We  have  no  wan-ant  for  believing  that 
matter  is  anything  more  than  a  possibility  of  sensations,  or  that  mind  is 
anything  more  than  a  series  of  feelings  aware  of  its  own  existence.  Even 
mathematical  truth  is  purely  phenomenal.  Two  and  two,  it  is  true,  make 
four  with  us,  but  it  is  only  because  we  are  used  to  it.  In  the  planet  Jupiter, 
where  the  customs  of  society  are  different,  two  and  two  may  make  five. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  absolute  truth.  Right  and  wrong  themselves  are 
matters  of  convention.  There  is  no  eternal  necessity  in  our  nature  which 
makes  the  right  praiseworthy  and  the  wrong  condemnable.  We  have  per- 
ceived the  consequences  of  lying  to  be  bad  —  we  call  it  a  vice  therefore. 
But  in  the  star  Sirius,  or  even  in  the  moon,  where  the  consequences  are 
more  happy,  lying  may  be  a  virtue.  The  universe  is  a  Cosmos  no  longer. 
There  is  no  will  binding  its  parts  together.  The  world  and  its  events  are 
but  a  procession  of  phantoms  without  connection  or  order,  of  whose  origin, 
significance  and  destination  we  know  absolutely  nothing,— a  conclusion  of 
absolute  skepticism  which  Lord  Neaves  justly  ridicules  in  the  persons  of 
Mill  and  Hume,  its  advocates,  by  the  following  humorous  lines  :— 

41  Against  a  stone  you  strike  your  toe ; 

You  feel 't  is  sore,  it  makes  a  clatter  ; 
But  what  you  feel  is  all  you  know 

Of  toe,  or  stone,  or  mind,  or  matter. 
Mill  and  Hume  of  mind  and  matter 
Wouldn't  leave  a  rag  or  tatter: 
What  although 
We  feel  the  blow? 
That  doesn't  show  there's  mind  or  matter. 

"  Had  I  skill  like  Stuart  Mill, 

His  own  position  I  could  shatter; 
The  weight  of  Mill  I  count  as  nil, 

It  Mill  has  neither  mind  nor  matter. 
Mill,  when  minu*  mind  and  matter, 
Though  he  make  a  kind  of  clatter, 
Must  himself 
Just  mount  the  shelf, 
And  there  be  laid  with  mind  and  matter." 

As  if  these  conclusions  were  not  sufficiently  absurd,  we  have  the  direct 
denial  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  purpose  in  the  Universe.  What  are 
•called  marks  of  design  are  only  accidental  coincidences.  Final  causes  are 


12  PHILOSOPHY   AND   RELIGION. 

merged  in  the  totality  of  secondary  causes.  The  sole  explanation  of  the- 
wondrous  adaptations  of  nature  to  the  good  of  man  is  that  these  are  simply 
the  result  of  mechanical  laws.  There  is  no  sense  in  wondering  at  the  order 
of  the  heavenly  spheres,  —  with  the  laws  that  govern  nature,  how  could  there 
be  any  disorder  ?  Thus  the  lofty  thought  of  the  classic  poet  that  the  highest 
link  of  nature's  chain  must  needs  be  tied  to  the  foot  of  Jupiter's  chair  is 
exchanged  for  the  blasphemous  assertion  that  the  heavens  declare,  not  the 
glory  of  God,  but  the  glory  of  the  Astronomer.  But  the  followers  of  Comte 
convict  themselves  of  folly  by  their  unintentional  use  of  language  which 
implies  adaptation  in  nature.  Darwin  is  obliged  to  speak  continually  of  the 
design  of  such  and  such  a  series  of  arrangements,  as  for  example,  that 
required  for  the  fertilization  of  orchids.  On  Comte's  own  showing,  there 
has  been  a  curious  design  in  the  arrangement  of  all  things  from  the  very 
beginning  with  reference  to  the  development  at  last  of  a  true  philosophy — 
a  wonderful  series  of  adaptations  by  which,  when  time  was  ripe  and  the 
world's  needs  greatest,  a  Comte  was  brought  forth,  and  humanity  delivered 
from  its  metaphysical  and  theologic  folly.  Surely  a  design  like  this,  executed 
too  only  through  unnumbered  subordinate  adaptations  and  arrangements 
of  human  character  and  history,  proves  a  designer  of  endless  wisdom  and 
goodness.  But  says  Maudsley,  one  of  the  Positivist  camp-followers:  "  De- 
sign, according  to  Spinoza's  sagacious  remark,  would  imply  imperfection  in 
the  designer — a  necessity  of  adding  something  to  himself  to  make  up  his 
sum  of  blessedness — and  this  notion  involves  you  in  a  self-contradiction, 
for  imperfection  of  any  sort  is  inconsistent  with  your  very  idea  of  God. " 
But  what  sort  of  a  God  would  be  Mr.  Maudsley's  perfect  God  ?  His  only 
notion  of  a  God  must  be  that  of  a  being  not  so  great  or  free  or  active  as 
ourselves — an  Asiatic  Brahma,  as  "idle  as  a  painted  ship  upon  a  painted 
ocean. "  No, — the  forthputting  of  designing  wisdom  and  of  creative  power 
is  not  inconsistent  with  infinite  perfection,  since  it  is  voluntary  self-limita- 
tion, for  the  sake  of  revealing  his  glory.  God  is  limited  by  nothing  outside 
himself,  but  only  by  the  decrees  of  his  own  most  free  and  blessed  mil ;  and 
such  a  self -limitation  is  only  a  proof  and  fruit  of  infinite  perfection.  Or 
again,  when  the  Positivist  argues  that  the  imperfection  of  the  design  proves 
the  absence  of  all  purpose  in  the  Universe,  it  is  hard  to  tell  which  is  to  be 
most  condemned,  the  ignorance  of  the  objection  or  its  presumption.  It  is 
the  old  boast  of  Alphonso  of  Castile,  that  if .  he  had  been  present  with  the 
Almighty  when  the  Universe  was  planned  he  could  have  suggested  to  him 
some  valuable  improvements.  The  Universe,  it  seems,  can  with  all  its 
imperfections  produce  a  Comte,  but  cannot  equal  his  intelligence.  Or,  if 
a  serious  reply  must  be  made  to  an  argument  so  shallow,  we  might  show 
that  the  whole  tendency  of  modern  science,  nay,  the  very  principle  that 
guides  her  in  all  her  researches,  is  to  take  for  granted  that  there  must  be 
adaptations  and  uses  in  things  whose  purpose  and  design  have  hitherto  been 
hidden.  Increasing  knowledge  has  only  taught  her  that  everything  is  for 
some  end, — and  even  if  it  were  ultimately  discovered  that  there  was  organic 
imperfection  in  the  System,  it  would  only  prove  a  deeper  adaptation  of  that 
system  to  man's  state  of  conscious  moral  discord  and  evil,  an  adaptation 
revealing  to  him  the  ruin  sin  has  wrought,  and  exciting  in  him  longings  for 
the  deliverance  from  bondage  of  the  whole  creation  of  God. 


PHILOSOPHY    AND    RELIGION.  13 

The  tendencies  of  a  philosophy  built  upon  such  principles  as  these  are 
too  manifest  to  require  elucidation.  They  tear  up  Philosophy  by  the  roots, 
and  Religion  must  share  the  fate  of  Philosophy.  One  of  Comte's  grandest 
generalizations  indeed  is  this,  that  theology  and  metaphysics  are  relics  of 
the  race's  infancy,  necessary  stages  in  human  progress,  but  to  be  regarded 
in  these  days  only  as  stepping-stones  which  may  be  removed,  now  that  we 
have  risen  by  them  from  infancy  to  manhood.  Biology  is  only  a  part  of 
physiology  ;  brain  secretes  thought  as  the  liver  secretes  bile  ;  man,  to  use 
Dr.  Holmes'  simile,  is  only  "a  drop  of  water  imprisoned  in  a  crystal,  one 
little  particle  in  the  crystalline  prism  of  the  solid  universe."  All  his  higher 
ideas  of  that  Universe,  its  forms  of  beauty,  its  divine  arrangements,  its  moral 
influences,  are  cast  aside  as  worthless.  All  his  noblest  intuitions — substance 
causation,  law,  freedom,  conscience,  accountability,  immortality — are  met- 
aphysical or  theological  chirnseras.  There  is  no  place  for  sin  nor  for  repent- 
ance. There  is  no  God  to  direct  the  blind,  resistless  forces  of  nature,  or  to 
hear  and  answer  the  cry  that  rises  from  the  desolate  heart  of  man.  In  the 
terrible  language  of  Holyoake,  one  of  the  advocates  of  this  Atheistic  creed: 
"  Science  has  shown  us  that  we  are  under  the  dominion  of  general  laws,  and 
that  there  is  no  special  Providence.  Nature  acts  with  fearful  uniformity  ; 
stern  as  fate,  absolute  as  tyranny,  merciless  as  death  ;  too  vast  to  praise,  too 
inexplicable  to  worship,  too  inexorable  to  propitiate  ;  it  has  no  ear  for  prayer, 
no  heart  for  sympathy,  no  arm  to  save. "  With  such  a  picture  of  the  Uni- 
verse before  us,  we  seem  enshrouded  by  the  darkness  of  Byron's  dream  : 

"  The  bright  sun  is  extinguished,  and  the  stars 
Do  wander  darkling  in  the  eternal  space, 
Kay  less  and  pathless ;  and  the  icy  earth* 
Swings  blind  and  blackening  in  the  moonless  air. 
Morn  comes  and  goes  — and  comes,  but  brings  no  day, 
And  men  forget  their  passions  in  the  dread 
Of  this  their  desolation,  and  all  hearts 
Are  chilled  into  a  selfish  prayer  for  light. 


Tin  •  waves  are  dead ;  the  tides  are  in  their  grave ; 
The  moon,  their  mistress,  has  expired  before; 
The  winds  are  withered  in  the  stagnant  air, 
And  the  clouds  perished ;  Darkness  had  no  need 
Of  aid  from  them  —  She  was  the  Universe." 

And  Comte  himself  has  given  us  proof,  if  any  such  were  needed,  that  the 
human  soul  revolts  at  the  picture  of  a  universe  without  a  God,  and  has  an 
instinct  implanted  in  its  very  constitution  which  cannot  be  satisfied  without 
some  semblance  of  worship.  The  later  speculations  of  the  great  Positivist 
aimed  at  nothing  less  than  the  establishment  of  a  new  religion  which  should 
dispense  with  the  notion  of  a  Deity  or  a  revelation,  a  religion  of  which 
Comte  himself  was  to  be  Sovereign  Pontiff  and  Supreme  Lawgiver.  The 
object  of  adoration  is  Collective  Humanity  or  the  totality  of  all  the  forces 
engaged  in  the  perfecting  of  the  race,  embracing  therefore  the  solid  earth 
itself  which  supports  this  race, — the  former  to  be  designated  as  the  "  Great 
Being"  and  the  latter  as  the  "Great  Fetish."  Three  hundred  and  sixty- 
five  of  the  world's  benefactors  are  chosen  to  represent  humanity  as  objects 
of  worship,  and  the  statues  of  all  these  are  set  up  in  the  Pantheon  of  the 
new  religion  that  each  day  of  the  year  may  have  its  special  saint  for  com- 


14  PHILOSOPHY   AND   RELIGION". 

memoration.  For  the  separate  weeks  and  months  there  are  dii  majores, 
or  greater  gods,  and  among  them  Confucius,  Voltaire  and  Mahomet,  though 
no  place  is  found  for  Christ.  For  private  devotion,  there  is  the  adoration 
of  the  mother,  the  wife,  the  daughter.  An  ejaculatory  prayer  is  proposed 
consisting  of  the  following  words:  "Love  as  our  principle  ;  order  as  our 
basis  ;  progress  as  our  end. "  Instead  of  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  so  common 
in  the  Romish  Church,  the  three  principal  cerebral  organs  are  to  be  thought- 
fully touched  by  the  finger.  For  priests  there  is  a  College  of  Savants;  for 
sacraments  there  are  birthday,  wedding  and  funeral  rites ;  for  the  last 
judgment  there  is  a  posthumous  decision  of  learned  men  upon  the  merits 
or  demerits  of  the  dead  ;  the  fame  of  this  decision  stands  for  immortality, 
and  a  civilized  earth  is  made  to  serve  for  heaven.  Such  is  the  substitute 
for  the  religion  of  the  Bible,  proposed  by  the  Atheistic  philosopher.  Re- 
volting at  the  childishness  of  worshiping  God,  he  constructs  a  religion  in 
which  the  race  shall  worship  man.  With  such  poetic  justice  is  the  truth 
avenged.  With  such  unconsciousness  of  its  own  nature  does  the  wisdom 
of  this  world  prove  itself  to  be  foolishness  in  the  sight  of  God. 

What  has  been  said  will  prepare  you  for  the  few  words  in  which  I  shall 
present  the  last  thought  of  my  subject.  It  is  this  :  An  impartial  philosophy 
is  essential  to  the  perfect  triumph  of  religion.  If  the  universal  sway  of 
Christianity  is  to  be  brought  about  in  accordance  with  the  common  laws  of 
mind,  it  would  seem  that  a  true  philosophy  must  be  one  of  God's  chosen 
weapons  for  subduing  the  world  to  Christ.  Christianity  has  not  only  noth- 
ing to  fear  from  a  true  science  of  the  mind,  but  she  must  recognize  in  such 
science  her  indispensable  coadjutor  and  ally.  The  stress  of  the  argument 
against  Christianity  among  investigators  of  physical  truth  is  not  so  much 
theological  as  it  is  philosophical,  and  this  fact  is  but  the  illustration  of  that 
wider  principle  enunciated  by  Sir  William  Hamilton,  that  "there  is  no 
difficulty  emerging  in  theology  which  has  not  first  emerged  in  philosophy. " 
In  spite  of  M.  Comte,  philosophy  will  exist  while  the  world  stands.  It  i& 
time  for  the  Christian  church  and  the  Christian  ministry  to  understand  its 
power,  and  instead  of  deploring  its  influence  or  treating  it  with  shallow 
contempt,  to  use  every  effort  to  bring  it  into  the  service  of  Christ.  As  the 
greatest  thinker  of  New  England  said  a  century  ago  :  ' '  There  is  no  need 
that  strict  philosophical  truth  be  at  all  concealed  from  men  —  no  danger  in 
contemplation  and  discovery  in  these  things.  The  truth  is  extremely  need- 
ful to  be  known,  and  the  more  clearly  and  perfectly  the  real  fact  is  known, 
and  the  more  constantly  kept  in  view,  the  better.  The  clear  and  full  knowl- 
edge of  the  true  system  of  the  universe  will  greatly  establish  the  true 
Christian  Scheme  of  divine  administration  in  the  City  of  God."  Let  us 
have  done  then,  once  for  all,  with  the  notion  that  metaphysical  studies  are 
beside  the  proper  work  of  the  preacher,  and  by  necessity  mystify  his  brain 
and  destroy  his  practical  power.  The  history  of  the  church  has  shown  that 
philosophy,  instead  of  weakening  the  grasp  and  corrupting  the  principles 
of  her  preachers,  has  been  their  great  discipline  and  strength.  No  man 
can  clearly  present  or  successfully  defend  the  truths  of  religion  without 
knowing  them  in  their  principles.  A  teacher  of  religion  who  sneers  at 
metaphysics,  as  if  it  were  a  fog-bank  in  which  only  fools  would  risk  their 
lives,  is  simply  playing  into  the  hands  of  infidelity  and  virtually  declaring 


PHILOSOPHY   AND   RELIGION.  15 

that  all  true  philosophy  is  on  the  side  of  the  enemies  of  religion.  To  fill 
his  place  as  a  preacher  in  these  days  he  must  know  the  foundations  of  his 
faith  in  the  human  consciousness ;  must  have  some  proper  sense  of  those 
grand  primitive  affirmations  of  the  soul,  which, 

"be  they  what  they  may, 
Are  yet  the  fountain-light  of  all  our  day, 
Are  yet  the  master-light  of  all  our  seeing." 

He  must  be  able  to  show  the  dabbler  in  an  Atheistic  philosophy  whither 
the  principles  he  has  ignorantly  adopted  will  lead  him ;  how  completely 
these  principles  affront  the  reason  and  mock  the  religious  nature  of  man  ; 
how  they  are  based  upon  a  single  primary  misconception  with  regard  to  the 
sources  of  our  knowledge  ;  how  a  simple  confidence  in  the  original  intuitions 
of  the  mind  will  restore  to  us  the  world,  the  soul  and  God  ;  how  that  confi- 
dence is  the  indispensable  basis  of  all  science,  while  a  denial  of  a  single  one 
of  these  original  convictions  is  like 

"the  little  rift  within  the  lute, 
That  by  and  by  will  make  the  music  mute, 
And,  ever  widening,  slowly  silence  all." 

It  is  the  business  of  the  preacher  to  know  the  false  philosophy  which 
threatens  to  leaven  society,  in  order  that  in  its  place  he  may  put  the  true. 
And  this  he  can  do  in  a  thousand  ways.  Formal  metaphysical  disquisitions 
in  the  pulpit  will  never  accomplish  anything  ;  but  the  incidental  statement 
in  sermon  and  correspondence  and  conversation  of  the  fundamental  errors 
of  a  false  philosophy,  accompanied  by  a  simple  ?'eductio  ad  absurdum,  will 
open  the  eyes  of  many  who  have  unconsciously  imbibed  notions  hostile  to 
the  true  faith.  The  preacher  is  not  only  bound  by  his  duty  to  God  never 
to  despair  of  philosophy  himself,  but  is  under  obligation  to  labor  and  to 
pray  that  a  true  philosophy  may  uproot  the  false,  and  prepare  the  way  for 
the  final  triumph  of  religion. 

A  true  philosophy  !  It  has  been  the  dream  and  quest  of  earth's  noblest 
spirits.  Bat  have  they  discovered  the  object  of  their  search  ?  Must  not 
the  world  still  ask  :  "  Where  shall  wisdom  be  found,  and  where  is  the  place 
of  understanding  ?  "  We  answer  both  yes  and  no.  There  has  always  been 
a  true  philosophy  in  the  world  side  by  side  with  the  false.  Side  by  side 
with  the  philosophies  of  Epicurus  and  the  Stoics,  partial  in  their  sources 
and  their  results,  dwelt  for  ages  the  philosophies  of  Plato  and  Aristotle, 
both  spiritual  and  both  theistic,  though  differing  largely  in  their  methods 
and  their  spirit.  And  between  our  modern  philosophies  of  Nescience 
and  Omniscience  there  exists  a  sober  philosophy  represented  by  men  like 
James  McCosh,  that  aims  to  give  to  all  the  facts  of  human  consciousness 
their  proper  weight  and  to  maintain  the  faith  of  those  sublime  intuitions 
by  which  we  cognize  the  existence  of  the  World,  the  Soul,  and  God. 
As  in  theology,  there  are  a  thousand  questions  yet  to  solve,  and  with 
regard  to  many  that  are  fundamental  there  is  still  diversity  of  opinion 
among  the  best  of  thinkers.  Yet  still  the  priests  of  God  and  the  priests 
of  Baal  are  easy  to  distinguish  from  each  other,  and  in  philosophy  as 
well  as  theology  the  cry  may  still  be  echoed  :  "If  the  Lord  be  God,  serve 
him ;  but  if  Baal,  serve  him ! "  Nor  was  there  ever  yet  a  day  when  the 
signs  of  the  times  were  more  hopeful  for  a  true  philosophy.  As  error  with 


16  PHILOSOPHY   AND   RELIGION. 

regard  to  the  person  of  Christ  reached  its  extremest  results  in  both  direc- 
tions and  exhausted  itself  in  the  first  centuries  of  Christianity,  so  error  in 
philosophy  seems  to  have  rendered  this  service  for  the  truth,  of  showing  to 
what  heights  and  depths  of  folly  and  ruin  a  partial  philosophy  in  either 
direction  may  lead.  The  day  has  dawned  already  in  which  philosophic 
investigation  is  carried  on  in  the  true  inductive  method  and  begins  with  the 
fundamental  facts  of  consciousness — the  intuitive  knowledge  of  matter,  of 
mind,  of  God,  and  of  each  as  distinct  and  differing  in  nature  from  the 
others.  Let  a  man  hold  fast  to  the  deliverance  that  he  has  a  face-to-face 
knowledge  of  the  external  world,  of  his  own  mind,  and  of  the  existence  and 
presence  of  God,  and  he  may  defy  all  the  arts  of  a  false  philosophy  to  lead 
him  astray. 

Just  in  proportion  to  the  extent  to  which  these  fundamental  convictions 
are  ignored  or  obscured  does  fatal  error  creep  into  our  reasonings.  Phi- 
losophy is  just  beginning  to  settle  her  debt  with  Sir  William  Hamilton,  who, 
with  all  his  splendid  contributions  to  a  true  science  of  the  mind,  still,  by 
his  notion  of  the  relativity  of  human  knowledge  and  his  virtual  denial  of  a 
direct  knowledge  of  matter,  left  the  door  ajar  for  a  subtle  Idealism  to  enter 
and  prepared  the  way  for  Hansel's  resolution  of  the  whole  material  of  our 
religious  faith  into  sheer  contradiction.  I  know  matter  as  something  exter- 
nal to  myself.  I  may  learn  a  thousand  things  about  it,  but  my  knowledge 
of  its  existence  can  never  be  more  perfect.  To  say  that  the  external  substance 
furnishes  six  of  the  twelve  parts  of  my  conception,  while  the  organs  by 
which  I  perceive  it  furnish  three,  and  the  mind  itself  three,  is  virtually  to 
deny  that  we  have  any  face-to-face  knowledge  of  matter  at  all.  And  so  to 
relegate  our  idea  of  the  divine  existence  to  the  realm  of  faith,  because, 
forsooth,  any  proper  knowledge  of  God  would  require  an  apprehension  of 
the  manner  in  which  his  infinite  attributes  coexist  to  form  one  object  is  to 
deny  one  of  the  simplest  facts  of  consciousness.  There  may  be  a  thousand 
facts  about  God,  of  which  I  am  ignorant,  but  my  mind  cognizes  his  exist- 
ence and  presence  for  all  that.  As  another  has  said:  "  The  African  on  the 
banks  of  the  Niger  may  be  altogether  ignorant  of  its  source  and  termination, 
but  it  would  not  be  right  on  that  account  to  deny  that  he  has  any  knowledge 
of  the  river,  and  it  would  be  equally  wrong  to  deny  that  we  can  know  God, 
merely  on  the  ground  that  we  do  not  and  cannot  grasp  his  infinite  attributes. " 
To  tell  me  that  this  knowledge  of  God,  "wherein  standeth  my  eternal  life," 
possesses  no  external  validity,  and  to  inscribe  upon  the  temple  of  religion 
the  legend,  "To  the  Unknown  God,"  is  simply  to  sweep  away  the  founda- 
tions of  all  knowledge.  The  clearness  and  power  of  this  intuitive  knowledge 
may  be  dimmed  and  blunted  by  sin.  To  see  God  revealed  to  my  soul  as 
distinctly  as  I  see  the  forms  of  my  fellow-men  may  belong  to  me  only  in 
those  clearer  moments  to  which  here  and  hereafter  the  pure  in  heart  may 
come,  but  still  the  fact  remains  that  an  intuitive  knowledge  of  God,  dis- 
torted, blunted,  overlaid  with  a  thousand  superstitious  fancies  though  it  be, 
belongs  to  man  as  man,  revealing  itself  in  his  consciousness  of  the  Infinite 
around  him  and  in  his  fears  of  the  judgment  before  him.  This  conception 
of  God  is  not  the  straining  forward  of  the  soul  into  an  unknown  abyss,  as 
Kant  maintained,  nor  is  it  a  mere  negation  of  all  bounds  and  limits,  as 
Hamilton  fancied ;  for  both  these  philosophers,  in  their  constant  declarations 


PHILOSOPHY    AND    RELIGION.  17 

thai  God  is,  and  that  he  is  a  God  of  truth,  declare  in  effect  that,  apart  from 
all  faith,  they  have  substantial  knowledge  of  God  and  of  certain  of  his 
attributes.  As  "there  is  a  spirit  in  man,  and  the  inspiration  of  the  Almighty 
giveth  him  understanding,"  the  very  height  and  glory  of  his  nature  is  that 
he  may  look  into  the  face  of  God  and  say  :  "My  Father  !  "  To  waken  this 
intuition  into  living  power  and  to  restore  the  actual  communion  of  the  soul 
with  God,  Christ  has  come,  and  in  him  who  is  "the  brightness  of  the 
Father's  glory  and  the  express  image  of  his  person  "  we  who  once  were  so 
involved  in  "the  dark  windings  of  the  material  and  earthy"  that  we  dared 
scarcely  say,  "  we  have  heard  of  Thee  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear,"  can  declare 
with  joy  that  "now  our  eye  seeth  Thee."  This  grandest  intuition  of  the 
soul  it  is  ours  to  interpret,  to  illustrate,  to  defend,  by  voice  and  pen,  in 
heart  and  life.  Men  may  mistake  it  and  deny  it,  but  its  establishment  upon 
a  scientific  basis  is  the  test  and  the  goal  of  a  true  philosophy.  We  may 
eacli  do  something  toward  the  grand  result,  not  only  by  the  service  of  the 
intellect,  but  by  living  every  day  "as  seeing  Him  who  is  invisible,"  and 
from  our  own  certainty  of  the  truth  commending  it  to  others.  The  noble 
lines  with  which  Wordsworth  concludes  "The  Prelude"  set  forth  the 
preacher's  work  no  less  than  the  poet's  : 

"  Prophets  of  nature,  we  to  them  may  speak 
A  lasting  inspiration,  sanctified 
My  reason,  blest  by  faith  ;  what  we  have  loved 
Others  will  love,  and  we  will  teach  them  how; 
Instruct  them  how  the  mind  of  man  becomes 
A  thousand  times  more  beautiful  than  the  earth 
On  which  he  dwells,  above  this  frame  of  things 
In  beauty  exalted,  as  it  is  itself 
Of  quality  and  fabric  more  divine." 

Upon  the  side  of  the  great  entrance-hall  of  the  Royal  Museum  in  Berlin 
is  painted  a  colossal  picture  of  Kaulbach's,  which  unites  more  than  any 
other  picture  in  the  world  the  interest  of  history  and  poetry,  of  weird  imag- 
ination and  symbolic  lore.  It  represents  that  last  battle  between  the  Romans 
and  the  Huns,  which  decided  the  fate  of  European  civilization.  The  story 
goes  that  the  hosts  on  either  side  fought  desperately  for  three  long  days, 
until  the  greater  part  of  the  combatants  were  slain,  and  the  rest,  worn  out 
with  the  conflict,  fell  to  the  ground  in  heavy  sleep.  But  as  the  night  came 
on,  the  spirits  of  the  slain,  still  fierce  and  restless  even  in  death,  rose  from 
their  bodies  and  held  a  still  and  awful  battle  in  the  air.  This  shadowy 
combat  Kaulbach  has  painted.  There,  on  the  right,  comes  Attila,  the 
"  scourge  of  God,"  borne  aloft  upon  a  shield,  and  leading  on  his  barbarians 
to  death  or  victory.  And  there  Theodoric,  the  Roman  leader,  advances  to 
meet  him,  with  sword  in  hand  and  the  cross  behind.  The  picture  is 
wonderful  for  its  vivid  portraiture  of  deadly  conflict,  but  far  more  for  its 
symbolic  teaching  that  the  battle  which  determined  the  future  of  Chris- 
tianity and  of  the  world  was  not  so  much  a  battle  of  men  and  spears  as  a 
battle  between  the  spirit  of  two  opposing  civilizations,  a  battle  in  which 
subtle  and  shadowy  principles  contended  for  the  mastery  of  the  world.  So, 
brethren,  let  us  never  forget  amid  the  practical  noise  and  strife  of  our  life- 
work,  that  above  our  heads  another  battle  is  going  on,  in  which  our  strug- 
gling finds  its  only  true  significance.  The  battle  of  the  ages  is  a  battle  of 
2 


18  PHILOSOPHY   AND   KELIGION". 

principles,  and  he  who  has  most  possessed  himself  of  the  knowledge  of  that 
upper  warfare  will  best  conduct  the  fight  amid  the  clang  of  arms  and  the 
shock  of  opposing  battalions.  Let  us  thank  God  that  the  issue  is  not 
doubtful.  Though  the  armies  of  error  are  more  subtle  and  more  fierce  than 
those  shadowy  barbarians  that  follow  after  Attila,  the  hosts  of  God  are 
stronger  still,  for  the  Cross  is  with  them,  and  by  that  sign  they  conquer  ! 


II. 
SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.* 


The  annual  festival  which  brings  us  together  marks  the  close  of  another 
year's  professional  instruction,  and  the  completion  by  many  before  me  of 
their  whole  preparatory  training  for  the  work  and  business  of  life.  The 
friendships  cemented  by  common  pursuits  and  aspirations  are  soon  to  exist 
only  in  memory,  and  the  hard  tests  of  practical  life  are  to  decide  how  much 
of  manly  energy  and  sagacity  and  principle  there  is  on  which  to  build  a  per- 
manent success.  It  is  a  noble  profession  to  which  you  have  bound  your- 
selves. There  is  but  one  which  can  rival  it  in  dignity.  The  three  great 
learned  guilds  are  one  in  their  object,  and  one  in  their  method  of  work.  All 
have  in  view  the  good  of  human  kind.  All  base  their  hope  of  good  upon 
the  study  of  God's  laws.  He  must  be  a  shallow  and  unworthy  representative 
of  the  legal  profession  whose  highest  conception  of  it  is  that  of  a  money- 
making  trade,  and  whose  mind,  with  all  its  matching  of  precedents  and 
forging  of  arguments,  never  once  finds  in  the  law  the  dim  reflection  of  God's 
eternal  justice  and  truth.  And  he  must  be  a  sorry  doctor  who  never  loses 
sight  of  selfish  comfort  or  reputation  in  disinterested  service  of  humanity, 
and  who  forgets  that  in  every  case  of  disease  that  comes  beneath  his  eye  are 
illustrated  the  highest  truths  of  God's  great  creation  of  mind  and  matter.  The 
physician  is  brought  face  to  face  with  the  saddest  and  solemnest  aspects  of 
human  life  —  he  should  be  a  wise  and  humble  man  ;  he  has  piteous  hands  held 
outtto  him  for  help  —  he  should  be  a  man  of  tender  human  feeling,  while  he 
is  yet  careful  and  calm  ;  he  must  again  and  again  see  the  soul  hovering  between 
two  worlds  and  at  last  passing  away  like  the  spark  of  an  extinguished  taper, 
—  he  should  be  a  truly  religious  man. 

The  great  German  dramatist  puts  into  the  mouth  of  one  of  his  characters 
the  words  :  "  Respect  the  dreams  of  thy  youth."  .  I  cannot  believe  that  one 
of  those  whom  I  especially  address  is  destitute  of  some  such  high  ideal  of 
professional  beneficence  and  character.  Yet  at  the  same  time  you  will  not 
deem  it  unkind  if  I  remind  you  that  the  dust  of  our  life-struggle  often 
obscures  to  us  the  lofty  beacon-lights  that  guide  our  way ;  and  that,  with  all 
pursuits  of  natural  science.  Medicine  shares  the  common  danger  of  forget- 
ting those  spiritual  facts  which  give  to  its  conclusions  all  their  validity  and 
significance.  Those  whose  occupation  and  principal  study  of  life  it  is  to 
adjust  applications  of  the  great  laws  of  chemistry  and  dynamics,  and  who 
are  exercised  but  little  in  subjects  and  fields  of  thought  external  to  mere 
nature,  come  often  to  be  practical  unbelievers  in  anything  but  nature.  Con- 


*An  Address  delivered  at  the  Commencement  of  the  Medical  College,  Cleveland, 
February  18, 1867. 


20  SCIENCE   AND    RELIGION. 

tiuually  occupied  with  the  phenomena  of  the  body  and  its  effects  on  the 
mind,  even  the  physician  sometimes  finds  it  hard  to  admit  within  his  scheme 
of  things  anything  supernatural  or  beyond  the  cognizance  of  the  senses. 
The  theologian  is  sometimes  guilty  of  the  opposite  fault, —  while  nature  and 
the  supernatural  together  constitute  the  one  system  of  God,  he  ofttimes 
ignores  the  results  of  science  and  decries  her  methods.  Religion  and  science 
will  never  understand  each  other,  or  find  terms  of  harmonious  cooperation, 
until  the  great  truth  is  recognized  by  each  that  observation  and  conscious- 
ness are  alike  sources  of  knowledge,  and  that  equal  validity  is  to  be  ascribed 
to  the  ascertained  results  of  metaphysical  and  moral  inquiry  with  that  which 
•we  ascribe  to  the  processes  of  natural  research.  It  is  my  profound  convic- 
tion that  neither  the  scientific  man  nor  the  moral  philosopher  can  achieve 
success  in  the  building  up  of  his  own  system,  or  in  the  symmetrical  develop- 
ment of  his  own  character,  so  long  as  either  disdains  the  pursuits  of  the 
other.  The  two  systems  are  complementary  to  each  other,  and  each  without 
the  other  is  fragmentary  and  incomplete.  The  greatest  possible  heresy  on 
the  part  of  either  is  to  play  the  empiric  by  assuming  that  its  system  com- 
prises the  whole  of  truth,  and  that  there  is  no  knowledge  but  that  which 
comes  through  its  peculiar  method.  Such  partiality  and  egotism  is  foreign 
to  the  true  scientific  spirit.  I  doubt  not,  therefore,  that  your  training  here 
has  favorably  disposed  you  toward  the  theme  which  I  desire  to  elucidate, 
namely,  the  indissoluble  connection  between  physical  and  metaphysical  in- 
quiry, or  what  is  much  the  same  thing,  the  mutual  dependence  of  science 
and  religion. 

My  first  proposition  is  that  no  system  of  thought  deserves  the  name  of 
true  science  which  does  not  recognize  the  existence  and  importance  of  a 
realm  of  metaphysical,  moral  and  spiritual  truth,  side  by  side  with  the  great 
fields  of  physical  inquiry.  Though  many  are  prone  to  deny  it,  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  metaphysical  science.  The  observation  and  classification  of  phe- 
nomena do  not  by  any  means  comprise  all  that  is  possible  in  scientific 
research.  By  the  word  phenomena  I  mean  here  the  phenomena  perceptible 
to  the  senses.  If  used  in  the  larger  sense,  which  embraces  all  that  occurs 
or  reveals  itself  within  the  mind  as  well  as  without,  the  word  phenomena 
may  include  within  its  scope  all  the  raw  material  of  our  knowledge.  There 
are  phenomena  of  mind  as  well  as  of  matter.  Self-consciousness  is  as  valid  a 
source  of  knowledge  as  consciousness  of  the  outer  world.  And  it  is  the 
merest  begging  of  the  question  for  the  Positivist  to  declare  that  only  the 
phenomena  of  sense  are  to  be  recognized  as  of  any  value  in  scientific  inquiry. 
The  results  of  intellectual  philosophy  are  just  as  real  and  valuable  as  the 
results  of  physical  investigation,  and  to  say  that  accepted  moral  truth  has 
no  other  basis  than  faith,  while  physical  truth  is  positive  in  any  peculiar 
sense,  is  simply  to  deny  the  dicta  of  consciousness.  Mental  and  spiritual 
facts  are  just  as  demonstrable,  though  by  a  different  kind  of  evidence,  as 
the  facts  of  the  visible  and  material  universe  around  us.'  Let  us  strip  away 
the  mystery  and  prejudice  that  envelope  that  much-abused  word,  metaphysi- 
cal. It  means  nothing  but  that  which  is  beyond  the  sphere  of  the  physical. 
For  example,  I  burn  my  hand  in  the  flame  of  this  gas-burner.  The  gas,  the 
flame,  the  disintegration  of  the  tissues  of  my  hand,  are  physical  facts  ;  but 
do  these  comprise  an  exhaustive  summary  of  the  case  ?  Some  philosophers 


SCIENCE    AND    RELIGION.  21 

would  say  so.  But  I  fancy  any  man  of  common  sense  would  feel  called 
upon  to  put  down  certain  other  facts, —  first,  namely,  a  decided  conscious- 
ness on  my  part  that  I  was  burned,  and  that  I  was  a  fool  for  putting  my 
hand  in  the  blaze.  Now  this  perception  of  pain,  this  consciousness  of  folly, 
are  not  physical  facts  but  metaphysical  ones,  and  no  one  could  ever  persuade 
me  that  here  was  not  a  case  for  metaphysical  inquiry.  A  similar  test  might 
be  proposed  for  ascertaining  the  existence  of  human  freedom  and  responsi- 
bility. If  any  man  declares  himself  a  fatalist,  and  assures  you  that  human 
life  and  action  are  only  unalterable  links  in  the  great  chain  of  necessitv  that 
fast  binds  the  universe, —  suppose  you  knock  him  down, — the  consequence 
is  that  he  immediately  rises  up  convinced  of  your  freedom  and  responsibility, 
and  considers  these  metaphysical  facts  at  least,  as  sufficiently  established,  to 
warrant  a  process  of  law  against  you. 

Upon  such  metaphysical  facts  science  itself  rests,  and  without  them  would 
be  impossible.  Science  cannot  proceed  a  step  in  her  observations  or  demon- 
strations without  assuming  great  truths  which  no  experience  has  ever  given 
her,  and  which  she  is  obliged  to  receive  by  faith  before  she  can  set  out  at 
all  on  her  voyage  of  discovery.  Faith  is  a  fundamental  principle  in  philos- 
ophy just  as  much  as  in  religion.  You  cannot  get  out  of  self  to  begin  any 
investigation,  without  first  assuming  that  you  are  different  from  the  world 
around  you,  and  that  the  faculties  which  assure  you  of  the  world's  existence 
are  truthful  in  their  deliverances.  Yet  what  evidence  have  you  of  these 
facts  ?  None  whatever,  except  that  you  have  a  nature  preceding  all  your 
conscious  thought,  and  underlying  all  your  mental  action, —  a  nature  which 
your  will  did  not  create, — a  nature  which  renders  it  impossible  for  you  not 
to  believe  that  your  primitive  cognitions  are  substantial  verities.  In  the 
words  of  Fichte  :  "  We  are  all  born  in  faith."  Faith  in  our  mental  powers 
us  the  sources  of  knowledge  is  a  part  of  our  nature.  All  science  rests  there- 
fort1,  in  the  last  analysis,  on  faith,  not  on  the  deductions  of  reason  ;  and  the 
proudest  contemner  of  religious  faith  builds  his  whole  structure  of  knowledge 
on  a  basis  of  precisely  the  same  character.  And  who  can  say  that  there  may 
not  be  dormant  in  the  soul  the  capacity  of  a  higher  faith,  which  divine  infl- 
euces  may  wake  to  activity,  just  as  outward  influences  first  wake  to  manifes- 
tation these  other  primitive  intuitions  of  the  mind  ?  Who  has  a  right  to 
despise  the  edifice  of  religious  knowledge,  which  equally  with  all  scientific 
knowledge  rests  upon  a  foundation  in  the  nature  itself  which  all  the  storms 
of  reasoning  can  never  shake  ?  .  And  who  will  not  see  something  more  than 
mere  poetry  in  those  noble  words  of  Tennyson  : 

"  Strong-  Son  of  God,  Immortal  Love, 
Whom  we,  that  have  not  seen  thy  face, 
By  faith  and  faith  alone  embrace, 
IJelieving1  where  we  cannot  prove ! 

"  Thou  wilt  not  leave  us  in  the  dust ; 
Thou  madest  man,  he  knows  not  why ; 
He  thinks  he  was  not  made  to  die ; 
And  thou  hast  made  him  :  thou  art  just." 

Take  the  terms  which  science  most  uses,— "law,"  "cause,"  " order, "- 
and  a  slight  examination  will  suffice  to  show  that  all  their  meaning  and  value 
consist  in  conceptions  they  derive  from  the  realm  of  the  metaphysical  and 
spiritual.     Suppose  a  case  of  acute  disorder  in  the  system  comes  under 


22  SCIENCE   AND   RELIGION. 

your  notice, — let  it  be  a  case  of  poisoning.  You  instantly  inquire  the  cause, 
and  you  proceed  to  administer  some  agent  to  counteract  the  poison,  or  expel 
it  from  the  system.  But  you  could  not  do  either  of  these  without  having  in 
mind  the  idea  of  causation, —  an  idea  which  the  mere  succession  of  events 
never  can  give  you, —  an  idea  which  is  derived  only  from  your  own  conscious- 
ness of  power  to  produce  effects  in  your  physical  organism, — in  other  words, 
from  the  metaphysical  fact  of  will.  And  how  could  we  know  or  love  or  seek 
order  in  the  universe, — how  could  we  begin  to  classify  facts  or  reduce  them 
to  system, — if  our  own  inward  experience  did  not  reveal  to  us  a  unity  of 
being  there,  amid  a  multiplicity  of  manifestations  ?  It  is  only  the  meta- 
physical consciousness  of  the  oneness  of  self  that  leads  us  to  seek  unity  in 
nature,  or  that  enables  us  to  interpret  nature  as  a  divinely  constituted 
cosmos  or  order. 

The  absolute  impossibility  of  ridding  ourselves  of  these  metaphysical 
conceptions  is  shown  again  and  again  in  the  involuntary  slips  of  the  pen  by 
which  those  who  deny  the  validity  of  all  primitive  cognitions  are  yet  com- 
pelled to  testify  to  their  reality  and  to  their  silent  presence  through  all  the 
steps  of  their  reasoning.  John  Stuart  Mill,  for  example,  though  declaring 
in  one  breath  that  the  very  idea  of  cause  is  a  delusion  of  the  imagination 
and  that  we  know  only  of  the  existence  of  fixed  sequences  in  creation,  is 
notwithstanding  forced,  when  he  comes  to  define  "quality,"  to  call  it  the 
cause  of  sensation,  thus  recognizing  involuntarily  the  very  metaphysical 
conception  which  he  has  been  combating.  And  Comte,  the  French  phil- 
osopher, while  denying  any  validity  to  consciousness,  is  yet  found  saying 
that  "man  at  first  knows  nothing  but  himself"  and  that  "the  phenomena 
of  life  are  known  by  immediate  consciousness. "  So  impossible  is  it,  if  we 
build  at  all,  to  avoid  building  upon  the  solid  ground  of  original  intuition 
which  underlies  all  our  mental  operations.  You  cannot  even  conceive  of 
any  material  object,  bounded  as  it  is  on  every  side  and  separated  from 
other  objects,  except  as  existing  in  space,  which  is  unbounded  and  includes 
all  objects.  You  cannot  think  of  any  event  as  transpiring  in  time  without 
at  the  same  time  conceiving  of  endless  duration  before  and  after,  in  which 
the  event  has  place.  You  cannot  help  believing  in  infinite  space  and  time, 
— you  cannot  even  conceive  of  any  limitation  of  them.  Yet  these  infinite 
realities  you  never  saw  with  your  bodily  eyes, — the  conception  came  to 
you  from  the  mind.  And  so  you  believe  that  every  change  is  the  result  of 
power  exerted  somewhere  and  somehow ;  but  this  idea  of  causality  is  not 
from  the  world  without  but  from  the  world  within,  and  "without  this 
action  of  mind  upon  its  objects,  the  little  world  of  man's  knowledge  would 
be  not  a  cosmos  but  a  chaos — not  a  system  of  parts  having  mutual  relation 
to  each  other  but  an  endless  succession  of  isolated  phantoms  coming  and 
going  one  by  one. " 

Thus  I  would  justify  my  first  proposition,  that  no  system  of  thought 
deserves  the  name  of  true  science  that  does  not  recognize  the  existence  and 
importance  of  a  realm  of  metaphysical,  moral  and  spiritual  truth  side  by 
side  with  the  great  fields  of  physical  inquiry.  The  facts  of  the  one  are  just 
as  important  as  the  facts  of  the  other,  and  however  one's  natural  tastes  may 
lead  him  to  prefer  one  line  of  investigation  to  the  other,  he  yet  owes  it  to 
science  and  to  himself  to  complement  his  knowledge  of  his  own  department 


SCIENCE    AND    RELIGION.  23 

by  the  acceptance  of  ascertained  results  in  the  other,  or  at  least  by  the 
recognition  of  another  sphere  whose  exploration  is  as  important  as  that  of 
his  own.  The  tendency  of  thought  in  all  ages,  however,  has  been  toward 
one  of  the  two  opposite  poles.  Idealism  and  Materialism  have  alternately 
held  sway,  and  the  world,  in  the  heat  of  controversy  between  them,  has 
forgotten  that  the  rounded  globe  of  truth  must  have  two  poles,  not  one. 
There  is  truth  in  both,  but  either  taken  singly  is  false  by  defect.  And  while 
every  man,  as  has  been  said,  is  born  an  Aristotelian  or  a  Platonist,  it  is  all  the 
more  important  that  the  balance  should  be  calmly  held  between  the  two.  The 
fatal  tendency  to  merge  matter  in  mind  or  mind  in  matter,  and  so  convert  the 
universe  into  one  substance,  can  only  be  counteracted  by  a  study  of  both' 
Such  study  teaches  us  on  the  one  hand  that  knowledge  of  external  things  can 
never  be  accounted  for  by  resolving  it  into  self-knowledge,  for  the  latter  is 
just  as  inexplicable  as  the  former.  We  know  self  and  we  know  the  world,  and 
we  know  that  self  is  different  from  the  world,  and  that  is  the  end  of  all  pan- 
theistic idealism.  But  on  the  other  hand  the  same  study  teaches  us  that 
self-knowledge  can  never  be  resolved  into  a  mere  phenomenon  of  matter ; 
no  muscular  or  nervous  vibrations  are  identical  with  sensation  or  perception  ; 
and  to  call  the  high  achievements  of  human  reason  the  mere  necessary 
products  of  blood  and  brain  is  beyond  measure  degrading  to  pcience  and  to 
the  soul. 

Yet  to  this  the  study  of  nature  must  lead  us  if  it  be  not  balanced  by 
considerations  from  another  department  of  knowledge.  Nature  alone  gives 
us  no  conception  of  mind  or  of  God,  for  it  is  different  from  mind  or  God. 
Let  us  pity  the  man  whose  whole  scheme  of  nature  has  no  room  in  it  for 
those  higher  ideas  which  give  nature  all  her  grandeur  and  glory.  ' '  I  can 
conceive  a  severe  science,"  says  F.  W.  Robertson  in  one  of  his  letters, 
"  compelling  a  mind  step  by  step  to  atheistic  conclusions  ;  and  that  mind, 
loyal  to  truth,  refusing  to  ignore  the  conclusions  or  to  hide  them.  But 
then  I  can  only  conceive  this  done  in  a  noble  sadness,  and  a  kind  of  divine 
infinite  pity  towards  the  race  which  is  so  bereft  of  its  best  hopes.  I  have 
no  patience  with  a  self-complacent  smirk  which  says  :  '  Shut  up  the  prophets  ; 
iv: id  Harriet  Martineau  and  Atkinson.  Friendship,  Patriotism,  are  mes- 
merized brain  ;  Faith,  a  mistake  of  the  stomach  ;  Love,  a  titillatory  move- 
ment occurring  in  the  upper  part  of  the  nape  of  the  neck  ;  Immortality,  the 
craving  of  dyspepsia ;  God,  a  fancy  produced  by  a  certain  pressure  upon 
the  gray  parts  of  the  hasty-pudding  within  the  skull ;  Shakespeare,  Plato, 
Caesar,  and  all  they  did  and  wrote,  weighed  by  an  extra  ounce  or  two  of  said 
pudding.'"  This  rough-shod  criticism  of  a  nobly  indignant  mind  is  a 
rediiftio  ad  abswdum  of  those  conceptions  of  nature  which  would  take 
out  from  it  its  very  life  and  soul.  When  Buckle  and  Draper  exhibit  to  us 
a  list  of  statistical  averages  to  prove  that  certain  actions  recur  with  uniform 
frequency  in  certain  periods  of  time,  they  would  have  us  infer  that  the  free 
will  of  man  is  a  mere  figment  of  the  imagination,  and  that  the  limits  which 
are  placed  around  human  action  reduce  it  to  the  law  of  necessity.  They 
forget  that,  in  the  case  they  bring  forward,  law  does  not  fetter  the  individual 
but  only  affects  men  in  the  mass.  This  is  unlike  gravitation,  for  gravitation 
acts  equally  and  universally  upon  all  matter.  Every  apple  let  go  from  the 
hand  must  fall,  but  not  every  man  must  act  so  and  so.  We  infer  from  these 


24  SCIENCE   AND   RELIGION. 

statistical  averages  merely  that  divine  foresight  has  fixed  bounds  to  human-- 
action, but  that  action  itself  is  no  less  free  within  its  sphere.  The  whole 
error  of  these  physicists  lies  in  their  persistent  determination  to  interpret 
the  phenomena  of  mind  by  the  conceptions  they  have  received  from  matter; 
or  in  the  words  of  James  Martineau,  "to  push  dynamics  into  the  conquest 
of  history  and  mankind,  and  to  coerce  the  universe  of  life  and  persons 
into  the  formulas  applicable  to  things. " 

While  then  any  monistic  theory  is  false,  whether  its  leanings  be  toward 
Idealism  or  Materialism,  and  while  it  is  true  that  both  departments  of  human 
research  must  be  included  in  any  complete  system  of  science,  it  becomes  a 
most  serious  question  which  of  these  two  co-ordinate  realms  shall  furnish 
the  interpretation  for  the  other.  After  what  I  have  said  you  will  not  be 
surprised  to  hear  my  second  and  last  proposition,  namely,  that  nature  must  be 
interpreted  by  our  knowledge  of  mind,  and  not  mind  and  its  phenomena  by 
our  knowledge  of  nature  ;  in  other  words,  the  governing  conception  in  man 
must  be  also  the  governing  conception  in  nature.  Man  has  been  well  called 
a  microcosm — a  little  world  in  himself — an  image  of  the  great  world  of 
matter  and  mind  outside  of  him.  It  is  this  embracing  in  himself  of  the  two 
that  qualifies  him  to  sit  as  judge  of  both  ;  and  his  own  being  must  be  the 
measured  segment  of  the  arc,  by  which  he  triangulates  the  vast  universe  of 
being  that  stretches  away  on  every  side  around  him.  The  senses  tell  him 
of  a  physical  organism  subject  to  natural  laws  ;  but  is  this  the  whole  of  his 
nature  ?  Ah,  no !  another  inward  sense  tells  him  of  the  possession  of 
endowments  totally  different  in  kind  from  those  of  matter.  He  has  mind  ; 
there  are  in  him  life,  knowledge,  will,  conscience, — and  nature  has  none  of 
these.  Now,  of  these  two  parts  of  a  man,  which  is  the  dominant  one  ?  I 
know  that  there  are  men  like  Emerson  to  affirm  that  man  is  here,  not  to 
work,  but  to  be  worked  upon.  I  know  that  there  are  men  like  Youmans  to 
suggest  that  by  mere  transformation  a  force,  existing  as  motion,  heat,  or 
light,  can  become  a  mode  of  consciousness  ;  and  that  emotions  and  thoughts 
are  simply  another  form  of  forces  which  are  liberated  by  chemical  changes 
in  the  brain.  But  in  reply  to  this  theory,  which  in  its  tendencies  is  purely 
materialistic  and  atheistic,  we  have  only  to  bring  forward  the  evidence  of 
consciousness,  that  testifies  clearly  that  mind  is  not  subject  to  the  laws  of 
matter,  but  that  it  holds  sway  over  these  and  can  bend  these  to  its  purpose. 
Man  conquering  nature  is  the  very  idea  of  modern  civilization.  I  do  not 
mean  that  any  one  of  nature's  laws  can  be  changed  at  his  caprice,  but  I 
mean  that  man  has  been  endowed  with  the  power  to  put  those  laws  in  new 
combinations,  and  so  make  them  his  slaves  to  do  his  bidding. 

A  single  act  of  man's  will  may  set  in  motion  a  train  of  natural  operations 
which  never  could  have  occurred  without  his  agency,  and  yet  which  con- 
tinue working  of  themselves  after  he  has  withdrawn  his  hand.  To  use  an 
illustration  of  Janet's  :  "I  kindle  a  fire  in  my  grate.  I  only  intervene  to 
produce  and  combine  together  the  different  agents  whose  natural  action 
behooves  to  produce  the  effect  I  have  need  of  ;  but  the  first  step  once  taken, 
all  the  phenomena  constituting  combustion  engender  each  other  conformably 
to  their  laws  without  a  new  intervention  of  the  agent,  so  that  an  observer 
who  shall  study  the  series  of  these  phenomena,  without  perceiving  the  first 
hand  that  had  prepared  all,  could  not  seize  that  hand  in  any  special  act,  and 


SCIENCE    AND    RELIGION.  2& 

jet  there  is  a  preconceived  plan  and  combination,"  and  the  whole  series  of 
effects  may  be  traced  back  to  the  action  of  one  mind  and  will.  So  Diman 
has  well  said  that  "when  laws  are  conceived  of,  not  as  single  but  as  com- 
bined, instead  of  being  immutable  in  their  operation,  they  are  the  agencies 
of  ceaseless  change.  Phenomena  are  governed,  not  by  invariable  forces,  but 
by  endlessly  varying  combinations  of  invariable  forces;"  and  we  may  add 
that  while  these  combinations  are  to  a  considerable  extent  in  the  hands  of 
man,  so  that  by  combining  the  laws  of  chemical  attraction  and  combustion  he 
can  fire  the  gunpowder  and  split  the  solid  rock  asunder,  these  combinations 
are  to  an  unlimited  extent  in  the  hands  of  God,  so  that,  without  suspension 
of  natural  laws  but  rather  through  these  laws,  he  can  interpose  to  produce 
providential  or  even  miraculous  results  in  nature,  which  nature  left  to  herself 
would  never  be  able  to  accomplish. 

What  I  contend  for,  then,  is  simply  this :  that  while  nature's  laws  are 
rigid,  there  is  a  power  superior  to  those  laws  and  exempt  from  their  control, 
namely,  the  power  of  the  personal  will  —  and  that  in  this  will  of  man  we 
have  an  instance  of  an  efficient  cause  in  the  highest  sense  of  that  term, 
acting  among  and  along  with  the  physical  causes  of  the  material  world,  and 
producing  results  which  would  not  have  been  brought  about  by  any  invari- 
able sequence  of  physical  causes  left  to  their  own  action.  We  have  evidence, 
in  fine,  of  an  elasticity  in  the  constitution  of  nature,  which  permits  the 
influence  of  human  power  on  the  phenomena  of  the  world  to  be  exercised 
or  suspended  at  will,  without  affecting  in  the  least  the  stability  of  the  great 
system  of  things.  If  I  throw  a  stone  into  the  air,  its  fall  is  determined  by 
natural  laws,  but  can  any  man  say  that  my  throwing  it  was  the  mere  result 
of  natural  laws  ?  Nay,  my  free-will,  something  above  nature,  has  done  it, 
nor  has  any  law  of  nature  been  violated  therein. 

In  this  conception  of  personal  will  we  find  the  only  key  to  the  interpreta- 
tion of  nature.  We  talk  about  the  forces  of  nature  —  or  about  the  different 
forms  that  force  takes  on  —  magnetism,  light,  heat,  motion, — but  what  do  we 
know  about  force  itself,  except  by  our  own  consciousness  of  power  exerted 
in  every  act  of  will  ?  That  is  the  only  force  of  which  we  have  immediate 
knowledge,  and  we  know  it  to  have  its  centre  and  source  in  our  own  person- 
ality. And  so  when  we  see  a  change  in  nature  we  instantly  attribute  it  to  the 
exertion  of  some  unseen  power, — the  very  laws  of  our  mental  constitution 
forbid  us  to  conceive  of  that  change  as  blind  and  causeless.  There  is  force 
everywhere  in  nature  —  the  moving  world  in  all  its  successions  and  changes 
is  bound  together  by  some  all-pervading  force,  which,  assuming  different 
forms,  produces  life  and  beauty  and  order.  But  our  minds  refuse  to  rest  in 
this  idea  of  force  —  we  cannot  even  conceive  of  it  except  as  having  its  source 
and  centre  in  a  personal  intelligence  and  will  analogous  to  our  own.  The 
very  same  faculties  whose  veracity  guarantees  the  existence  of  the  outward 
world  guarantee  also  the  existence  of  One  whose  wisdom  shapes  that  world 
and  conserves  jts  being  and  brings  about  its  regular  successions  from  day 
to  day.  The  universe  is  not  a  great  machine  self-erected  and  running  its 
endless  courses  by  virtue  of  some  blind  tendency  to  self-development. 
There  is  no  real  power  that  has  not  its  seat  in  mind,  and  every  change 
in  the  relations  of  matter  is  evidence  of  the  presence  of  a  superintending 
wisdom  and  of  a  divine  will  that  upholds  all  things  by  its  word.  And  so. 


26  SCIENCE   AND   RELIGION. 

instead  of  asserting  with  some  of  our  modern  physicists  that  the  highest 
law  of  all  science,  the  most  far-reaching  principle  that  adventuring  reason 
has  discovered  in  the  universe,  is  the  conservation  of  force, —  we  may  with 
greater  reverence  say  that  science  itself,  in  its  highest  sense,  points  to  a 
principle  high  above  all  force  and  all  the  laws  of  force,  namely,  the  personal 
will  of  the  omnipresent  and  omnipotent  God. 

We  recognize  accordingly,  in  our  own  consciousness  of  will-power  and  in 
our  own  experience  of  its  exercise,  a  clue  to  the  explanation  of  the  world 
without  us,  its  forces  and  its  origin.  But  there  is  another  fact  in  our  mental 
operations  which  sheds  yet  further  light  upon  the  meaning  of  nature,  and 
that  is  our  consciousness  of  purpose.  We  not  only  work,  but  we  work 
toward  ends.  In  ourselves,  we  recognize  not  only  the  principle  of  cause, 
but  also  the  principle  of  final  cause.  I  am  myself  convinced  that  the  belief 
that  all  things  have  their  ends  is  a  primitive  and  universal  one ;  that  this 
alone  gives  a  rational  unity  to  the  whole  system  of  things;  that  this  alone 
renders  induction  possible.  I  can  argue  from  one  thing  to  another  only 
upon  the  assumption  that  things  in  the  universe  correspond  to  each  other; 
in  other  words,  that  each  has  been  made  to  fill  its  place  in  the  system,  that 
each  exists  for  a  purpose.  But  whether  it  be  a  primitive  belief  or  not,  it  is 
At  any  rate  a  working  principle  of  all  science.  Science  could  make  no 
progress,  indeed  could  make  no  beginnings,  if  she  did  not  take  for  granted 
that  there  must  be  adaptations  and  uses  in  things  whose  purpose  and  design 
have  hitherto  been  hidden. 

There  are  two  ways  in  which  this  rational  interpretation  of  nature  is 
sought  to.  be  refuted.  The  older  and  fortunately  now  somewhat  antiquated 
method,  of  which  Comte  was  the  representative,  is  that  of  denying  that 
there  is  any  such  thing  as  purpose  in  nature.  What  once  seemed  marks  of 
design  are  called  accidental  coincidences.  Final  causes  are  merged  in 
the  totality  of  efficient  causes.  But  later  writers  have  felt  the  necessity 
of  recognizing  the  principle  of  finality  in  nature,  of  ends  toward  which 
the  universe  and  its  various  parts  are  working ;  —  yet  they  are  unwil- 
ling to  grant  that  there  is  a  superintending  wisdom  which  at  all  an- 
swers to  the  Christian  idea  of  God.  The  result  has  been  the  announce- 
ment of  the  principle  of  immanent  finality,  of  unconscious  intelligence. 
And  to  this  second  interpretation  of  nature  a  large  part  of  our  modem 
scientists  are  inclined  to  give  in  their  adhesion.  They  point  to  the  instinct 
of  the  bee  which  builds  its  hexagons  and  provides  its  winter  store  without 
consciousness  of  the  end  its  labor  is  to  subserve.  They  point  to  the  uncon- 
scious formation  of  language — a  whole  people  for  centuries  shaping  and 
perfecting  a  vehicle  for  thought — yet  without  consultation  with  each  other  or 
understanding  of  the  harmonious  structure  which  they  are  rearing.  They 
point  to  the  work  of  the  world's  greatest  geniuses  in  music  and  in  literature, 
and  claim  that  the  perfection  of  art  is  characterized  by  spontaneity,  absence 
of  forethought,  in  short,  unconscious  intelligence.  So  they  would  have  us 
believe  that  the  spirit  that  moves  and  works  in  the  universe  is  also  an  uncon- 
scious intelligence,  and  that  the  marvelous  results  of  order  and  beauty  which 
we  see  about  us  are  but  the  unpurposed  ends  toward  which  an  impersonal 
force  has  been  working. 

There  are  very  many  arguments  which  might  be  urged  against  this  con- 


SCIENCE    AND    RELIGION.  27 

ception  of  nature,  but  we  can  notice  only  one.  It  loses  sight  of  man.  It 
is  the  universe  that  is  to  be  accounted  for,  and  the  theory  expressly  holds 
that  man  is  a  part  of  the  universe.  If  there  were  no  such  thing  as  conscious 
freedom  and  conscious  purpose  anywhere,  if  animal  intelligence  were  the 
highest,  then  there  would  be  nothing  so  impossible  in  the  hypothesis  that 
undesigniug  creatures  were  an  outgrowth  of  undesigning  intelligence.  But 
the  moment  that  man  is  taken  into  the  account,  we  have  a  problem  which 
this  philosophy  can  never  solve  —  the  problem  how  the  corfscious  is  to  be 
explained  from  the  unconscious.  It  is  granted  that  there  is  intelligence  in 
nature;  it  is  granted  that  there  is  conscious  intelligence  in  man,  and  that 
this  conscious  intelligence  is  higher  than  that  which  is  unconscious.  We 
claim  that  it  is  more  rational  to  explain  the  lower  by  the  higher,  than  it  is 
to  explain  the  higher  by  the  lower  —  more  rational  to  suppose  that  uncon- 
scious intelligence  has  derived  its  origin  from  conscious  intelligence,  than 
that  the  conscious  has  come  from  the  unconscious.  If  natuie  has  an 
intelligent  cause,  you  are  bound  to  get  your  ideas  of  the  nature  of  that 
cause,  not  from  the  lowest  forms  of  intelligence  you  know,  but  from 
the  highest  —  not  from  the  animal,  therefore,  but  from  the  man.  In  our  own 
intelligent  purpose  we  have  the  simplest  explanation  of  the  intelligence  of 
the  universe  about  us.  Somewhere  or  other  you  must  find  purpose  outside 
of  man  to  explain  purpose  in  man  —  and  when  you  have  found  a  conscious 
intelligence  that  can  explain  man,  you  can  best  explain  the  unconscious 
universe  by  referring  that  to  this  intelligence  also.  An  organism  working 
unconsciously  toward  an  end  can  be  best  explained  by  supposing  that  it  is 
impelled  toward  that  end  by  another  being  who  is  conscious  and  who  has 
chosen  the  end.  It  is  only  reason  to  suppose  that  nature  reaches  her  ends 
because  nature  is  ruled  by  a  being  immanent  in  nature  whose  intelligence 
has  determined  the  ends  and  whose  power  realizes  them.  Leave  out  man 
and  the  universe  cannot  be  rationally  interpreted.  Include  man  in  your 
survey,  and  you  are  bound  to  regard  nature  as  the  product  and  working  of 
a  mind  and  will  analogous  to  the  conscious  soul  that  inhabits  and  energizes 
and  directs  the  human  body. 

I  have  said  that,  if  we  include  man  in  our  survey  of  the  universe,  we  are 
bound  to  regard  nature  as  the  product  and  working  of  a  mind  and  will  anal- 
ogous to  the  conscious  soul  that  inhabits  and  energizes  and  directs  the  human 
body.  Deny  this,  and  I  do  not  see  what  is  to  save  you  from  denying  also 
the  fact  of  conscious  intelligence  in  man.  To  this  the  theory  I  am  combat- 
ing logically  tends.  We  have  no  physical  evidence  of  the  existence  of  con- 
sciousness in  others.  As  our  fellow-beings  are  declared  destitute  of  free 
volition,  so  they  should  be  declared  destitute  of  consciousness.  As  the 
brutes  are  called  automata,  so  should  man  be  called  an  automaton.  It  has  well 
been  said  that  if  physics  be  all,  we  have  no  God,  but  then  also  we  have  no 
man,  existing.  If  we  deny  that  the  adaptations  in  nature  are  indications  of 
a  designing  God,  we  should  equally  deny  that  the  watch,  the  aqueduct  and 
the  railway  are  indications  of  a  designing  man.  "The  essential  bestiality 
of  man  "  is  a  natural  and  logical  conclusion.  Into  this  Slough  of  Despond, 
this  renunciation  of  the  highest  honors  of  manhood,  the  philosophy  of  the 
day  is  drifting.  "What  the  bearing  of  the  automatic  theory  of  human 
nature,"  I  quote  from  a  late  essay  of  Mr.  Gold  win  Smith,  "  what  the  bear- 
ing of  the  automatic  theory  of  human  nature  would  be  upon  the  hopes  and 


28  SCIENCE   AND   RELIGION. 

aspirations  of  man,  or  on  moral  philosophy  generally,  it  might  be  difficult, 
no  doubt,  to  say.  But  has  any  one  of  the  distinguished  advocates  of  th<« 
automatic  theory  ever  acted  upon  it,  or  allowed  his  thoughts  to  be  really 
ruled  by  it,  for  a  moment  ?  What  can  be  imagined  more  strange  than  an 
automaton  suddenly  becoming  conscious  of  its  own  automatic  character, 
reasoning  and  debating  about  it  automatically,  and  coming  automatically  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  automatic  theory  of  itself  is  true  ?" 

Tennyson  alswers,  in  effect,  the  question  of  Goldwin  Smith,  and  the 
answer  is  despair  and  suicide  : 

"  Why  should  we  bear  with  an  hour  of  torture,  a  moment  of  pain, 
If  every  man  die  forever,  if  all  his  griefs  are  in  vain, 

And  the  homeless  planet  at  length  will  be  wheel'd  thro'  the  silence  of  space, 
Motherless  evermore  of  an  ever- vanishing  race, 

When  the  worm  shall  Imve  writhed  its  last,  and  its  last  brother-worm  will  have  fled 
From  the  dead  fossil  skull  that  is  left  in  the  rocks  of  an  earth  that  is  dead? 

"  Have  I  crazed  myself  over  their  horrible  infidel  writings  ?    O  yes, 
For  these  are  the  new  dark  ages,  you  see,  of  the  popular  press, 
When  the  bat  comes  out  of  his  cave,  and  the  owls  are  whooping  at  noon, 
And  Doubt  is  the  lord  of  this  dung-hill  and  crows  to  the  sun  and  the  moon, 
Till  the  Sun  and  the  Moon  of  our  science  are  both  of  them  turn'd  into  blood. 
And  Hope  will  have  broken  her  heart,  running:  after  a  shadew  of  good." 

And  so  we  feel  bound  to  protest  against  the  doctrine  that  the  unconscious  is 
the  measure  and  the  source  of  the  conscious,  and  that  final  causes  are  only 
unphilosophic  dreams.  Mr.  Darwin  himself  has  conceded  that  upon  his 
view  there  is  no  reason  why  the  progress  of  life  upon  the  planet  should  be 
toward  higher  rather  than  toward  lower  forms.  Upon  this  theory  there  is 
no  explanation  of  the  moral  order  and  sanctions  of  the  individual  life,  nor 
of  the  moral  purpose  that  is  visible  in  human  history.  Evolution  itself,  as 
involving  uniform  progress,  implies  an  ordaining  wisdom.  Evolution,  indeed, 
is  only  a  mode  of  divine  action,  not  in  conflict  with  design,  but  a  new  illus- 
tration of  it, — a  method  of  securing  a  result,  and  so  the  latest  and  best  proof 
a  designing  God. 

When  once  we  have  settled  the  truth  that  nature  is  to  be  interpreted  by 
our  knowledge  of  mind,  and  not  mind  by  our  knowledge  of  nature,  we  have 
the  intellectual  foundation  of  all  true  religion.  Mind,  and  not  matter,  pre- 
sents to  us  the  truest  image  of  God.  The  universe  is  governed  not  by  physi- 
cal so  much  as  by  moral  laws.  Final  causes  precede  efficient  causes.  There 
is  an  end  which  controls  the  choice  of  means.  Now  we  are  prepared  to  see 
the  marks  of  design  which  meet  the  candid  eye  everywhere  in  the  universe. 
Now  we  can  see  eternal  wisdom  in  every  leaf  and  twig,  in  every  sand-grain, 
in  every  breeze,  in  every  sunbeam.  No  longer  do  we  look  upon  the  system 
of  things  as  a  ship  constructed  and  launched  by  its  builder  and  now  given 
over  to  the  sailors  to  navigate.  No  longer  do  we  feel  compelled  to  banish 
the  great  Architect  to  some  far-off  corner  of  his  dominions,  while  the  vast 
structure  of  the  world  is  left  to  itself,  and  the  races  of  men  pursue  their 
fated  course  to  glory  or  ruin.  Bather  than  bear  the  terrible  burden  of  such 

a  godless  universe, 

—  "  I'd  rather  be 
A  Pagan,  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn ; 

So  might  I,  standing-  on  this  pleasant  lea, 
Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn ; 

Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea, 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 


SCIENCE   AND    RELIGION.  29 

But  better  than  Paganism  is  the  faith  to  which  a  true  science  leads  us.  It 
teaches  us  that  "the  universe,"  in  the  words  of  a  French  philosopher,  " is 
a  thought  of  God."  It  teaches  us  that  the  living  presence  of  God  is  all 
around  us,  and  that  in  the  great  events  of  history,  as  well  as  in  the  changes 
of  the  natural  world,  there  is  a  wisdom  that  sees  the  end  from  the  beginning, 
and  orders  all  things  with  reference  to  that  "  one  far-off  divine  event,  toward 
which  the  whole  creation  moves. "  In  one  of  his  hasty  dispatches  from  the 
field  of  Waterloo,  the  Duke  of  Wellington  wrote  :  "  The  finger  of  Providence 
was  upon  me  !  "  And  there  are  moments  at  least  in  the  lives  of  all  of  us, 
when  we  turn  from  the  iron  pressure  of  the  world's  unvarying  laws  with  a 
burden  upon  us.  The  gigantic  mechanism  of  the  universe  cannot  soothe 
or  quiet  the  questionings  of  the  intellect  or  the  agitations  of  the  soul. 
Trouble  and  care,  the  responsibilities  and  failures  of  life,  make  us  long  to 
feel  that  some  great  divine  Heart  is  at  the  centre  of  the  sublime  system,  and 
that  infinite  Wisdom  and  Power  can  sympathize  with  us  and  give  us  rest. 

Then  it  is  pleasant  to  see  how  nature,  interpreted  by  that  which  we  find 
within  ourselves,  gives  us  assurances  of  a  divine  and  fatherly  care.  Pro- 
fessor Cooke,  of  Cambridge,  has  drawn  a  most  ingenious  and  convincing 
argument  from  the  nature  and  adaptation  of  the  chemical  elements  of  which 
the  physical  universe  is  composed.  Grant  that  the  world  is  merely  the  result 
of  development  from  a  nebulous  fire-mist,  revolving  and  condensing  and 
throwing  off  red  hot  satellites  and  suns, —  still  the  chemical  constituents  of 
that  tire-mist —  oxygen,  hydrogen,  nitrogen,  carbon,  and  all  the  elementary 
substances  —  existed  then  as  now,  and  the  evidences  of  design  in  their  original 
adaptation  to  each  other  are  as  strong  as  the  evidences  of  design  in  the  com- 
pleted creation.  God's  goodness  and  wisdom  alone  can  account  for  even 
this  original  constitution  of  the  elements  as  they  existed  in  chaos.  But 
when  we  look  up  to  the  heavens  above  us,  and  see  what  mighty  forces  are 
required  to  cover  a  continent  with  its  wintry  mantle  of  snow,  and  to  send 
the  showers  of  the  skies  upon  the  just  and  unjust, — when  we  look  beyond 
our  atmosphere,  and  consider  what  vast  powers  of  gravitation  must  be  ever 
active  to  keep  our  planet  in  its  true  relations  to  the  solar  system  and  the 
stellar  worlds  above,  we  feel  that  the  presence  of  God  must  be  as  inseparable 
from  the  movements  of  the  universe  as  the  figure  of  Phidias  on  Minerva's 
shield,  which  could  not  be  erased  without  spoiling  the  whole  composi- 
tion. And  if  this  be  the  true  conception  of  nature,  then  how  rational  it 
is  to  go  further  and  say  that  this  personal  Will  that  moves  all  and  preserves 
all,  is  not  fettered  by  nature,  but  is  the  master  of  nature.  Nature  is  but  the 
manifestation  of  God,  and  the  laws  of  nature  are  only  the  fixed  methods  of 
His  working.  He  orders  and  governs  the  universe,  not  for  its  own  sake,  but 
for  the  revelation  of  Himself.  Beason,  love,  conscience,  purity,  these  are 
the  ends  for  which  we  live, — they  must  be  the  ends  for  which  God  lives. 
And  if  we  can  accomplish  our  designs,  by  forming  new  combinations  of 
natural  laws  and  inserting  among  them  the  force  of  our  own  personal  wills, 
how  elastic  and  pliable  must  this  constitution  of  things  be  in  the  hand  of 
God  !  Miracles  are  not  impossible  unless  God  is  impossible, — they  are  not 
improbable  unless  we  deny  his  moral  attributes, —  they  are  not  false  unless 
we  deny  his  word,  and  put  beneath  our  feet  all  the  laws  of  human  testimony. 
Allow  only  a  sufficient  end  to  be  gained  by  their  performance  —  the  authenti- 


30  SCIENCE   AND   RELIGION. 

cation  of  that  very  revelation  which  nature  makes  only  imperfectly  —  and 
miracles  become  not  only  possible  but  natural.  It  was  fit  that  the  great  bell 
of  the  universe  should  sound,  when  the  Author  of  nature  came  in  human 
guise  to  proclaim  deliverance  to  the  captives  and  recovery  of  sight  to  the 
blind. 

As  you  go  out  then,  graduates  of  this  college,  into  the  great  suffering 
world,  to  be  ministers  of  mercy  to  the  sick  and  dying,  I  would  charge  you 
to  be  something  more  than  devotees  of  your  profession,  something  more  than 
men  of  science, —  I  would  have  you  also  men  of  faith.  For  faith  is  nothing 
more  than  the  acceptance  of  God's  testimony  on  evidence  as  accessible  and 
as  valid  as  that  on  which  we  accept  the  reality  of  outward  phenomena.  Such 
faith  is  no  infirmity  of  the  soul ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  confers  the  only  title 
to  true  symmetry  and  strength  of  character,  as  well  as  to  the  broadest  and 
highest  attainments  in  knowledge.  Let  intellect  and  heart  go  together,  let 
physical  and  moral  science  be  united,  let  knowledge  and  religion  both  com- 
bine to  make  character  strong  and  success  sure.  What  God  hath  joined 
together,  let  not  man  put  asunder.  Mere  intellectual  culture  is  only  a  part 
of  the  great  sum  of  a  perfect  manhood. 

"What  is  she,  cut  from  love  and  faith, 
But  some  wild  Pallas  from  the  brain 

"  Of  demons?  fiery  hot  to  burst 
All  barriers  in  her  onward  race 
For  power.    Let  her  know  her  place : 
She  is  the  second,  not  the  first. 

"  A  higher  hand  must  make  her  mild, 
If  all  be  not  in  vain ;  and  guide 
Her  footsteps,  moving  side  by  side 
With  wisdom,  like  the  younger  child  ; 

41  For  she  is  earthly,  of  the  mind, 

But  wisdom  heavenly,  of  the  soul." 


MATERIALISTIC  SKEPTICISM.* 


The  unbelief  of  the  present  day  is  a  stream  with  many  eddies,  but  its 
general  drift  and  direction  are  plain.  Twenty  years  ago,  the  transcendental 
idealism  of  Hegel  threatened  to  sweep  away  the  faith  of  the  world.  By 
a  natural  and  perfectly  explicable  reaction,  this  has  given  place  to  the 
mechanical  philosophy  of  Feuerbach  and  Biichner.  Or  to  put  it  more 
accurately,  the  change  from  Hegel  to  Biichner  in  Germany  is  but  the  type 
of  a  universal  change  in  the  tendency  of  skeptical  thought.  It  needs  no 
long  search  to  discover  occasions  and  helpers  of  this  change.  The  growth 
of  material  interests  in  these  modern  days,  the  progress  of  physical  research, 
the  inventions  that  have  opened  new  mines  to  industry  and  new  lands  to 
trade,  have  disposed  the  unreligious  to  a  Sadduceeisrn  which  holds  this 
world  to  be  all,  and  believes  in  neither  angel  nor  spirit. 

Not  that  materialism  is  always  openly  avowed.  It  constitutes  the  staple 
of  thought  in  many  a  professed  description  of  physical  facts,  and  in  many  a 
literary  work  whose  apparent  aim  is  simply  to  depict  life  and  the  develop- 
ment of  character.  The  philosophy  of  Comte  and  Bain  and  Herbert  Spencer, 
the  natural  researches  of  Darwin  and  Tyndall  and  Huxley,  the  historical 
studies  of  Buckle  and  Taine,  and  the  romances  of  Auerbach  and  George 
Eliot,  alike,  though  in  different  degrees,  reveal  this  materialistic  spirit  and 
show  how  widely  diffused  and  how  dangerous  it  is.  It  not  only  gives  color 
to  a  large  part  of  the  literature  of  the  day,  but  it  too  often  tinges  the  thinking 
of  medical  men,  and  enters  as  an  unconscious  element  into  demands  for 
radical  reform  in  our  methods  of  education.  It  gets  possession  even  of 
philanthropists  and  theologians,  leading  the  latter  to  make  out  of  Providence 
and  Redemption  only  one  vast  system  of  natural  law,  and  leading  the  former 
to  confound  evangelization  with  civilization,  and  to  deny  the  possibility  of 
permanently  changing,  except  by  physical  means,  the  innate  and  persistent 
types  of  character  in  either  individuals  or  nations. 

It  is  this  general  tendency  of  modern  literature  and  life  which  Christianity 
must  now  meet  and,  if  possible,  correct.  The  danger  is  great  only  so  long 
as  it  is  undefined.  We  may  define  the  danger,  by  defining  the  system 
which  gives  rise  to  it.  Materialism  is  that  method  of  thought  which  would 
make  all  things,  even  intelligence  and  volition,  to  be  mere  phenomena  of 
matter.  It  holds  that  the  universe  can  be  explained  without  bringing  in 
the  notion  of  a  designing  mind — without  bringing  in  the  notion  of  any 
immaterial  principle  at  all  —  explained  from  the  mere  natural  properties  of 

*  Printed  in  the  Examiner,  October  2, 1873. 

31 


"32  MATERIALISTIC    SKEPTICISM. 

the  atoms  and  forces  which  constitute  it.  Stripped  of  the  hazy  rhetoric 
in  which  it  is  so  frequently  enveloped,  and  reduced  to  a  bare  definition, 
materialism  loses  its  novelty  as  well  as  its  beauty.  We  descry  in  it  the 
features  of  an  error  long  since  slain  and  buried.  Five  hundred  years  before 
Christ  it  was  propounded  by  Democritus,  and  two  centuries  later  all  its 
essential  principles  were  elaborately  set  forth  in  that  Epicurean  philosophy 
which  the  great  apostle  met  and  overthrew  on  Mars'  Hill. 

What  a  history  this  theory  of  the  universe  has  had  !  Rising  evermore  in 
periods  of  national  and  social  declension,  it  has  been  the  product  and  the 
sign  of  spiritual  and  moral  decay — an  ignis  fatuus  which  springs  from 
death,  and  which  lures  to  death.  No  nation  in  its  sturdy  youth  has  ever 
had  any  other  than  a  spiritualistic  philosophy.  No  age  given  over  to  mater- 
ialism has  ever  shown  creative  genius  or  noble  statesmanship.  Epicurus 
marks  the  time  of  Greek  corruption  and  debasement,  when  the  deepening 
darkness  was  making  negative  preparation  for  the  rise  of  Christ's  new  light 
upon  the  world.  Condillac  and  Diderot,  D'Alembert  and  D'Holbach, 
repeating  the  Epicurean  philosophy  in  the  18th  century,  mark  in  like  man- 
ner that  time  of  godless  passion  and  sensual  idolatry  which  culminated  in 
the  French  Revolution. 

But  every  prevalent  and  plausible  falsehood  has  its  grain  of  verity.  Let 
us  give  materialism  its  rights,  and  allow  the  small  truth  which  it  contains, 
else  we  shall  not  understand  it  nor  its  power ;  much  less  be  able  to  frame  a 
radical  and  conclusive  answer.  Materialism  does  right  in  insisting  upon 
the  substantive  existence  of  the  properties  of  matter  and  upon  the  persistence 
of  natural  forces.  It  utters  a  useful,  though  not  the  most  successful,  protest 
against  the  Idealism  which  would  deny  the  objective  existence  of  the  exter- 
nal world,  and  the  semi-pantheism  which  would  make  all  force  to  be  the 
simple  volition  of  God.  Let  us  acknowledge,  then,  once  for  all,  the  existence 
and  the  powers  of  matter — these  we  cannot  deny  without  denying  our  senses 
and  intuitions  alike.  The  universe  is  not  a  drama  whose  shifting  scenes 
display  only  one  actor — God;  other  powers  have  been  ordained  and  other 
agents  created  by  him ;  there  are  physical  powers  as  well  as  mental,  blind 
forces  as  well  as  intelligent ;  and  the  observer  of  nature,  as  he  looks  upon 
the  complicated  movements  and  relations  of  elements  and  worlds,  need  never 
for  a  moment  fancy  them  a  deceptive  show — they  are  a  sublime  reality. 
But  then  they  are  not  the  sublimest  of  realities.  It  is  the  fundamental  error 
of  materialism  to  think  them  so.  To  the  view  of  a  true  philosophy,  there 
lies  back  of  all  these  a  superior  energy,  an  originating  cause,  a  designing 
intelligence,  an  upholding  power,  whose  greatness  and  wisdom  they  dimly 
reflect,  but  can  never  fully  express;  in  other  words,  the  existence  and 
working  of  the  material  elements  is  not  an  ultimate  fact  which  furnishes  its 
own  explanation ;  much  less  can  this  explain  the  higher  forms  of  life  which 
appear  upon  the  planet;  reason  can  never  be  satisfied  without  postulating 
an  immaterial  existence  and  a  personal  power  in  which  these  inhere,  and 
from  which  they  derive  their  being — an  existence  and  a  power  infinitely 
higher,  yet  analogous  in  nature  to  that  which  we  find  in  our  own  minds  and 
wills — the  existence  and  the  power  which  we  call  God. 

Materialism  may  be  refuted  by  considerations  drawn  from  three  different 
sources,  the  facts  of  matter,  the  facts  of  organization,  the  facts  of  mind. 


MATERIALISTIC   SKEPTICISM.  33 

Let  us  look  at  these  in  their  order.  First,  then,  matter  furnishes  no  proper 
<?ause  for  the  universe  or  for  any  of  its  phenomena.  Think  for  a  moment 
what  is  meant  by  cause.  The  cause  of  any  given  phenomenon  is  not  simply 
the  antecedent  of  that  phenomenon.  The  night  is  the  antecedent  of  the 
day,  but  darkness  is  not  the  cause  of  light.  Nothing  is  properly  a  cause 
which  has  not  power  as  well  as  antecedence.  Reason  is  not  satisfied  without 
attributing  every  known  change  in  nature  to  some  power  which  produced  it. 
The  materialist  cannot  justify  his  position  unless  he  can  show  that  his 
philosophy  accounts  for  the  existence  of  the  universe.  He,  with  us,  is 
compelled  to  assign  some  origin  and  source  to  external  things,  but  he  finds 
that  origin  and  source  of  all  things  in  matter.  We  urge  against  this  theory 
of  the  universe  that  the  materialist  is  bound  to  furnish  not  simply  a  cause, 
but  a  sufficient  cause,  for  this  complicated  mechanism  and  structure  which 
we  see  without  us.  Matter  is  no  such  sufficient  cause  for  the  universe.  For 
what  is  matter?  This  we  may  certainly  say,  that  apart  from  its  sensible 
qualities  and  from  force,  we  know  it  only  as  existence,  extension,  perma- 
nence. It  is  plain  then  that  matter,  as  matter,  cannot  be  shown  to  have  the 
properties  of  a  cause.  Only  as  some  power  from  without  shall  possess  it 
and  use  it,  can  it  become  a  cause,— and  then  not  matter,  but  this  power  from 
without,  is  properly  the  cause  in  question. 

But  the  later  materialism  adds  to  the  notion  of  matter  the  notion  of  force. 
This  force  is  conceived,  of  course,  as  a  mere  property  of  matter,  since  to 
make  it  a  separate  and  independent  existence  would  be,  for  the  materialist, 
to  give  up  the  theory  of  matter  as  a  cause,  and  to  make  shipwreck  of  his 
materialism  altogether.  But  can  force  be,  as  the  materialist  holds,  only  an 
inseparable  property  of  matter  ?  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  fact  of  inertia 
disproves  this.  No  body  ever  moves  of  itself.  It  remains  in  a  state  of  rest 
forever  until  impressed  from  without.  We  do  not,  indeed,  know  the  nature 
of  gravitation.  Newton  conceived  of  it  as  an  impulsion  ab  extra.  But 
whether  it  be  what  Newton  imagined,  or  an  attraction  of  every  molecule 
from  within,  the  case  is  not  altered — we  get  no  nearer  to  an  inherent  power 
of  motion.  Only  as  one  portion  of  matter  is  acted  upon  by  another,  can  it 
move  toward  that  other.  The  motion  of  matter  is  due,  not  to  matter  itself, 
but  to  some  external  cause.  In  other  words,  adding  to  matter  the  idea  of 
force,  does  not  render  matter  a  sufficient  cause  for  the  least  motion  in  the 
universe,  much  less  a  sufficient  cause  for  the  universe  itself.  The  motions 
of  matter,  and  the  adjustments  of  material  bodies  to  each  other,  so  that  they 
draw  forth  each  other's  powers  and  work  together  harmoniously  toward 
useful  ends,  can  only  be  accounted  for  by  supposing  an  immaterial  force  — 
a  force  which  is  itself  no  property  of  matter. 

This  force  must  be  a  mental  force.  And  that,  because  we  find  ideas  in 
nature,  and  ideas  are  the  product  solely  of  mind.  Why  is  the  spoken  word 
significant  to  men  ?  Why  is  it  different  from  the  whistling  of  the  wind  ? 
Simply  because,  from  the  analogy  of  our  own  speech,  we  infer  that  it  has  a 
oause  in  the  mind  of  another.  Vibrations  of  air  do  not  explain  it,  because 
it  contains  an  idea.  We  cannot  explain  a  beautiful  picture  by  making  an 
inventory  of  the  colors  of  the  canvas.  We  see  an  idea  in  it.  We  see  a  mind 
behind  it  that  once  conceived  and  expressed  that  idea.  So  to  a  right-think- 
ing soul  the  universe  is  a  spoken  word,  a  harmonious  picture.  The  material 
8 


34  MATERIALISTIC    SKEPTICISM. 

elements  of  which  it  is  composed  do  not  explain  it ;  something  more  than* 
matter  is  there ;  there  is  mind,  and  the  universe  is  the  expression  of  that 
mind.  Or,  to  sum  up  in  few  words  this  portion  of  the  argument :  Since 
matter  is  neither  self-existent  nor  self-acting,  whether  in  the  molecule  or 
the  world,  it  can  never  be  regarded  as  a  sufficient  cause  or  explanation  of 
the  present  system  of  things ;  supplementing  the  idea  of  matter  with  that 
of  force  does  not  help  the  difficulty,  since  whatever  force  is  inseparable  from 
matter  still  leaves  each  portion  of  matter  inert  and  dependent  upon  impres- 
sions from  without ;  to  attribute  to  this  force  the  properties  of  a  first  cause 
is  to  make  it  a  force  apart  from  matter  and  above  matter,  and  such  a  force 
can  never  be  conceived  as  other  than  the  energy  of  a  conscious  spirit,  a 
spirit  that  can  create  matter  and  work  upon  matter,  but  which  has  no  nec- 
essary connection  with  matter,  and  which  the  facts  of  matter  can  never 
explain.  In  short,  the  facts  of  matter  show  that  matter  can  never  explain 
its  own  existence  or  adjustments ;  they  show  the  rather,  that  it  evermore 
points  upward  to  a  causative  and  mighty  Mind. 

A  second  argument  against  materialism  is  derived  from  what  we  may  call 
facts  of  organization.  There  are  phenomena  of  organic  life  which  can  never 
be  explained  except  upon  the  hypothesis  of  an  organizing  force  superior  to 
matter.  Assimilation  and  reproduction,  growth  according  to  definite  plan, 
preservation  of  form  notwithstanding  changes  of  substance,  capacity  of  self- 
repair,  these  characteristics  of  plant  and  animal  life  are  in  themselves  a 
reversal  of  all  laws  belonging  to  matter  as  such,  whether  those  laws  be 
mechanical  or  chemical.  Effects  so  special  and  peculiar  demand  a  special 
and  peculiar  cause  —  and  this  cause  we  denominate  life.  It  has  indeed  been 
sought  to  define  life  as  a  mere  quality  of  matter.  But  if  life  were  a  property 
of  protoplasm,  as  aquosity  is  a  property  of  water,  protoplasm  and  life  would 
be  inseparable.  We  know,  however,  that  in  the  dead  animal  protoplasm 
may  exist  without  life.  The  mutton  which  the  materialist  eats  might  con- 
vince him  of  his  error,  for  here  is  protoplasm  of  which  life  is  not  a  property. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  living  protoplasm  has  a  structure  and  power  which 
chemistry  cannot  account  for,  any  more  than  it  can  account  for  the  peculiar 
build  and  the  marvelous  achievements  of  a  printing-press  or  a  reaping- 
machine.  To  account  for  this  structure  and  this  power  we  must  presuppose 
not  only  chemical  and  mechanical  forces,  but  also  a  force  utterly  different  in 
its  nature,  and  as  superior  to  these  forces  as  its  results  are  superior  to  theirs. 
The  force  that  dominates  matter  and  subdues  it  to  its  purposes  must  be, 
not  a  material,  but  an  immaterial  energy. 

And  here  again  we  meet  the  ever-recurring  fact  of  ideas  in  nature.  The 
life  of  the  animal  and  of  the  plant  reveals  a  rational  unity,  a  tending  of  all 
its  forces  to  an  end,  a  working  out  of  a  plan,  a  striving  for  completeness  of 
organization  and  use.  And  as  in  the  life  of  the  individual  plant  or  animal, 
so  in  the  long  history  of  life  upon  the  earth  since  the  geologic  ages  began, 
we  discover  a  unity  and  harmony  which  reason  refuses  to  attribute  to  the 
blind  action  of  natural  forces.  The  stream  cannot  rise  higher  than  the  foun- 
tain. The  system  whose  order  so  delights  the  reason  must  have  had  for  its 
source  a  designing  intelligence  ;  in  other  words,  must  have  sprung  not  from 
matter  but  from  mind.  Even  if  the  materialist  could  by  his  chemistry  act- 
ually produce  living  plants  or  animals  from  inorganic  materials,  the  argu- 


MATERIALISTIC    SKEPTICISM.  35 

ment  we  urge  would  not  be  invalidated,  since  the  production  of  such  forms 
of  life  as  geologic  history  displays,  and  their  production  in  such  order  and 
relations,  demands  still  a  designing  and  adjusting  mind  that  adapts  the  ele- 
ments to  each  other,  and  prearranges  the  course  of  their  development. 

But  this  origin  of  life  from  inorganic  elements  is  a  pure  assumption  of 
which  science  knows  nothing  at  all.  No  single  attested  fact  as  yet  substan- 
tiates it.  So  far  as  we  know,  life  originates  only  from  preexisting  life.  It 
is  never  the  result  of  organization,  but  always  the  cause  of  organization ; 
never  the  product  of  protoplasm,  but  always  something  superinduced  upon 
it.  You  may  look  in  vain  to  mere  nature  for  its  parentage.  Go  back  a 
thousand  million  years,  and  matter  can  furnish  the  source  and  explanation 
of  it  no  more  than  now.  You  must  either  attribute  its  existence  on  the 
globe  to  some  meteoric  accession  from  other  planets  of  the  system  —  and  this 
merely  pushes  back  the  problem  without  solving  it, —  or  you  must  acknowl- 
edge that  life  sprang  originally  from  an  immaterial  source,  from  one  who 
has  life  in  himself  —  and  that  is  the  same  thing  as  to  say  that  materialism  is 
false,  since  the  fundamental  superior  originating  thing  in  this  universe  is 
not  matter,  but  Mind. 

Materialism  is  disproved,  finally,  by  the  facts  of  our  own  being.  Our  intel- 
lectual nature  gives  testimony  against  it.  For  there  is  much  in  this  intellect- 
ual nature  which  never  could  have  come  from  matter.  The  materialist  holds 
that  mental  energy  is  only  one  of  the  correlated  physical  forces,  and  that 
thought  is  but  transformed  sensation.  We  might  answer  that  it  is  essential 
to  the  very  idea  of  physical  force  to  be  susceptible  of  measurement  by  physical 
tests.  Heat  is  a  mode  of  motion,  say  the  scientists,  and  therefore  the  force 
expended  in  any  given  combustion  may  be  expressed  in  actual  pounds- weight. 
But  who  shall  weigh  thought  or  feeling  or  volition  ?  Love  cannot  be  meas- 
ured by  bushels,  or  weight  of  thought  estimated  in  avoirdupois.  But 
wherein  consists  the  absurdity  of  this,  if  mental  action  is  but  the  product  of 
impressions  from  without  ? 

The  fundamental  error  in  this  materialistic  reasoning  is  that  of  supposing 
the  mind  to  be  a  mere  tablet  on  which  circumstances  and  sensations  make 
their  marks,  whereas  the  mind  is  active  instead,  in  all  its  knowledge,  and 
gives  quite  as  much  as  it  receives.  The  single  fact  of  attention  shows  this. 
It  depends  wholly  upon  the  consent  of  the  will  whether  we  receive  impres- 
sions from  passing  objects  or  not.  A  man  may  have  flowing  into  his  ears  all 
the  noises  of  a  crowded  street,  and  yet  be  as  unconscious  of  them  as  if  he 
were  in  silence  and  solitude.  Into  what  sort  of  mental  energy  are  all  these 
multitudinous  sensations  transformed  ?  Or  if  we  ask,  with  a  late  writer,  into 
what  physical  force  the  brain  power  of  the  dying  Shakespeare  was  converted, 
what  answer  can  be  returned  ?  The  truth  is,  it  is  impossible  to  account  for 
the  power  of  thinking  by  any  combinations  or  vibrations  of  material  atoms. 
Thought  may  in  the  present  state  be  connected  inseparably  with  such  affec- 
tions of  our  physical  organism  —  although  even  this  is  exceedingly  difficult 
to  prove  —  but  this  connection  is  not  identity.  Because  the  organist  pro- 
duces the  fugues  of  Bach  only  by  touching  the  keys  of  his  instrument,  we 
do  not  conclude  that  instrument  and  organist  are  one,  and  that  that  one  is 
the  organ.  Thought  and  the  motions  of  matter  are  not  mutually  convertible. 
We  may  not  only  say  with  Tyndall  that  "the  passage  from  the  physics  of 


36  MATERIALISTIC    SKEPTICISM. 

the  brain  to  the  corresponding  facts  of  consciousness  is  unthinkable, "  but  we 
may  also  say  that  to  derive  the  latter  from  the  former  is  a  reversal  of  all  logic. 

If  the  physical  could  be  proved  to  produce  the  psychical,  the  materialist 
would  have  proved  his  doctrine.  But  the  latter  produces  the  former  as  much 
as  the  former  the  latter.  In  order  to  sense-impressions  there  must  previously 
exist  a  mind  to  be  impressed.  As  Professor  Gardiner  has  said  :  "  Most  of 
the  properties  of  matter  have  no  meaning  where  there  is  no  mind  to  perceive 
them.  There  is  no  audible  world  without  the  ear  ;  there  is  no  visible  world 
without  the  eye.  What  is  accessible  to  the  senses  is  not  the  only  reality. 
Mind  gives  to  matter  its  chief  meaning.  Hence  matter  alone  can  never 
explain  the  universe."  And  Eobert  Browning,  that  "subtlest  assertor  of 
the  soul  in  song,"  says  nothing  more  worthy  of  himself  than  when,  in  "  The 
Ring  and  the  Book,"  he  puts  into  the  Pope's  mouth  the  words  :  "  Mind  is 
not  matter,  nor  from  matter,  but  above." 

We  are  asking  whether  mind  is  a  sublimated  form  of  matter  ?  What  does 
the  mind  itself  say  with  regard  to  this  question  ?  This  simply,  that  it  is 
radically  and  essentially  different  from  matter.  Amid  all  the  changes  of  the 
material  world  around  it,  and  amid  all  the  changes  of  the  material  organism 
of  which  it  makes  use,  the  mind  is  conscious  to  itself  of  being  one  continu- 
ous and  identical  existence.  In  and  with  every  act  of  sense- perception  is 
bound  up  the  mind's  knowledge  of  itself  as  an  undivided  unit,  inconceivable 
as  occupying  space  or  as  measurable  by  any  material  standard.  While  the 
mind  is  conscious  of  dependence  upon  the  senses  for  knowledge  of  the  outer 
world,  a  large  part  of  its  knowledge,  and  that  the  noblest  part,  is  its  own 
original  and  native  endowment.  The  ideas  of  substance,  of  space  and  time 
of  cause,  of  right,  of  God,  are  not  the  gift  or  product  of  experience.  Expe- 
rience may  occasion  their  rise  in  consciousness,  but  there  is  more  in  them  than 
experience  can  ever  explain.  And  as  with  its  knowledge,  so  with  its  higher 
activities  —  these  are  independent  of  any  known  physical  conditions.  No 
materialist  has  ever  yet  shown  that  the  abstract  thought  of  any  great  philos- 
opher or  the  fervid  imaginings  of  any  great  poet  could  be  accounted  for  by 
changes  of  molecules  in  the  brain.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  an  originating 
activity  in  the  human  spirit.  Affections  of  the  mind,  such  as  love,  hope, 
fear,  influence  the  body  more  than  the  sensations  of  the  body  influence  the 
mind.  The  mind  knows  itself  as  superior  to  the  body  —  not  its  creature  and 
slave.  It  can  resist  the  body  and  subdue  it.  Instead  of  ceasing  to  grow 
when  the  body  ceases  to  grow,  the  mind  only  then  enters  upon  its  noblest 
growth.  Instead  of  becoming  weak  and  helpless  as  the  body  fails  in  strength, 
the  mind  not  seldom  shows  then  an  unflagging  brilliance  and  energy.  And 
when  the  frail  body  is  near  to  dissolution,  the  mind  feels  most  its  immeasur- 
able superiority  to  all  material  things,  and  triumphs  in  the  very  article  of 
death.  The  materialism  that  would  degrade  man  to  a  cadaver  finds  all  the 
voices  of  our  intellectual  being  uniting  in  one  solemn  protest  against  it. 

But  the  protest  grows  more  loud  and  plain  when  we  consult  the  moral 
nature.  If  we  know  anything  at  all,  we  know  that  we  are  free.  We  know 
that  we  have  the  power  to  originate  action,  and  to  choose  between  right  and 
wrong.  But  matter  is  incapable  of  originating  action.  Upon  the  material- 
istic theory,  free  will  is  impossible.  The  materialist  is  a  necessitarian. 
Huxley  shows  us  the  logical  outcome  of  the  theory,  when  he  declares  that  a 


MATERIALISTIC    SKEPTICISM.  37 

spontaneous  act  is  an  absurdity,  since  it  is  an  effect  without  a  cause.  But 
mark  the  result.  If  the  human  will  be  not  a  cause,  then  it  belongs  in  the 
category  of  things  determined  wholly  from  without.  Human  responsibility 
ceases,  and  with  this  all  just  foundation  for  law  and  morality.  Conscience 
is  at  once  annihilated,  for  if  conscience  be  a  modification  of  matter,  then  it 
is  mechanical,  not  moral,  and  this  is  the  same  as  to  say  that  it  does  not  exist. 
What  yet  remains  of  remorse  and  apprehension  in  the  mind  of  the  trans- 
gressor is  but  a  subjective  delusion,  having  no  objective  rule  in  the  universe 
of  things  to  justify  it,  and  no  future  account  to  render  its  decisions  worthy 
of  the  slightest  regard.  Man  is  what  his  nature  and  his  circumstances  make 
him.  He  may  resolve  and  pray  as  he  will,  but  the  forces  of  the  universe  are 
persistent  and  they  overmaster  him.  We  may  look  with  sympathy  upon 
men  laden  with  tendencies  to  evil,  but  there  is  no  power  to  recreate  and  save 
—  that  is,  no  power  except  the  distant  and  slow- working  forces  of  inheritance, 
climate,  and  social  condition.  Why  labor  for  the  welfare  of  creatures  of 
clay,  over  whose  perished  bodies  "ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust"  will  soon 
be  said,  but  all  hope  of  resurrection  be  wanting  ?  James  Martineau,  in  the 
autobiographical  preface  to  his  "  Types  of  Ethical  Theory,"  expresses  not 
only  his  own  experience  but  the  experience  of  many  others,  when  he  says  : 
"  It  was  the  irresistible  pleading  of  the  moral  consciousness  which  first  drove 
me  to  rebel  against  the  limits  of  the  merely  scientific  conception.  It  became 
incredible  to  me  that  nothing  was  possible  except  the  actual.  *  *  *  Is 
there  then  no  ought  to  be,  other  than  what  is  f" 

Materialism  gives  up  and  must  give  up  the  immortality  of  the  soul  as  an 
egoistic  reverie,  since  the  mind  must  die  with  the  body  whose  movements 
constitute  it.  It  is  said  of  Robert  Hall,  that  he  buried  his  materialism  in  his 
father's  grave.  As  he  looked  into  the  gulf  that  was  just  about  to  swallow  up 
forever  all  that  was  left  to  him  of  that  wise  mind  and  tender  father's  heart, 
the  son  shrank  back.  He  felt  that  the  tomb  was  too  narrow  to  contain  so 
much.  He  felt  that  whatever  might  become  of  the  body,  the  soul  was  fash- 
ioned in  a  different  mould  and  must  live  on  forever.  But  the  highest  hope 
of  the  materialist,  as  he  lays  mother  or  child  in  the  dust,  is  that  the  body 
may  manure  the  soil  and  pass  through  endless  changes  into  other  forms  of 
conscious  or  unconscious  life.  And  we  little  realize  how  much  of  this  pagan- 
ism is  abroad  to-day.  The  same  hopeless  spirit  of  Epicurean  fatalism  which 
breathed  through  all  the  later  age  of  imperial  and  decadent  Rome  is  breath- 
ing in  much  of  our  literature  to-day.  It  finds  its  fit  expression  in  the  maxim 
of  Feuerbach  :  "  Man  1st  was  er  ^  —  Man  is  what  he  eats."  Expressed 
or  unexpressed,  visible  or  invisible,  it  is  the  subtle  spirit  of  materialism, 
which  declares  the  human  body  to  be  only  a  weedy  outgrowth  of  the  primeval 
slime,  the  soul  to  be  only  a  congeries  of  highly  developed  and  subtly  con- 
nected atoms,  and  immortality  to  be  only  the  eternal  procession  of  the  body's 
disintegrated  elements  around  the  great  circle  of  chemical  change.  Such  a 
view  as  this  inevitably  reduces  philosophy  to  physiology,  ethics  to  mechan- 
ics, and  the  law  of  God  to  a  bill  of  fare. 

Does  it  need  to  be  said  that,  logically,  this  is  Atheism  also  ?  Can  there  be 
no  such  thing  as  spontaneity?  Then  there  is  no  freedom  for  God  any  more 
than  for  man.  Must  we  deny  the  existence  of  everything  which  we  cannot 
weigh  in  scales  and  handle  with  the  forceps  ?  Then  we  must  not  only  grant 
to  the  materialist  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  mind,  because,  forsooth,  the 


38  MATERIALISTIC    SKEPTICISM. 

anatomist  cannot  lay  it  bare  to  sight  with  his  cerebral  dissecting-knife  —  we 
must  also  grant  that  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  God,  because,  forsooth, 
the  astronomer  cannot  see  God  through  his  telescope.  May  we  not  say  of 
materialism,  as  a  final  and  conclusive  indictment,  that  the  facts  of  our  religious 
nature  disprove  it?  We  have  in  us  and  with  us,  as  our  inmost  possession, 
the  knowledge  of  God.  Try  to  escape  it  as  we  may,  it  underlies  all  our 
reasoning  and  conditions  all  our  life.  In  times  of  awakened  conscience, 
when  the  tempest  rages,  or  death  draws  nigh,  this  inward  witness  to  God's 
existence  and  moral  character  stands  out  like  the  handwriting  of  fire  on 
Belshazzar's  palace- walls.  To  this  God  our  very  nature  compels  us,  in  spite 
of  ourselves,  to  look,  as  the  proper  rule  and  end  of  life,  the  true  rest  and 
portion  and  reward  of  a  human  soul.  Materialism,  by  depriving  us  of  God, 
would  deprive  us  of  all  that  can  make  the  present  tolerable,  or  the  future 
other  than  an  object  of  terror.  If  all  things  in  the  universe  be  only  phenom- 
ena of  matter,  then  not  only  is  there  no  spirit  in  man,  but  the  idea  of  a 
supreme  Spirit  in  the  universe  is  the  wildest  of  imaginations.  All  Avorship 
or  upward  looking  of  the  soul  is  foreclosed  forever.  The  heavens  are  deaf 
to  human  entreaty.  In  man's  sin  and  sorrow  there  is  no  eye  to  pity  and  no 
arm  to  save.  The  highest  wisdom  is  to  live  upon  the  maxim,  "Let  us  eat 
and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die." 

"  I  trust  I  have  not  wasted  breath  : 
I  think  we  are  not  wholly  bruin, 
Magnetic  mockeries ;  not  in  vain, 
Like  Paul  with  beasts,  I  fought  with  Death  ; 

"  Not  only  cunning  casts  in  clay : 

Let  Science  prove  we  are,  and  then 
What  matters  Science  unto  men, 
At  least  to  me?    I  would  not  stay." 

Thus  we  see  how  a  whole  system  of  thought,  originating  in  a  desire  after 
scientific  unity,  becomes  dogmatic  and  thoroughly  unscientific,  by  attempt- 
ing to  refer  two  classes  of  phenomena  to  the  same  ground,  when  it  cannot 
logically  resolve  one  into  the  other.  To  honor  matter  by  denying  mind  is 
to  falsify  the  facts.  To  elevate  God's  ordinance  of  second  causes  into  the 
chief  place,  and  make  them  play  the  part  of  the  Great  First  Cause,  is  logi- 
cally suicide,  since  in  denying  the  fundamental  and  superior  fact  of  spiritual 
existence  man  logically  denies  his  own  existence,  and  opens  the  way  to 
utter  skepticism. 

And  yet  the  logical  refutation  of  materialism  is  not  the  only  one,  nor  the 
most  practical.  A  better  refutation  is  the  sense  of  sin  in  the  soul,  inexplic- 
able except  there  be  freedom  and  God.  A  better  still  is  the  person  of 
Christ,  inexplicable  except  it  be  a  new  breaking  in  upon  the  sinful  history 
of  the  world  by  the  power  and  grace  of  Him  who  first  created  it.  He  who 
well  ponders  his  own  nature  and  his  own  lack  of  harmony  with  the  moral 
law  revealed  in  conscience,  will  see  depths  in  his  own  being  which  a  material 
theory  of  its  origin  can  never  explain,  and  which  only  Christ,  the  Son  of 
God,  the  all-sufficient  Saviour,  can  ever  fill  with  light  and  peace.  To  Christ 
then  we  commend  the  candid  inquirer.  Let  him  go  to  Christ,  to  Christ  him- 
self, and  be  "  taught  in  him,  even  as  truth  is  in  Jesus. "  He  who  is  ' '  able  to 
save  even  unto  the  uttermost,"  will  save  him,  even  from  these  uttermost 
depths  of  materialistic  skepticism. 


IV. 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EVOLUTION.' 


I  count  it  an  honor  to  speak  to  these  hearers  and  in  this  place.  Those 
-whom  I  immediately  address  are  preparing  to  influence  their  time  by  the 
force  of  ideas.  The  place  is  hospitable  to  ideas, — the  world's  thought, 
whether  new  or  old,  finds  a  focus  here.  Protectionists  did  wisely  in  their 
generation  when  they  sought  to  stem  the  rising  tide  of  free  trade  by  securing 
the  colleges.  But  it  is  not  so  much  for  its  services  to  science  that  I  value 
the  University.  It  is  because  every  University  is  a  well-spring  of  philosophy 
—  a  teacher  of  those  fundamental  principles  which  underlie  all  science,  as 
well  as  all  literature,  jurisprudence,  morals  and  civilization.  Therefore,  I 
feel  the  responsibility  as  well  as  the  honor  of  speaking  here.  And  I  can 
best  discharge  this  responsibility,  as  it  seems  to  me,  by  directing  your 
attention  to  a  new  philosophy,  which  makes  imposing  claims  upon  our 
allegiance,  which  is  the  current  sensation  of  the  decade,  and  which,  if 
accepted,  must  work  great  ultimate  changes,  whether  for  good  or  evil, 
in  our  methods  of  thought  and  life.  I  propose  to  you  a  consideration  of 
what,  in  America,  has  been  called  the  Cosmic  Philosophy,  or  what  is  more 
generally  known  as  the  Philosophy  of  Evolution. 

I  speak  of  this  philosophy  as  the  intellectual  sensation  of  the  decade,  for 
not  ten  years  have  passed  since  it  made  its  way  to  the  front.  It  is  not  wise 
to  be  moved  from  our  critical  attitude  by  the  flourish  of  its  trumpets  and 
the  seeming  weight  of  its  onset.  The  student  of  philosophy  knows  that 
each  decade  has  its  new  pretender  to  the  throne  of  thought.  "Our  little 
systems  have  their  day.  They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be."  Old  men 
among  us  look  back  to  the  time  when  the  reigning  philosophy  was  that  of 
Locke  and  Hume.  The  men  of  middle-age  before  me  remember  how  that 
philosophy  was  attacked  and  seemingly  overthrown  by  the  transcendental 
idealism  of  Germany,  and  how  this  last  became,  in  turn,  the  bugbear  of 
orthodox  thinkers.  We  of  a  younger  sort  know  well  that  the  ghost  of 
transcendentalism  has  been  laid  these  many  years.  In  its  place  we  have 
seen  rise  upon  the  scene  the  portentous  form  of  French  positivism  with  its 
contemptuous  denial  of  causation,  and  beyond  the  Bhine  the  accompanying 
gross  materialism  of  Biichner,  who,  like  a  revived  Lucretius,  deifies  blind 
atoms.  And  now  that  positivism  has  lost  its  prestige  and  power,  it  is  only 
natural  that  the  generation  just  entering  upon  active  life  should  see  still 
another  claimant  to  the  honors  of  the  field.  It  is  the  scheme  which  we 
examine  to-night.  At  first  glance  the  new  system  seems  better  armed  and 


*An  address  delivered  before  the  Literary  Societies  of  Colby  University,  Tuesday 
«'ven ing,  July  23,1878. 

39 


40  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF   EVOLUTION. 

equipped  than  any  of  those  which  it  has  superseded.  But  closer  inspection 
reveals  the  fact  that  this  equipment  is  largely  made  up  of  spoils  taken  from 
these  very  predecessors.  In  truth,  the  new  philosophy  is  an  attempt  to 
combine  the  plausible  elements  of  all  the  four  systems  that  have  gone  before  ; 
or,  in  other  words,  to  rehabilitate  the  sensational  method  of  Locke  and 
Hume  in  certain  discarded  robes  of  the  later  idealism,  while  positivism 
furnishes  the  facts  and  materialism  the  spirit  of  the  whole. 

Yet  we  would  not  willingly  underrate  our  opponent.  Under  the  con- 
structive hand  of  Herbert  Spencer,  this  philosophy  has  a  sweep  that  com- 
prehends the  universe.  Eesources  of  advanced  physical  science,  such  as 
Locke  and  Hume  never  knew,  are  marshaled  in  its  defense.  And  to  these 
Mr.  Spencer  adds  a  faculty  of  popular  exposition  such  as  no  preceding 
thinker  of  his  ability  has  possessed.  When  we  grant  that  he  has  brought 
out  into  strong  relief,  though  he  has  not  discovered,  a  certain  truth  of 
development  too  much  ignored  before,  we  allow  to  his  system  certain  notable 
elements  of  power.  But  all  this  is  so  much  the  worse  if  the  system,  in  its 
essential  features,  is  false.  This  we  desire  to  show,  both  as  respects  the 
assumptions  upon  which  it  proceeds,  and  as  respects  the  method  in  which 
its  principles  are  applied. 

As  Mr.  Jevons  has  well  shown,  the  Baconian  method  had  its  origin,  not 
with  Francis  Bacon,  Lord  Verulam,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  but  with  Roger 
Bacon,  friar  and  philosopher,  in  the  thirteenth.  This  whole  method  was 
a  recoil  from  that  of  the  Greek  philosophers  which  the  scholastics  had 
perpetuated.  The  Greek  philosophers  had  assumed  certain  causes  and  then 
had  inferred  what  the  effects  must  be.  Give  them  fire  or  air  or  water,  and 
out  of  them  they  would  construct  the  existing  universe.  The  Baconian 
philosophy  cast  contempt  upon  all  this  and  taught  the  world  that  the  only 
true  method  of  science  was  to  proceed,  not  from  causes  to  effects,  but  from 
effects  to  causes.  First  facts,  then  explanations  ;  observation  and  induction, 
the  instruments  of  knowledge ;  progress  ever  from  the  known  to  the  unknown 
— these  were  its  fundamental  principles ;  and  if  human  knowledge  since 
that  day  has  made  progress  such  as  the  ancients  never  dreamed  of,  it  has 
been  because  modern  investigators  have  followed  these  principles  in  their 
labors.  Now,  the  first  count  in  our  indictment  of  the  philosophy  of  Evolu- 
tion is  this,  that  it  ignores  this  settled  organon  of  investigation  and  attempts 
to  deduce  the  existing  universe  by  purely  necessary  laws  from  an  assumed 
original  somewhat,  the  existence  and  nature  of  which  is  undemonstrated  and 
indemonstrable.  That  the  deductive  element,  rather  than  the  inductive,  is 
the  determining  characteristic  of  the  scheme  is  an  offense  against  modern 
science,  and  raises  a  presumption  against  it  at  the  start.  When  Mr.  Spencer 
tells  us  that  if  we  will  grant  him  the  single  indubitable  truth  of  the  persist- 
ence of  force,  he  will  show  us  how  nebulae  and  suns  and  planets  and  rocks 
and  plants  and  brutes  and  men  and  histories  and  civilizations  and  literatures 
and  philosophies  have  been  necessarily  evolved,  we  seem  to  be  hearing 
Anaximander  over  again  as  he  tells  us  that  all  things  come  from  infinity  — 
a  principle  universally  diffused  and  devoid  of  all  qualities  which  can  be 
described  or  known,  and  which  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  equivalent  to 
nothing,  endowed  with  the  power  of  generation,  and  we  turn  with  relief  to 
the  words  of  Tait,  a  greater  scientific  authority  than  Spencer,  when  he  says  :. 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    EVOLUTION.  41 

"  No  a  priori  reasoning  can  conduct  us  demonstrably  to  a  single  physical 
truth." 

I  must  not  be  understood  as  objecting  to  the  Cosmic  Philosophy  so  called 
simply  upon  the  ground  that  it  makes  use  of  an  a  priori  principle,  for  all 
systems  whatever  are  obliged  to  take  for  granted  certain  a  priori  principles  ; 
indeed,  without  assuming  the  existence  of  space  and  time,  the  necessity  of 
a  cause  for  every  change,  and  the  validity  of  the  common  laws  of  thought, 
we  could  not  observe  or  reason  at  all.  What  I  have  thus  far  objected  to  is 
this,  that  the  Cosmic  Philosophy,  instead  of  using  its  abstract  fundamental 
principle  as  purely  regulative,  commits  the  scientific  enormity  of  deriving 
the  whole  concrete  universe  therefrom.  This  reasoning  from  the  abstract 
to  the  concrete,  instead  of  depending  for  knowledge  of  the  concrete  upon 
observation  and  induction,  constitutes  it  a  purely  a  priori  scheme  of  the 
most  vicious  kind.  Mr.  Spencer's  method  would  be  a  wrong  one  and  its 
results  delusive,  even  if  the  fundamental  principle  from  which  he  deduces 
his  scheme  were  true.  But  I  urge  against  it  a  still  more  important  objec- 
tion :  this  fundamental  principle  is  not  simply  undemonstrated  and  inde- 
monstrable ;  it  is  false  —  false  by  defect.  Add  what  is  necessary  to  make  it 
true,  and  no  such  system  of  evolution  can  be  based  upon  it.  We  are  asked 
to  postulate  at  the  beginning  simple  force,  abstract  and  blind,  and  the 
necessity  of  its  persistence.  Now  we  grant  the  mental  necessity  that  compels 
this  assumption,  provided  only  we  be  allowed  to  state  the  full  content  of 
our  belief.  That  belief,  fully  expressed,  is  nothing  less  than  this  :  There 
is  an  endlessly  persistent  will-force.  For  we  know  nothing  of  force  at  all, 
except  through,  and  upon  occasion  of,  the  exercise  of  our  own  wills.  In 
the  outward  world  our  senses  perceive  change,  but  they  do  not  perceive 
power.  I  might  look  forever  upon  the  sweep  of  the  tempest  and  the  rolling 
waves  of  the  ocean  without  inferring  that  the  tempest  produced  the  waves, 
if  it  were  not  that  I  have  within  me  the  experience  of  effort  and  of  effect 
produced  by  effort.  I  will  to  raise  my  arm  and  strike  a  blow.  In  that 
willing  there  is  direct  consciousness  of  force  and  its  outgoing.  If  my  arm 
is  in  a  normal  condition,  the  arm  is  lifted  and  the  external  effect  is  produced 
—  the  hammer  rings  on  the  anvil ;  but  the  stroke  of  the  hammer  is  not  force, 
and  the  muscular  tension  of  the  arm  is  not  force  ;  these  are  but  indications 
and  effects  of  force  ;  the  anvil  may  fail  to  be  struck,  and  the  arm  from 
sudden  paralysis  may  fail  to  strike,  but  force  may  still  exist  and  be  con- 
sciously exerted  back  of  all  these,  though  it  be  exerted  in  vain.  In  short, 
we  know  force,  not  as  something  perceived  by  the  senses,  but  as  something 
intuitively  cognized  by  the  reason.  We  know  it  as  the  inseparable  correlate 
of  effort ;  as  always  implying  will ;  in  the  very  conception  of  force  there 
lies,  latent  if  not  expressed,  the  idea  of  conative  and  active  mind.  We  feel 
compelled,  with  Mr.  Spencer,  to  postulate  force  as  behind  and  before  all 
things  ;  but  then  it  is  force  that  has  its  origin  in  will ;  and  if  it  be  an  endless, 
universal  and  infinite  force,  then  a  force  proceeding  from  an  endless,  uni- 
versal and  infinite  mind.  Force  cannot  be  denned  or  conceived  except  in 
terms  of  will ;  and  if,  as  Mr.  Spencer  declares,  our  conviction  of  the  persist- 
ence of  force  is  "deeper  than  demonstration,  deeper  even  than  definite 
cognition,  deep  as  the  very  nature  of  mind,"  then  we  demand  that  the 
fundamental  principle  of  his  philosophy,  false  by  defect  hitherto,  be  enlarged 


42  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    EVOLUTION. 

to  take  iu  the  full  compass  of  this  intuitive  deliverance  of  reason,  and  that 
he  build  his  system  henceforth,  if  he  can,  upon  the  broader  truth  that,  as 
the  ultimate  basis  and  explanation  of  all  things,  there  exists  and  persists  an 
infinite  source  of  energy  whose  nature  is  conscious  intelligence  and  will. 

The  central  reason  why  he  truncates  this  most  fundamental  of  our  knowl- 
edges until  it  becomes  a  torso  without  sign  of  life  or  reason  will  very  soon 
-appear.  Let  us  at  present  notice  the  objection  which  he  urges  against 
regarding  force  as  always  implying  an  exercise  of  will.  It  is  simply  this, 
that  iipon  this  view  we  must  consider  the  muscles  of  the  arm  not  only,  but 
all  external  things  in  nature,  as  having  each  its  separate  consciousness.  When 
you  lift  a  chair  from  the  floor,  he  would  say,  you  are  bound  upon  your  theory 
to  maintain  that  the  chair  is  as  conscious  of  the  force  of  gravitation  which 
draws  it  down,  as  your  arm  is  conscious  of  the  nervous  tension  which  holds 
it  up.  Not  so,  we  say.  Both  the  chair  and  the  arm  are  middle  terms,  and 
neither  are  properly  conscious.  Both  are  the  instruments  of  force.  The 
arm  communicates  and  gives  effect  to  a  force  which  does  not  originate  in  the 
arm,  and  of  which  the  arm  is  not  itself  conscious.  It  is  the  ego,  the  mind, 
that  puts  forth  the  force,  and  is  conscious  of  the  strain.  So  the  chair  com- 
municates and  gives  effect  to  a  force  which  does  not  originate  in  the  chair, 
and  of  which  the  chair  is  not  conscious.  But  the  mind  and  will,  of  which 
gravitation  is  the  uniform  expression,  may  be  supposed  to  be  conscious  of 
«ach  particular  instance  of  its  application,  unless  indeed  we  be  anthropo- 
morphic enough  to  fancy  an  infinite  mind  as  not  sufficiently  capacious  to 
embrace  such  details  without  perplexity,  and  an  infinite  will  as  not  sufficiently 
powerful  to  make  such  multiplied  efforts  without  weariness. 

But  the  moment  we  perceive  clearly  that  force  is  simply  a  manifestation 
of  will,  and  has  will  for  its  inseparable  correlate,  we  see  at  once  that  the 
persistence  of  force  means  the  persistence  of  will.  And  will  is  necessarily 
free.  Here  then  is  an  incalculable  element,  at  the  start,  which  threatens 
ruin  to  any  theory  of  the  universe  that  would  explain  it  as  a  necessary  devel- 
opment of  blind  forces  existing  from  the  beginning.  We  see  at  once  how 
important  it  is  for  Mr.  Spencer  to  exclude  this  will  from  his  system.  Admit 
it,  and  what  trouble  may  it  not  work — to  Mr.  Spencer  !  God  is  not  so  easily 
harnessed,  and  will  not  draw  so  steadily  on  the  evolution-track,  as  will  these 
perfectly  calculable  forces.  But  how  is  it  that  force  has  become  forces  ?  A 
moment  ago  we  had  the  persistence  of 'force,  and  the  peculiarity  of  this 
force  was  that  it  was  abstract,  indefinite,  intangible.  Suddenly  it  has  become 
forces,  definite  forces  of  attraction,  and  very  inconsistently  as  it  would  seem, 
of  repulsion  also,  and  these  wonderfully  adapted  to  each  other  and  to  the 
production  of  matter  and  motion  with  the  whole  universe  of  things  that 
result  from  them.  Ah,  there  is  but  one  explanation  of  it !  If  forces  had 
been  talked  of  at  the  beginning,  it  would  have  been  too  plainly  seen  that 
they  do  not  necessarily  persist.  Only  the  absolute  force  —  which  we  have 
seen  to  be  identical  with,  or  correlative  to,  infinite  mind  and  will  —  only  this 
absolute  force  persists  of  necessity,  while  what  we  call  forces  are  mere  man- 
ifestations of  this  self-existent  force,  and  may  persist  or  not  as  the  will  iu 
which  they  have  their  origin  may  direct.  So  Mr.  Spencer  gets  the  advan- 
tage, to  his  theory,  of  investing  blind  forces  with  the  unchangeableness  of 
the  God  whom  they  manifest,  while  yet  the  creative  will  and  designing  wis- 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF   EVOLUTION.  43 

<lom  of  God  are  set  aside.  There  is  a  certain  truth,  indeed,  in  the  doctrine 
that  forces  persist ;  but  then  it  is  a  mere  relative  truth  of  induction,  not  an 
absolute  truth  of  philosophy.  How  far  it  is  true  is  to  be  determined,  not 
from  our  inner  consciousness,  but  from  observation  and  testimony.  In  all 
ordinary  cases,  and  for  all  common  purposes  of  life,  the  forces  of  nature  are 
unchangeable.  But  no  law  of  necessity  ordains  their  uniformity.  The  will 
which  they  manifest  to-day  may  abolish  them  to-morrow.  It  is  only  the 
infinite  will  which  they  manifest  that  necessarily  persists.  And  that  per- 
sists not  necessarily  in  action  external  to  itself.  It  might  conceivably  exist 
for  whole  eternities  absorbed  in  thought  and  activity  of  which  there  should 
be  no  outward  manifestation  whatever.  Infinite  will  need  not  manifest  its 
whole  power.  God  can  all  that  he  will,  but  he  will  not  all  that  he  can, —  else 
God  is  the  slave  of  his  own  omnipotence.  He  is  a  great  God,  and  in  that 
limitless  mind  and  unfettered  will  which  constitute  the  only  necessarily  per- 
sisting force,  there  are  fortunately  "some  things  that  are  not  dreamed  of  in 
Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy. 

Allowing,  however,  that  force  can  exist,  and  can  be  differentiated  into 
forces  without  implying  will  or  design,  we  have  still  to  see  whether  matter 
and  motion  can  be  derived  from  mere  force.  We  maintain  that  this  cannot 
be  done  without  denying  that  matter  is  matter  and  that  motion  is  motion. 
All  we  know  of  matter  in  the  last  analysis,  it  is  said,  is  that  it  resists  or  that 
it  presses.  Boscovitch  concluded  that  the  only  proper  conception  of  matter 
was  that  which  regarded  it  as  consisting  of  mere  centres  of  force.  But  how 
can  there  be  pressure  or  resistance  where  there  is  nothing  that  presses  or 
resists,  and  where  there  is  nothing  that  is  pressed  or  resisted  ?  We  see 
clearly  that,  unless  we  accept  the  purely  idealistic  hypothesis  that  nothing 
really  exists  but  sensations  and  impressions,  we  must  affirm  that  over  against 
the  mind  that  has  the  sensations  and  impressions  there  exists  an  external 
matter  that  produces  them.  Impressions  without  something  that  impresses 
.and  something  that  is  impressed,  sensations  without  something  that  has  sen- 
sation and  something  that  causes  sensations,  are  figments  of  the  imagina- 
tion. In  reality,  we  know  the  external  thing  perceived,  and  the  conscious 
f-tjn  that  perceives,  in  the  same  concrete  act  in  which  we  cognize  the  internal 
fact  of  perception.  We  know  the  existence  of  external  matter  with  the  same 
certainty  as  we  know  our  own  existence.  But  a  philosophy  which  resolves 
matter  into  mere  force  must  make  it  a  purely  subjective  thing,  internal  and 
not  external  to  the  mind.  It  must  believe  in  impressions  without  anything 
to  make  them,  and  resistance  without  anything  that  resists,  and  this  is  the 
principle  of  absolute  idealism.  And  this  pitfall  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy 
cannot  escape,  except  by  being  utterly  inconsistent  with  itself  and  admitting 
a  principle  of  realism  which  will  destroy  it.  No,  let  us  say  it  out  so  plainly 
that  none  can  mistake, —  matter  is  matter,  and  not  the  mere  feeling  of  it, 
and  if  it  be  something  really  external  to  the  mind,  then  neither  force  nor 
forces  can  account  for  it,  and  much  less  produce  it.  And  yet  without  matter 
force  has  nothing  to  work  with,  and  is  unavailable  for  the  purposes  of  evo- 
lution. Is  it  not  easy  to  see  that  a  Creator  is  required,  before  even  Mr. 
Spencer's  forces  can  build  up  a  universe  ?  When  we  perceive  with  Professor 
Oook,  of  Cambridge,  that  the  elements,  oxygen,  hydrogen,  carbon,  are 
wonderfully  adapted  to  each  other  in  their  original  constitution,  and  with 


44  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   EVOLUTION. 

Professor  Clerk  Maxwell,  of  England,  that  the  indivisible  atoms  in  their 
absolute  uniformity  bear  all  the  marks  of  being  "manufactured  articles, 'f 
can  we  not  say  that  the  theory  of  Creation  is  an  infinitely  simpler  and  more 
credible  one  than  that  of  the  chance  development  of  matter  from  the  action 
of  loose  forces  in  the  empty  void  ?  But  then,  if  matter  was  created,  it  may 
be  destroyed,  and  what  then  will  become  of  the  great  principle  of  the  inde- 
structibility of  matter  which  forms  so  natural  a  corollary  to  the  persistence 
of  force  ?  Ah,  that  is  Mr.  Spencer's  quandary,  and  not  ours  !  To  us  who 
believe  in  creation,  the  indestructibility  of  matter  is  no  a  priori  and  neces- 
sary truth,  as  it  seems  to  Mr.  Spencer,  but  only  a  relative  truth,  the  limits 
of  which  are  to  be  determined  by  observation  and  experience.  The  same 
God  who  creates  can  also  destroy. 

So  with  motion.  This,  too,  is  called  a  mere  manifestation  of  force.  But 
can  we  be  sure  that,  even  with  force  and  matter  on  hand  at  the  outset, 
continuous  motion  will  necessarily  follow  ?  What  is  meant  by  inertia  ?  IH 
it  not  this,  that  matter  is  not  self -moving  ?  Surely  one  portion  of  matter 
cannot  move  another  portion  without  a  previous  adjustment  of  the  one 
portion  to  the  other.  And  so  to  the  magnificent  scheme  of  development 
suggested  by  Laplace — development  of  the  universe  from  a  primeval  tenuous 
mist  of  atoms,  drawing  together,  and  so  revolving,  and  so  heating,  and  so 
intensifying  and  liberating  its  latent  forces  until  chaos  turns  to  cosmos —  we 
only  reply  that  force  alone  cannot  explain  motion.  Force  may  be  only 
latent,  or  it  may  draw  all  matter  to  a  common  centre  of  blackness  and  death, 
or  it  may  involve  matter  in  boundless  waste  and  confusion.  If  the  universe 
consisted  of  a  single  atom,  however  richly  endowed  with  force,  it  would 
never  move  at  all.  As  matter  is  inexplicable  without  creation,  so  motion 
is  inexplicable  without  adjustment.  For  the  operation  of  force  there  is 
requisite,  plurality  of  atoms  and  relation  between  them.  And  this  relation 
can  be  constituted  only  by  mind ;  above  all,  motion  that  shall  evolve 
anything  is  impossible  without  coordinating  intelligence.  That  nebulous 
matter  moved  at  all,  and  especially  that  it  moved  so  as  to  produce,  even 
after  vast  cycles  of  time,  the  order  and  beauty  of  suns  and  stars  with  their 
measured  orbits  and  their  mutual  influences,  this  has  its  root  in  purpose 
and  plan,  not  in  mere  force  without  prescience  or  wisdom.  No  cosmos  is 
possible  without  a  plan,  and  while  we  should  have  only  praise  for  Mr. 
Spencer  in  this  portion  of  his  researches,  if  he  were  setting  forth  the  method 
of  divine  working,  we  can  feel  only  reprobation  for  a  scheme  which  makes 
so  large  a  place  for  matter  and  motion,  but  which  has  no  place  for  mind. 
I/ v  Thus  far  we  have  criticised  only  Mr.  Spencer's  general  method  and  the 

particular  a  priori  principles  upon  which  his  philosophy  is  founded.  To 
follow  him  minutely  in  the  practical  application  of  these  principles  would 
be  an  almost  endless  task.  Yet  every  system  must  be  finally  tested  by  its 
applications.  Does  it  actually  explain  the  facts  ?  We  maintain  that  Mr. 
Spencer's  scheme  not  only  does  not  account  for  the  most  critical  and  impor- 
tant of  these  facts,  but  is  compelled  either  to  ignore  them  or  virtually  to 
deny  them.  I  shall  try  to  show  its  defects  in  three  important  features  :  1st., 
as  an  explanation  of  the  origin  of  life  and  mind  ;  2dly,  as  a  theory  of  human 
knowledge  with  regard  to  truth  and  God  ;  and  3rdly,  as  a  basis  for  scientific 
and  practical  morality. 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    EVOLUTION.  45 

1.  You  are  aware  that  the  Mosaic  record  recognizes  both  creation  and 
-cosmogony.  It  recognizes  the  present  order  of  things  as  the  result,  not 
simply  of  an  originating  fiat  of  God,  but  also  of  subsequent  arrangement 
and  development.  A  fashioning  of  inorganic  materials  subsequently  to  their 
creation  is  described,  and  also  a  use  of  these  materials  in  providing  the  con- 
ditions of  organized  existence.  Life  is  depicted  as  reproducing  itself,  after 
its  introduction,  according  to  its  own  laws  and  by  virtue  of  its  own  inner 
energy.  The  earth  brings  forth  and  the  waters  swarm ;  the  tree  has  seed 
in  itself  and  the  animal  creation  is  self-multiplying.  But  although  this 
principle  of  development  is  recognized  in  Genesis,  as  Origen  and  Augustine 
and  Anselm  perceived  many  centuries  ago,  yet  it  has  not  been  allowed  its 
full  weight  by  the  interpreters  of  Scripture.  They  have  been  so  impressed 
with  the  unique  declarations  of  God's  absolute  Creatorship  that  they  have 
not  sufficiently  attended  to  the  accompanying  declarations  of  subsequent 
evolution  according  to  natural  law.  It  is  this  last  principle  which  Mr. 
Spencer  has  made  the  characteristic  of  his  system  ;  but  the  principle  is  not 
only  as  old  as  the  church-fathers, — it  is  as  old  as  Moses.  We  thank  him 
for  emphasizing  a  truth  too  much  neglected.  But  we  charge  him  with 
narrowness  in  excluding  from  his  scheme  the  greater  truth  that  in  the 
beginning  God  created  the  heaven  and  the  earth.  His  philosophy  demands 
this  truth  for  its  supplement  and  explanation,  but,  since  it  is  a  truth  which 
could  come  only  from  revelation,  he  will  none  of  it.  How  is  it  that  the 
Hebrews  alone  of  all  nations  had  the  idea  of  absolute  creation  ?  We  find 
no  trace  of  it  in  classic  times.  With  the  heathen,  there  were  only  eternal 
processes  of  birth  or  growth  from  something  pre-existing,  — the  question  as 
to  origination  none  attempted  to  answer.  Science  could  never  have  informed 
the  Hebrews,  for  science  was  not.  Physical  science  can  observe  changes, 
but  it  knows  nothing  of  origins.  As  Sir  Charles  Lyell  has  well  said  : 
"Geology  is  the  earth's  autobiography — but  no  autobiography  can  give 
account  of  the  birth  of  its  subject. "  But  what  science  cannot  give,  reve- 
lation did  give  to  that  least  scientific  nation  of  ancient  times.  They  knew 
of  God,  the  Creator  of  the  very  substance  of  the  universe.  They  knew  of 
development,  but  they  knew  also  of  an  originating  act  of  God  by  which  this 
development  was  prefaced,  and  of  successive  manifestations  of  divine  power 
by  which  this  development  was  supplemented. 

We  are  ourselves  evolutionists  then,  within  certain  limits,  and  we  accept 
a  large  portion  of  the  results  of  Mr.  Spencer's  work.  We  gratefully  appro- 
priate whatever  science  can  prove.  We  have  long  ceased  to  respect  the 
objection  of  Leibnitz  to  the  Newtonian  law  of  gravitation.  We  know  that 
gravitation  does  not  take  the  universe  out  of  the  hands  of  God,  but  only 
reveals  the  method  of  the  divine  working.  So,  the  day  is  past,  in  our 
judgment,  when  thoughtful  men  can  believe  that  there  was  a  creative  fiat  of 
-God  at  the  introduction  of  every  variety  of  vegetable  and  animal  life.  God 
may  work  by  means,  and  a  law  of  variation  and  of  natural  selection  may 
have  been  and  probably  was  the  method  in  which  his  great  design  in  the 
vast  majority  of  living  forms  was  carried  out.  But  what  we  claim  is  that 
no  law  of  mere  evolution  can  furnish  an  exhaustive  explanation  of  the  facts. 
There  are  outstanding  problems  which  this  philosophy  can  never  solve. 
The  origin  of  life  upon  the  earth— the  beginning  of  organic  existence,— 


46  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF    EVOLUTION". 

this  is  utterly  beyond  the  powers  of  Mr.  Spencer's  calculus.  For  Bastian's 
theory  of  spontaneous  generation  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  scientific  warrant, 
and  Sir  William  Thomson's  method  of  bringing  in  a  vegetable  germ  hidden 
in  the  cleft  of  some  meteorite  from  the  stellar  spaces  is  too  manifestly  a 
shoving-back  of  the  difficulty  to  some  other  sphere,  where  he  cannot  well 
be  followed,  to  merit  anything  better  than  ridicule.  Again,  when  we  come 
to  the  origin  of  mind  this  philosophy  is  utterly  at  fault.  It  can  show  that 
psychical  processes  are  always  accompanied  by  physical  processes,  and  that 
mind  and  body  are  mutually  dependent  in  the  present  state  of  being  ;  but  it 
has  never  made  an  approach  to  proving  that  consciousness  is  transformed 
physical  or  nervous  force,  or  that  thought  is  a  mode  of  motion.  Indeed,  the 
fact  which  Mr.  Bain  brings  out  so  clearly,  namely,  that  when  thought  begins 
there  is  not  the  slightest  break  in  the  line  of  physical  sequences,  and  that 
when  thought  ends  there  is  no  perceptible  addition  to  the  sum  of  the  phy- 
sical forces  of  the  universe,  is  conclusive  evidence  that  the  physical  and  the 
psychical  are  not  mutually  correlative.  But  if  mind  cannot  be  got  from  mat- 
ter, still  less  can  man  be  got  from  the  brute.  His  possession  of  general  ideas, 
of  self-consciousness,  of  a  moral  sense,  and  of  free  self-determination — in 
short,  his  personality  —  cannot  have  been  derived  by  any  process  of  devel- 
opment from  the  inferior  creatures.  Even  if  his  body  were  descended  from 
some  primitive  simian  ancestor,  his  soul  cannot  be  ;  for  the  differences  be- 
tween man's  soul  and  the  principle  of  intelligence  in  the  lower  animals,  as 
Wallace  has  shown,  are  differences,  not  of  degree,  but  of  kind,  so  that  there  is- 
no  explanation  of  his  lofty  and  complex  being  but  that  of  the  Scripture : 
* '  There  is  a  spirit  in  man,  and  the  inspiration  of  the  Almighty  giveth  him 
understanding."  But,  last  of  all,  there  rises  before  us  the  form  of  the  living 
Christ — a  new  beginning  in  human  history,  not  to  be  explained  from  His 
Jewish  antecedents  —  transforming  human  nature  because  He  transcends 
human  nature  —  and  as  we  gaze  upon  Him  we  are  compelled  to  confess  the 
new-creating  power  of  God.  These  three  —  organic  life,  the  human  soul, 
the  realized  ideal  of  manhood  in  Christ  —  these  three  owe  their  origin,  not 
to  processes  of  natural  law,  but  to  direct  interpositions  of  God.  Even  if  all 
the  remaining  history  of  the  planet,  from  primeval  fire-mist  down,  could  be 
explained  on  principles  of  development,  here  are  three  great  facts  which  can- 
not be  so  explained.  The  Philosophy  of  Evolution  meets  Life,  in  its  three 
typical  forms,  as  (Edipus  met  the  Sphynx  of  ancient  fable  ;  and  since  the 
Philosophy  of  Evolution  cannot  solve  the  riddle  of  Life,  it  must  confess  itself 
vanquished,  and  yield  itself  to  death  as  gracefully  as  it  may. 

So  we  add  to  the  truth  of  Creation,  which  ensures  God's  independence 
and  sovereignty,  the  other  truth  of  Superintendence,  which  is  inseparable 
from  his  omnipresence  and  control.  He  is  in  the  universe  while  he  is  above 
it, — immanent  while  he  is  transcendent, —  able  to  work  upon  occasion  by 
direct  exercise  of  will,  while  his  ordinary  method  of  working  is  through 
natural  law.  And,  without  taking  into  account  this  superintending  care  and 
wisdom,  none  of  the  great  assumed  facts  of  evolution  would  be  credible  or 
rational.  The  rotation  of  the  nebula,  inexplicable  except  by  some  impact 
from  without ;  the  heat-producing  condensation  of  the  diffused  mass,  in 
spite  of  operative  forces  of  repulsion ;  the  origin  of  the  varieties  which 
natural  selection  finds  ready  to  its  hand,  and  the  most  useful  of  which  it 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF   EVOLUTION.  47 

only  preserves  ;  the  beauty  of  insect- wings  and  of  diatom-markings,  so  much 
of  which  could  serve  no  purpose  of  utility,  because  unseen  by  any  eye  but 
God's  ;  the  progress  of  life  along  a  line  of  gradual  improvement,  instead  of 
along  a  line  of  gradual  deterioration,  such  as  Mr.  Darwin  declares  to  be 
equally  possible  upon  his  theory  ;  the  history  of  human  civilization,  and  the 
gradual  overbalancing  of  sensual  instincts  by  the  force  of  moral  ideas, —  all 
these  things  are  indications  that  something  more  than  force,  groping  blindly 
to  its  ends,  is  at  work  in  the  universe  ;  all  these  things  are  explicable  only 
upon  the  view  that  there  is  a  thinking  mind,  a  loving  heart,  an  ordaining 
will,  who  superintends  the  forces  of  matter  and  of  mind,  and  directs  them 
to  the  accomplishment  of  a  plan  of  far-reaching  wisdom.  But  such  a  view 
can  find  no  standing  ground  upon  the  premises  of  the  Cosmic  Philosophy. 
It  is  denounced  as  anthropomorphism  —  an  unmanageable  pseud-idea  that 
has  no  claim  to  respect.  We  see  no  reason  why  Mr.  Spencer  should  be  unwil- 
ling to  endow  his  all-originating  force  with  the  attributes  of  mind  and  will, 
unless  it  be  this,  that  he  knows  too  well  that,  if  he  puts  intelligence  and  free- 
dom in  at  the  beginning,  he  will  be  obliged  to  recognize  them  when  they 
come  out  at  the  end.  But  this  he  cannot  do,  and  adhere  to  his  system.  It 
is  essential  to  that  system  to  regard  the  universe  as  consisting  only  of  one 
substance,  of  which  matter  and  mind  are  equally  manifestations.  Now  we 
cannot  give  up  the  natural  dualism  of  our  ordinary  thinking,  without  calling 
mind  matter,  or  matter  mind.  Mr.  Spencer  chooses  the  former  alternative. 
To  him  mind  is  matter.  At  least  it  is  conceived  and  construed  under 
physical  analogies,  and  the  priority  of  thinking  and  willing  spirit  is  denied » 
And  so,  having  no  mind  at  the  beginning,  he  can  have  none  at  the  end. 
Mind  is  really  resolved  into  the  motion  of  material  particles,  and  man  is 
logically  reduced  to  an  automaton.  So  monism  convicts  itself  of  folly.  Its 
conceit  of  wisdom  ends  in  degrading  man,  instead  of  exalting  him.  This  is 
worse  than  the  fate  of  Ulysses'  companions,  for  Circe's  cup  only  turned  men 
into  swine, — this  philosophy  makes  them  machines. 

2.  What  estimate  shall  we  place  upon  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  of  knowledge  ? 
Can  the  human  mind  cognize  truth, —  can  we  reach  reality?  If  not,  philos- 
ophy would  seem  the  vainest  of  vain  pursuits.  But,  if  we  are  to  have  knowl- 
edge at  the  end,  we  must  have  knowledge  at  the  beginning.  The  child  whose 
study  of  the  alphabet  should  lead  him  to  the  conclusion  that  A  was  probably 
A,— but  then,  it  might  also  be  B,  or  it  might  be  nothing,— would  surely  have 
a  very  insecure  basis  for  his  future  attainments.  If  I  do  not  know  with 
absolute  certainty  that  I  think,  that  I  exist,  that  my  faculties  in  their  normal 
action  do  not  deceive  me,  how  can  I  possibly  know  any  of  the  other  things 
that  are  built  upon  these  foundations  ?  But  now  comes  Mr.  Spencer,  and 
assures  us  that  nothing  can  be  absolutely  known.  The  '  relativity  of  knowl- 
edge ' —  misleading  and  fatal  phrase,  borrowed  though  it  be  from  Mansel  and 
Hamilton  —  is  a  very  watchword  of  this  philosophy.  All  knowledge,  it  is 
said,  is  a  very  watchword  of  this  philosophy.  All  knowledge,  it  is  said,  is 
relative  to  the  knowing  agent ;  that  is,  what  we  know,  we  know,  not  as  it  is 
objectively,  but  only  as  it  is  related  to  our  own  senses  and  faculties.  The 
conclusion  is  drawn,  that  there  is  ever  a  subjective  element  in  what  we  call 
knowledge,  which  vitiates  it  and  robs  it  of  its  certainty.  Now  we  regard 
this  whole  method  of  representation  as  a  most  reprehensible  mystification 


48  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    EVOLUTION. 

of  the  truth.  We  grant  that  we  can  know  only  that  which  has  relation'to 
our  faculties.  But  this  is  only  to  say  that  we  know  only  that  which  we  come 
into  mental  contact  with,  that  is,  we  know  only  what  we  know.  But  we 
deny  that  what  we  come  into  mental  contact  with  is  known  by  us  as  other 
than  it  is.  So  far  as  it  is  known  at  all,  it  is  known  as  it  is.  In  other  words 
the  laws  of  our  knowing  are  not  merely  arbitrary  and  regulative,  but  corre- 
spond to  the  nature  of  things, — they  are  laws  of  thought  because  they  are 
laws  of  things.  Upon  the  opposite  principle,  man's  search  for  truth  is  the 
boy's  search  for  the  pot  of  gold  at  the  foot  of  the  rainbow.  Who  will  search 
for  truth,  if  there  be  no  truth  to  be  found  ?  Every  elaborate  philosophy 
like  Mr.  Spencer's  is  a  practical  refutation  of  the  relativity  of  knowledge. 
It  must  contradict  itself,  indeed,  to  maintain  a  moment's  existence.  As 
another  has  put  the  words  into  Mr.  Spencer's  mouth,  so  we  may  quote  them  : 
"All  knowledge  is,  not  absolute,  but  relative.  Our  knowledge  of  this  fact, 
however,  is  not  relative  but  absolute  !  "  Therefore  it  is  not  absolutely  true 
that  all  knowledge  is  relative,  and  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  of  knowledge  falls 
to  the  ground. 

Now  the  truths  which  we  must  know  as  the  conditions  and  foundations  of 
all  other  knowledge  are  of  the  class  called  a  priori.  Space,  time,  substance, 
cause,  design,  God  —  these  are  cognitions  incontrovertibly  prior  to  all  others. 
They  cannot  be  derived  from  experience,  because  without  them  no  experi- 
ence is  possible.  They  cannot  be  derived  from  reasoning,  because  all  reas- 
oning, inductive  as  well  as  deductive,  is  founded  upon  them.  And  yet  they 
are  not  things  perceived  by  the  senses  —  they  are  cognized  by  the  mind. 
Sense  occasions  them,  but  does  not  account  for  them.  Plato  thought  them 
reminiscences  of  things  apprehended  in  a  previous  state  of  being.  We  see 
that  they  are  part  of  the  original  furniture  of  the  reason,  which  experience 
draws  forth  from  latency  into  power.  The  mind  is  not  a  tabula  rasa  at  the 
start,  but  is  so  constituted  that  upon  occasion  of  cognizing  body  it  necessa- 
rily perceives  that  body  to  exist  in  space  ;  upon  occasion  of  cognizing  suc- 
cession, it  necessarily  perceives  that  succession  to  exist  in  time ;  upon 
occasion  of  cognizing  qualities,  it  necessarily  perceives  the  existence  of  sub- 
stance in  which  qualities  inhere  and  find  their  unity ;  upon  occasion  of 
cognizing  change,  it  necessarily  perceives  that  change  to  be  due  to  some 
producing  cause  or  power ;  upon  occasion  of  cognizing  order  and  useful 
collocation  pervading  a  system,  it  necessarily  perceives  this  to  be  the  result 
of  design  ;  upon  occasion  of  cognizing  finiteness,  dependence  and  obligation, 
it  necessarily  perceives  the  existence  of  an  infinite  and  independent  being, 
to  whom  obligation  is  due.  These  truths  do  not  come  to  us  as  the  result  of 
observation  or  inference,  because  both  observation  and  inference  presuppose 
them.  You  could  not  observe  the  dispositions  of  matter,  without  the  prior 
idea  of  space.  You  could  not  conduct  any  process  of  inference,  except  upon 
the  tacit  assumption  of  a  designing  intelligence  which  has  so  put  things  in 
relation  that  you  can  argue  from  one  to  the  other.  There  can  be  no  science 
of  the  merely  relative.  What  we  call  law  is  something  utterly  imperceptible 
to  the  senses.  Mere  successions  and  coexistences  give  no  relations  —  the 
senses  perceive  no  connecting  link  between  external  facts, —  and  science  is 
the  pursuit  of  relations,  not  the  cataloguing  of  facts.  And  a  philosophy  that 
ignores  or  denies  these  a  priori  cognitions  of  the  human  mind,  not  only 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    EVOLUTION.  49 

forfeits  its  claim  to  be  called  a  philosophy,  but  opens  the  way  for  a  thor- 
ough-going and  boundless  skepticism  ;  for  if  the  mind's  testimony  to  these 
most  fundamental  of  all  truths  be  cast  away  as  worthless,  then  no  other 
knowledge,  however  plausible  it  may  seem,  is  worthy  of  a  moment's  confi- 
dence. 

Mr.  Spencer's  treatment  of  this  most  important  matter  is  ingenious  in  the 
extreme.  Positivism,  with  its  denial  that  we  can  know  anything  but  the 
phenomena  of  sense,  is  too  bald  a  misrepresentation  of  the  facts  of  con- 
sciousness. Mr.  Lewes's  idea  that  the  mere  recording  of  facts  is  philosophy, 
and  the  only  philosophy,  does  not  satisfy  the  aspirations  of  so  great  a  thinker 
as  Mr.  Spencer.  We  cannot  deny  that  there  is  an  a  priori  element  in  our 
knowledge  which  the  acquisitions  of  no  single  lifetime  can  explain ;  each 
man  finds  himself  in  possession  of  ideas,  the  origin  of  which  he  cannot  trace 
to  his  own  observation  and  experience.  Now,  the  new  system  professes  to 
recognize  the  a  priori  element  in  all  human  knowledge,  while  yet  it  shows 
this  a  priori  element  to  have  been  derived  from 'the  sense-experiences  of 
past  generations.  It  is  transcendental  for  the  individual,  but  empirical  for 
the  race.  Well,  let  us  be  thankful  for  small  favors  from  Mr.  Spencer's 
school !  Even  this  is  an  advance  on  John  Stuart  Mill,  who  denied  that  we 
had  any  reason  to  believe  even  the  axioms  of  mathematics  to  be  valid  in 
other  worlds  than  ours,  and  according  to  whose  view  two  parallel  lines  might 
possibly  enclose  a  space  in  the  star  Sirius,  and  three  times  three  make  ten 
in  Orion.  Such  an  attempt,  as  this  of  Mr.  Spencer,  to  make  peace  with  the 
intuitionalists,  shows  that  the  intuitionalist  artillery  has  done  some  execution 
within  the  enemy's  lines.  None  the  less  is  it  true  that  the  peace  proposed 
is  a  hollow  and  delusive  one.  No  peace  is  possible  except  upon  surrender 
of  the  sensationalist  position.  Mr.  Spencer  assumes,  provisionally,  the 
validity  of  these  a  priori  truths,  only  that  he  may  the  more  effectively  argue 
them  out  of  existence.  And  he  can  do  no  otherwise.  He  must  assume  these 
necessary  laws  even  in  his  argument  to  show  that  they  are  not  necessary. 
We  propose  to  him,  therefore,  a  dilemma.  Either  these  assumptions  are 
true,  and  then  his  argument  against  them  must  be  false  ;  or,  these  assump- 
tions are  false,  and  then  the  argument  which  is  built  upon  them  is  false, 
likewise.  In  either  case,  as  has  been  said,  he  plants  his  battery  over  an 
adversary's  mine,  and  is  hoisted  at  his  first  fire. 

What  is  gained  by  carrying  back  the  origin  of  these  ideas  to  past  millen- 
niums, when  the  demand  for  explanation  is  the  same  even  there  ?  Of  what 
avail  is  it  to  call  them  the  results  of  past  experiences  of  the  race,  when  the 
first  experience  presupposes  them  and  is  impossible  without  them  ?  The 
first  experience  of  individual  positions  of  external  matter  logically  presup- 
poses the  knowledge  of  space.  The  first  act  of  self -consciousness  or  judg- 
ment presupposes  memory  and  the  knowledge  of  time.  They  cannot  be  an 
outgrowth  of  successive  inductions  of  primitive  man,  for  the  first  induction 
was  impossible  without  the  assumptions  of  cause  and  design  and  the  implicit 
acceptance  of  all  the  laws  of  logical  reasoning.  Mr.  Spencer  tells  us  that 
all  cognition  is  really  recognition  ;  but  when  we  ask  how,  then,  there  could 
be  a  first  cognition,  he  mumbles  something  about  gradual  growth  and  slowly 
accumulating  impressions, — but  there  is  absolutely  no  explanation  of  the 
first  fact  of  actual  attention  or  observation  or  memory  or  judgment  or  rea- 
4 


50  THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF   EVOLUTION. 

sorting.  In  truth,  nothing  so  clearly  shows  Mr.  Spencer's  ignorance  or 
evasion  of  the  real  question  at  issue  as  his  treatment  of  the  intuitions.  To 
him,  they  are  not  different  in  essence  from  the  accumulated  force  of  associa- 
tion in  the  brute  ;  to  him,  there  is  as  much  in  the  dog  to  be  accounted  for 
as  in  the  man.  We  do  not  envy  him  his  view  of  the  human  mind,  although 
we  can  easily  see  how  his  philosophy  corresponds  to  it.  It  is  a  good 
philosophy  for  the  brute,  for  it  is  a  plausible  explanation  of  the  brute's 
psychology  ;  but  self-respect  forbids  our  accepting  it  as  a  philosophy  for 
man.  It  is  easy  to  see  that,  however  much  regard  Mr.  Spencer  may  think 
it  politic  to  pay  to  the  intuitions  at  the  outset  of  his  investigations,  they  are 
left  with  but  sorry  claims  to  respect  at  the  end  of  his  investigations.  All 
knowledge  is  proved  to  be  only  transformed  sensation,  and  these  a  priori 
knowledges  among  the  rest.  And,  now  that  we  know  just  what  they  have 
come  from,  we  can  judge  of  their  weight  and  validity.  Here  is  much  that 
sensation  cannot  justly  give.  Let  it  be  regarded,  therefore,  only  as  provi- 
sional and  regulative  truth  ;  in  other  words,  let  us  give  it  as  little  credence 
as  we  can,  and  as  soon  as  possible  let  us  get  rid  of  it  altogether.  So  the 
realism  with  which  Mr.  Spencer  begins  turns  out  to  be  an  exceedingly 
transfigured  realism.  In  fact,  when  we  hear  him  saying  of  consciousness 
that  it ' '  contains  no  element,  relation  or  law  that  is  like  any  element,  relation 
or  law  in  the  external  body,"  it  seems  to  be  hardly  distinguishable  from 
idealism.  And  here  Mr.  Spencer  belongs.  He  is  an  idealist,  though  a 
materialistic  idealist.  Dr.  Carpenter  can  say:  "That  whatever  thinks 
exists,  is  known  to  us  as  a  necessary  a  priori  truth  by  its  own  evidence ; 
but  that  I  myself  exist  is  known  to  me,  not  by  evidence  of  any  kind,  but  by 
consciousness,  to  be  a  particular  contingent  fact  of  supreme  certainty." 
But  Mr.  Spencer  cannot  consistently  say  this.  That  the  external  world 
exists,  or  that  spirit  exists  within,  must  be  upon  his  principles  problemat- 
ical. He  and  his  school  are  Humists.  The  soul,  to  them,  is  but  a  screen 
for  shadows,  or  rather  a  mere  succession  of  shadows  without  any  screen, 
though  it  passes  knowledge  how  they  can  be  certain  that  even  the  shadows 
themselves  exist. 

The  chief  evil  of  this  system  of  philosophy  is,  however,  that  it  shuts  out 
all  knowledge  of  God.  It  claims  to  be  far  more  reverent  than  orthodox 
religionists,  in  that  it  abstains  from  all  sacrilegious  endeavors  to  describe  or 
define  that  which  is  essentially  and  forever  unknowable.  The  force  which 
is  manifested  in  the  processes  of  nature  it  declares  to  be  beyond  human 
conception,  and  what  is  inconceivable  must  be  unknown.  Now,  we  admit 
that  we  know  only  that  of  which  we  can  conceive,  if  by  "conceive"  we  mean 
our  distinguishing,  in  thought,  the  object  known  from  all  other  objects. 
This  we  claim  we  can  do  with  respect  to  God.  We  distinguish  him,  as  the 
infinite  Spirit,  Love  and  Holiness,  from  every  other  being  whatever.  But, 
by  "conceive,"  Mr.  Spencer  means  something  entirely  different  from  this, 
namely,  to  form  an  adequate  mental  image.  He  confounds  conception  with 
that  which  is  merely  its  occasional  accompaniment  and  help  —  the  picturing 
of  the  object  by  the  imagination.  This  is  an  erroneous  use  of  the  word 
"conception,"  and,  taken  in  this  sense,  conceivability  is  by  no  means  a  final 
test  of  truth.  The  formation  of  a  mental  image  is  not  essential  either  to 
conception  or  to  knowledge.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  both  conceive  and 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EVOLUTION.  51 

know  many  things  of  which  we  cannot  form  a  mental  image  of  any  sort  that 
in  the  least  corresponds  to  the  reality.  We  know  our  own  minds  ;  but  who 
can  picture  to  himself  the  form  or  substance  of  that  which  he  thus  knows  ? 
We  have  a  conception  of  space,  in  the  sense  that  we  can  distinguish  it  in 
thought  from  the  body  that  nils  it,  and  from  the  time  in  which  that  body 
moves  ;  but  who  can  figure  space  in  his  imagination  ?  The  mind  possesses 
the  body  ;  the  soul  is  present,  there  is  reason  to  suppose,  in  every  part  of 
the  body  at  once,  even  as  God  is  in  every  part  of  his  universe — totus  in 
omni  parte — but  who  can  image  the  soul  under  spatial  relations?  Yet, 
certain  of  these  unpicturable  things  are  positively  known  to  be  true.  To 
conceive  is  not  to  picture ;  and,  therefore,  the  fact  that  we  cannot  form  an 
adequate  mental  image  of  God  is  no  proof  that  we  cannot  conceive  of  him 
or  know  him.  The  truth  is  that  Mr.  Spencer's  test  of  inconceivability  is 
not  only  false  in  itself  ;  he  applies  it  arbitrarily,  and  at  times  surrenders  it 
altogether.  For  example,  the  idea  of  a  self -existent  and  infinite  mind  and 
will  is  rejected  because,  in  Mr.  Spencer's  sense,  it  is  inconceivable.  Mr. 
Spencer  allows  that  the  force,  of  which  all  things  are  manifestations,  is 
equally  inconceivable ;  but,  in  spite  of  its  inconceivability,  he  accepts  the 
idea  of  it  as  the  most  primitive  and  fundamental  of  truths.  Such  a  test  is 
a  convenient  one  —  it  will  admit  Mr.  Spencer's  God,  but  will  shut  out  every 
other  man's. 

But  the  stock-objection  to  theism  employed  by  the  philosophy  of  nescience 
is  that  God  cannot  be  known,  because  to  know  is  to  limit  or  define  ;  hence, 
it  is  concluded  that  the  Absolute  as  unlimited,  and  the  Infinite  as  undefined, 
cannot  possibly  be  known.  But  we  reply  that  such  an  infinite  and  absolute 
as  Mr.  Spencer  has  in  mind  is  a  mere  abstraction  and  chimera, — it  is  not  the 
being  for  the  knowledge  of  whom  we  are  contending.  To  this  being  the 
most  fundamental  of  all  attributes  is  that  of  perfection  ;  all  other  attributes 
are  qualified  by  this.  A  God  incapable  of  movement  or  revelation  is  not 
the  God  of  whom  we  speak,  nor  have  we  in  mind  a  God  who  can  be  all 
things  evil  as  well  as  all  things  good.  God  is  absolute,  not  as  existing  in  no 
relation,  but  as  existing  in  no  necessary  relation.  No  relation  is  imposed 
upon  him  from  without.  If  he  enters  into  relations,  he  does  it  by  virtue  of 
a  self-determination  from  within  ;  and  if  he  continues  in  these  relations,  he 
does  it  in  perfect  freedom.  So,  God  is  infinite,  not  as  excluding  all  co-ex- 
istence of  the  finite  with  himself  ;  for  a  God  who  must  in  the  nature  of  things 
be  the  sole  being,  cut  off  from  all  communication  of  himself  to  others,  is 
laden  with  imperfection  and  impotence.  God  is  infinite,  then,  as  being  the 
ground  of  the  finite,  and  so  unfettered  by  it.  He  is,  therefore,  a  being  so 
limited  and  defined  as  to  render  knowledge  of  him  possible.  Indeed,  it  is 
not  irreverence  to  say  that  in  his  own  moral  nature  and  unchangeableness 
he  is  the  most  limited  being  in  the  universe  ;  but  that  he  cannot  lie  or  sin 
or  die  is  his  perfection  and  glory.  Here,  too,  Mr.  Spencer  rejects  theism 
upon  grounds  which  should  compel  him  to  reject  the  doctrine  of  force  also. 
For,  while  he  declares  that  by  becoming  cause  God  would  cease  to  be  abso- 
lute, his  unknowable  force  becomes  cause  without  impairing  its  absoluteness 
in  the  least.  "But  if  it  can  be  cause  without  ceasing  to  be  absolute,"  says 
an  able  critic,  "why  can  it  not  be  known  without  ceasing  to  be  absolute? 
So,  too,  if  everything  known  is  a  form  of  the  unknowable,  the  unknowable 


52  THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF    EVOLUTION. 

is  modified,  and  the  absolute  or  unmodified  unknowable  has  no  existence. 
But  if  the  absolute  can  be  modified  without  ceasing  to  be  absolute,  why  can 
it  not  be  known  without  ceasing  to  be  absolute  ?  "  We  can  then  know  God 
in  relation,  and  this  is  the  only  God  we  wish  to  know  or  need  to  know. 
And  all  this  Mr.  Spencer  practically  confesses  when  he  confers  upon  his 
Unknowable  so  great  a  number  of  definite  and  characterizing  appellatives. 
One  cannot  even  call  a  thing  unknown  and  unknowable  without  showing 
that  he  already  knows  one  thing  about  it,  namely,  that  he  does  not  know  it 
and  that  it  cannot  be  known.  But  how  great  the  compass  of  one's  knowl- 
edge must  be  when  he  is  able  to  speak  of  this  Unknowable,  as  Mr.  Spencer 
does  in  various  places,  as  the  one,  eternal,  ubiquitious,  infinite,  ultimate, 
absolute  existence,  power  and  cause  !  Here  are  nine  separate  designations, 
and  with  the  term  "unknowable"  we  have  ten.  It  is  absurd  to  say  that  an 
Infinite  and  Absolute  that  can  be  thus  described  and  defined  is  beyond  the 
sphere  of  human  knowledge. 

Mr.  Spencer's  quarrel,  however,  is  chiefly  with  the  idea  of  personality. 
This  he  would  extirpate  as  a  self-contradictory  and  meaningless  notion  when 
applied  to  the  power  that  moves  in  nature  and  in  mind.  The  uniformities 
of  natural  order,  he  would  say,  negative  God's  personality  ;  in  other  words, 
absolute  regularity  of  action  excludes  the  possibility  of  intelligence  and  free- 
dom. But  is  this  true  ?  Do  we  call  the  capricious  variability  of  childhood 
the  best  evidence  of  purpose  and  wisdom  ?  On  the  other  hand,  do  we  not 
find  that  increasing  maturity  always  brings  with  it  increase  of  system? 
Are  not  the  wise  man's  actions  the  easiest  to  predict?  What  is  this 
but  to  say  that  the  more  perfect  intelligence  and  will  become,  the  more 
uniform  is  the  thought  and  life  ?  The  nearer  we  approach  to  ideal  person- 
ality, the  more  we  escape  from  caprice  and  thoughtlessness.  Why  then 
should  we  refuse  to  apply  the  predicate  '  personal '  to  God  ?  The  perfect 
personality  might  be  perfectly  regular  in  the  methods  of  his  operation.  Mr. 
Spencer  claims,  indeed,  that  he  only  refuses  to  attribute  personality  to  the 
power  above  us  because  he  believes  in  something  higher  —  something  as 
far  above'personality  as  our  intelligence  and  will  are  above  the  modes  of  being 
of  the  plant.  But  so  long  as  he  refuses  to  recognize  what  we  can  know,  it 
is  vain  to  console  us  by  assuring  us  that  something  exists  which  we  cannot 
know.  It  must  ever  remain  true  that  a  being  without  intelligence  and  will 
must  be  less  perfect  than  one  who  possesses  them.  We  see  in  our  own 
being,  if  not  in  the  outward  world,  effects  which  demand  a  personal  cause. 
The  very  constitution  of  our  minds  compels  us  to  attribute  to  that  cause, 
though  in  an  infinite  degree,  all  the  highest  qualities  of  the  human  spirit ; 
to  recognize  that  the  methods  of  the  divine  mind  and  of  the  human  mind 
are  similar,  and  that  man  is  made  in  God's  image.  All  this,  theism  recog- 
nizes, but  agnosticism  denies.  Yet  Mr.  Spencer  fancies  himself  a  mediator 
between  science  and  religion.  He  proposes  terms  of  reconciliation  between 
these  two.  They  are  ancient  enemies,  he  says,  but  only  ignorance  of  each 
other  keeps  them  apart.  He  has  discovered  the  truth  which  they  hold  in 
common.  Let  each  give  up  that  which  is  purely  accidental,  and  unite  upon 
that  which  is  essential  and  eternal.  What  is  this  common  truth  ?  It  is 
simply  this  :  There  is  a  Causal  Power  which  is  inscrutable  to  man.  Now 
this  is,  to  say  the  least,  a  very  abstract  account  of  religious  belief.  Mr. 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF   EVOLUTION".  53 

Spencer  claims  that  it  is  all  in  which  the  various  religions  can  be  said  to 
agree.  This  we  deny.  We  maintain,  on  the  other  hand,  that  personality 
in  the  cause  or  causes  which  control  and  vivify  the  universe  is  an  indestruct- 
ible element  in  every  religion,  from  fetichism  up  to  Christianity.  The  sense 
of  mystery  and  dependence  is  not  religion  ;  it  is  only  the  felt  need  of  religion. 
Keligion  is  the  practical  faith  in  a  personal  power,  or  in  personal  powers, 
that  comes  in  to  supply  that  felt  need.  The  religion  which  Mr.  Spencer 
would  save  is  nothing  that  now  goes  by  that  name.  It  is  simply  the  recog- 
nition of  a  need  that  is  never  satisfied.  The  truly  religious  man  must  be  a 
Tantalus.  The  moment  he  professes  to  know  anything  about  the  inscrutable 
power  around  him  and  above  him,  he  becomes  an  example  of  the  impiety  of 
the  pious.  The  moment  he  tries  to  satisfy  his  need  of  religion,  he  ceases  to 
be  religious.  What  practical  difference  is  there  between  saying  that  there 
is  no  God,  and  saying  that  there  is  no  God  apprehensible  by  us,  no  God 
that  we  can  distinguish  from  the  sum  total  of  things,  no  God  that  certainly 
exists  apart  from  our  subjective  ideas  of  Him  ? 

3.  We  have  thus  tested  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophical  principles  by  inquir- 
ing whether  they  could  explain  the  origin  of  life  and  mind,  and  whether 
they  led  to  a  proper  theory  of  knowledge.  Let  us  now,  with  greater  brevity, 
ask  with  regard  to  the  moral  aspects  of  the  system,  and  its  influence  upon 
practical  life.  Here,  as  in  every  scheme  of  moral  philosophy,  all  the  im- 
portant questions  may  be  reduced  to  four,  and  they  all  centre  in  the  idea  of 
ol  >1  Ration.  The  first  is  a  question  about  right  :  What  is  the  historical  origin 
of  the  feeling  of  obligation  ?  The  second  has  to  do  with  law  :  What  is  the 
rational  ground  of  obligation  ?  The  third  concerns  itself  with  conscience  : 
What  is  the  psychological  faculty  which  determines  obligation  ?  And  the 
fourth  is  conversant  with  will  :  What  power  is  there  to  discharge  obligation  ? 

To  the  first  of  these  questions  Mr.  Spencer  replies  that  the  feeling  of  obli- 
gation is  the  result  of  ancestral  experiences  of  utility.  Right  is  adaptation 
of  constitution  to  conditions.  Action  unfitted  to  its  surroundings  has  devel- 
oped a  generic  repugnance  to  similar  action  in  future,  and  accumulated 
impressions  of  this  unfitness  have  become  transformed  into  an  instinct  so 
strong  and  persistent  that  it  is  at  last  independent  of  conscious  experience, 
and  is  worthy  the  name  of  an  intuition.  Now  we  readily  grant  that  an 
instinctive  appetency  for  certain  courses  of  action,  and  a  blind  aversion  to 
certain  others,  might  be  plausibly  accounted  for  in  this  way.  We  object  to 
the  theory  that  it  fails  to  account  for  the  very  thing  to  be  accounted  for, 
namely,  the  feeling  that  the  latter  are  reprehensible  and  the  former  obligatory. 
In  short,  right  is  confounded  with  advantage,  and  wrong  with  mere  unfitness 
or  inutility.  All  the  languages  of  mankind  distinguish  between  these  two 
ideas  and  put  an  immeasurable  gulf  between  them.  The  awkward  country- 
man at  a  full-dress  reception  has  a  crushing  sense  of  his  unfitness  to  his 
surroundings,  but  who  would  call  his  feelings  those  of  remorse  ?  I  look 
back  with  satisfaction  to  some  past  right  action  ;  do  I  mean  when  I  call  it 
right,  that  it  was  an  action  that  brought  me  pleasure  or  advantage  ?  No, 
the  moral  feelings  are  of  a  wholly  different  sort  —  they  affirm  not  advantage 
but  obligation.  The  peculiarity  of  these  feelings  is  that  they  refer  action, 
not  to  an  external  standard  of  utility,  but  to  an  inward  standard  of  right. 
The  words  "  I  ought ! "  have  in  them  an  imperativeness  which  is  wholly 


54  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    EVOLUTIOX. 

absent  when  I  am  calculating  what  self-interest  may  be.  The  old  Associa- 
tionalism  accounted  for  the  sentiment  of  obligation  by  calling  it  the  result 
of  education  or  of  human  enactment.  It  was  well  replied  :  If  the  sense  of 
right  comes  from  education,  whence  did  the  first  educator,  that  is,  the  first 
man,  derive  it  ?  And  can  it  come  from  law,  when  law  is  founded  upon  obli- 
gation and  simply  expresses  it  ?  But  Mr.  Spencer  has  discovered  a  more 
excellent  way.  The  sense  of  right  is  but  the  transformed  feeling  of  utility 
or  fitness.  If  this  be  so,  there  must  have  been  a  first  time  when  utility  or 
fitness  was  seen  to  be  right ;  in  other  words,  when  useful  or  fit  action  was 
seen  to  be  obligatory.  Now,  he  who  knows  what  snow  is,  and  what  white 
is,  may  affirm  that  snow  is  white.  But  the  man  who  had  no  notion  of  snow, 
or  of  white,  could  never  affirm  the  one  of  the  other.  So  he  who  first  per- 
ceived that  the  useful  was  obligatory  must  have  brought  this  notion  of  the 
obligatory  with  him,  instead  of  getting  it  from  the  utility  he  was  scrutiniz- 
ing. In  other  words,  the  idea  of  right  is  not  inherent  in  things  or  actions, 
but  is  brought  to  them  by  the  mind.  It  does  not  come  from  experience, 
but  is  an  intuition.  And  Mr.  Spencer's  attempt  to  account  for  the  right,  by 
calling  it  an  outgrowth  from  the  useful,  labors  under  the  same  fatal  difficulty 
which  we  saw  attending  his  explanation  of  the  other  intuitions.  In  the  very 
first  recognition  of  right  on  the  part  of  any  human  being  we  have  neces- 
sarily involved  a  fact  of  intuition,  the  judging  according  to  an  inward  standard 
that  transcends  all  experience,  the  evolution  of  a  knowledge  that  conies  from 
some  higher  source  than  mere  nature. 

So  we  pass  to  the  second  of  the  questions  with  regard  to  the  moral  aspects 
of  the  system.  What  is  its  view  of  law  ?  In  what  is  this  recognized  obliga- 
tion grounded  ?  Mr.  Spencer's  answer  is,  by  implication,  already  before 
us.  An  action  is  right,  not  only  as  it  is  useful,  but  because  it  is  useful.  The 
foundation  of  moral  obligation  is  in  utility,  and  this  utility  is  to  be  found  in 
happiness  —  in  the  last  analysis,  the  happiness  of  the  individual.  It  is 
enough  to  say  that  the  common  judgment  of  mankind  reverses  this  order, 
and  declares  an  action  to  be  useful  because  it  is  right,  and  not  right  because 
it  is  useful.  To  be  virtuous  for  the  sake  of  the  happiness  that  is  to  come 
thereby  is  not  to  be  virtuous  at  all.  Supreme  regard  for  our  own  interest  is 
not  virtue,  but  is  selfishness,  the  opposite  of  all  virtue.  In  truth,  it  is  a 
most  serious  mistake  to  regard  happiness  in  any  sense,  even  the  happiness 
of  the  universe  including  God  himself,  as  the  highest  good  or  as  the  ground 
of  duty.  For  this  is  to  say  that  virtue  is  not  a  good  in  itself,  but  is  good 
only  for  the  sake  of  happiness,  good  only  as  a  means  to  an  end.  It  is  to  say 
that  in  eternity  past,  before  creation  began,  God  was  holy  only  for  the  sake 
of  the  happiness  that  holiness  would  bring  —  in  other  words,  that  holiness 
has  no  independent  existence  in  his  being,  and  that  he  might  be  unholy  if 
greater  happiness  would  come  thereby.  This  is  to  merge  all  his  moral 
attributes  in  a  profound  and  overmastering  self-love,  or  what  is  the  same 
thing,  to  deny  them  altogether.  So  the  theory  that  the  general  well-being 
is  the  highest  end  proves  itself  to  be  only  a  refined  form  of  the  utilitarian 
view  —  God  is  righteous  only  because  of  what  he  can  make  by  it.  Let  those 
who  maintain  the  good  of  being  in  general  to  be  the  ground  of  obligation 
ask  themselves,  why  they  are  bound  to  seek  the  general  good.  That  ques- 
tion demands  an  answer.  The  only  answer  will  be  because  God  has  so  made 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF   EVOLUTION.  55 

us.  We  are  created  in  his  image,  and  we  reach  the  end  of  our  being  only 
by  conforming  to  his  character.  In  short,  the  moral  character  of  God,  in 
whose  image  we  are  made,  and  not  the  good  that  will  come  from  right  action, 
is  the  true  ground  of  moral  obligation.  How  far  from  this  view  Mr.  Spencer 
is,  we  have  sufficiently  seen.  All  virtue  is  reduced  to  the  slippery  calcula- 
tion of  our  personal  interest,  and  unselfish  action  for  right's  sake  and  for 
God's  sake  is  not  only  excluded  from  the  category  of  morality,  but  is  ren- 
dered logically  impossible. 

We  do  not  need  to  answer  at  length  our  third  and  fourth  questions.  We 
asked  what  upon  this  theory  was  conscience.  The  only  reply  is  that  con- 
science is  simply  the  mind's  power  of  comparing  utilities.  No  intuitional 
element  enters  into  it.  With  no  hold  upon  God's  law  or  God's  nature  to 
steady  it,  it  is  simply  the  record  of  shifting  human  opinion.  There  is  no 
immutable  morality  for  it  to  echo,  and  conscience  has  no  power  to  echo  it,  if 
there  were.  What  seem  to  be  the  impulses  of  a  higher  power,  commanding 
obedience  to  the  right,  are  only  misinterpreted  instincts  to  secure  our  own 
advantage  ;  what  seem  to  be  the  threats  of  a  coming  judgment  upon  wrong 
doing,  are  but  base-born  and  cowardly  fears  of  ill  success.  A  faculty  that 
cognizes  the  right  as  distinct  from  the  agreeable,  and  that  affirms  its  ever- 
lasting obligatoriuess,  a  faculty  that  adds  its  sanction  to  all  subordinate 
judgments  as  to  right  which  are  formed  by  the  intellect,  and  invests  them 
with  its  own  indefeasible  authority  —  such  a  faculty  as  this  cannot  well  be 
evolved  out  of  mere  pleasurable  and  distasteful  sensations.  But  such  a 
faculty  conscience  really  is,  and  because  it  is  such  a  faculty  there  is  no  room 
for  it  in  the  system  of  Mr.  Spencer.  And  it  is  just  so  with  will,  the  last  sub- 
ject of  our  questioning.  Free-will  —  the  executive  faculty  of  the  soul,  the 
power  of  discharging  obligation  —  how  can  this  find  place  in  a  scheme  of 
blind  material  development?  Nothing  can  come  out  at  the  end  but  what 
goes  in  at  the  beginning.  Without  freedom  in  the  Creator,  you  can  have  no 
freedom  in  the  creature.  What  seems  to  be  freedom,  therefore,  is  but  a 
show.  Man's  will  is  necessitated  in  its  action  by  his  external  circumstances 
and  conditions.  He  is  not  a  moral  agent.  History  is  a  fatalistic  develop- 
ment. In  short,  Ethics  is  only  another  name  for  Physics. 

Cicero  is  reported  to  have  said,  with  regard  to  the  first  of  these  moral 
questions,  that  he  who  confounded  the  honestum  with  the  utile,  or  the  right 
with  mere  advantage,  deserved  to  be  banished  from  society.  Since  his 
judgment  can  hardly  have  been  due  to  theological  bigotry,  it  may  well  be 
commended  to  the  consideration  of  all  thorough-going  evolutionists.  We 
agree  with  Cicero  in  fearing  the  influence  of  such  a  system  upon  practical 
life.  For,  abstract  and  lofty  as  speculations  like  these  may  seem,  like  water 
from  the  clouds  falling  upon  well-nigh  impervious  rock,  they  filter  their 
way  after  a  while  to  the  lowermost  strata  of  society.  A  system  of  monism  like 
Mr.  Spencer's,  with  its  delusive  simplicity,  has  an  inexpressible  fascination 
for  those  whose  intellectual  pride  cannot  brook  the  perpetual  tyranny  of 
pressing  but  unsolved  problems.  Especially  is  such  a  system  attractive  t© 
that  great  multitude  of  men  whose  inmost  moral  feeling  is  one  of  dislike  to 
the  idea  of  a  God  who  imposes  moral  law,  and  who  will  execute  penalty 
upon  those  who  are  unlike  him  in  moral  character.  And  besides  these  will  be 
numbers  who  are  carried  away  unawares  by  the  popular  current  of  opinion, 


56  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EVOLUTION". 

and  who  accept  this  philosophy  simply  because  they  know  no  other.  To  all 
these,  the  breadth  of  its  generalizations,  the  novelty  of  its  solutions  of  per- 
plexing questions,  and  the  wealth  of  scientific  knowledge  displayed  in  its 
illustrations,  will  make  it  seem  a  new  gospel  of  science  for  mankind. 

I  believe  that  this  system  will  be  destructive  to  morality,  because  history 
has  abundantly  shown  that  life  follows  doctrine.  The  denial  of  God's  moral 
being  and  governorship  takes  away  the  practical  authority  of  conscience. 
When  the  solemn  voice  of  duty  is  hushed,  and  right  is  regarded  as  only  an 
imposing  name  for  utility  or  pleasure,  there  is  no  longer  any  question 
whither  men's  passions  and  ambitions  will  lead  them.  The  descent  to  the 
pit  of  rapacity  and  sensuality  is  sure,  and  none  the  less  for  the  philosophical 
composure  with  which  the  descent  began.  The  philosopher  himself  may 
not  reach  the  depths  to  which  his  followers  are  plunged.  Early  influences 
of  habit  and  culture,  and  above  all  the  Christian  principles  that  by  a  sort  of 
endosmosis  have  been  unconsciously  imbibed  from  the  surrounding  atmos- 
phere, still  keep  the  thinker  outwardly  pure  and  inwardly  satisfied.  But 
the  very  basis  of  morality  is  gone  from  the  system,  and  they  whose  educa- 
tion is  conducted  under  its  influence,  and  whose  principles  of  living  are 
derived  wholly  from  it,  will  have  no  care  for  truth  or  love  or  duty  for 
truth's  or  love's  or  duty's  sake,  and  will  learn  to  be  false  without  self-re- 
proach, and  to  be  vicious  without  fear.  Crime  is  but  a  name  for  the  ill-repute 
of  crime  ;  make  immorality  reputable  and  it  ceases  at  once  to  be  ;  the  new 
Paul  and  Virginia,  on  their  island,  find  that  with  their  advanced  ideas  of 
obligation  as  grounded  in  the  greatest  happiness,  they  can  do  just  what  they 
please.  I  do  not  wonder  that  certain  of  the  representatives  of  this  school 
are  already  discussing,  with  some  anxiety,  in  their  Symposia,  the  question 
whether  belief  in  a  God  is  not  after  all  necessary  to  morals.  The  signs  of 
the  times  might  teach  them.  Art  has  begun  to  feel  the  poisonous  breath  of 
the  new  philosophy,  and  the  heroic  and  religious  in  both  painting  and 
sculpture  have  sensibly  withered  under  it.  Pictures  for  the  boudoir  have 
taken  the  place  of  pictures  for  the  altar,  and  a  broad  immodesty  or  a  piquancy 
of  evil  suggestion  largely  supplants  the  pure  simplicity  and  lofty  purpose  of 
an  earlier  day.  And  literature  —  how  vast  the  change  since  the  transcen- 
dental and  ideal  poetry  of  Wordsworth  gave  way  to  the  pagan  sensuousness  of 
Algernon  Swinburne.  All  these  things  are  signs  of  moral  decadence  under 
the  influence  of  the  general  philosophical  spirit  of  our  day  —  a  spirit  of 
which  Mr.  Spencer's  system  is  the  most  conspicuous  and  typical  example. 
Let  us  remember  that  Epicurus  and  Lucretius  were  genial  philosophers,  but 
the  results  of  their  fatalism  in  practice  are  seen  in  the  shamelessness  of  the 
Pompeian  frescoes,  and  in  the  atrocities  of  the  Eoman  gladiatorial  shows 
under  the  empire.  Thus,  with  the  loss  of  a  God  who  can  be  known  and 
obeyed,  we  lose  every  true  interest  of  man.  To  oppose  a  philosophy  which 
results  in  so  great  disaster  is  therefore  the  duty  of  every  lover  of  his  kind. 
It  is  a  congeries  of  fallacies  and  of  assumptions,  but  the  most  vital  point  at 
which  it  may  be  attacked  is  its  denial  of  the  divine  creatorship.  There  is 
the  first  root-falsehood  of  the  scheme  ;  for,  without  creatorship,  God  cannot 
be  sovereign  over  the  universe,  but  must  ever  fill  the  subordinate  place  of 
a  fashioner  of  intractable  material  made  ready  to  his  hand  ;  indeed,  without 
creatorship,  God  cannot  be  personal  now  that  the  universe  exists,  for  a  God 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    EVOLUTION.  57 

necessarily  bound  to  a  self -existent  universe  is  no  longer  self -determining 
or  free.  The  Christian  philosopher  or  theologian  who  grants  the  eternity 
of  matter  plays  unconsciously  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  The  very 
book-revelation  that  is  so  denounced  and  contemned  bears  on  its  forefront 
the  one  and  only  solution  to  the  problem  of  the  universe  :  "In  the  begin- 
ning God  created  the  heaven  and  the  earth."  The  Sabbath,  the  weekly 
memorial  of  creation,  revenges  itself  on  its  violators,  by  proclaiming  with  all 
its  multitudinous  bells  the  personality  of  God,  manifested  not  only  in  the 
first  creation  of  the  universe,  but  in  the  new  creation  of  humanity  at  the 
resurrection  of  Christ.  And  with  the  Bible  and  the  Sabbath  every  heart  that 
has  been  brought  into  living,  loving  relation  to  the  heavenly  Father,  gives  in 
its  testimony,  not  only  that  God  is,  and  that  he  can  be  known,  but  that  this 
is  eternal  life  that  we  might  know  him.  To  this  crowd  of  witnesses  let  us 
join  ourselves.  For  I  am  persuaded  that  in  this  day,  when  the  popular 
currents  of  the  scientific  world  are  running  toward  a  theory  of  atheistic  evo- 
lution which  would  sweep  away  the  very  foundations  of  knowledge,  break 
down  the  principles  of  morality,  degrade  man  to  the  level  of  the  brute,  and 
hurl  almighty  wisdom  and  love  and  justice  from  its  throne,  we  can  have  set 
before  us  no  nobler  task  than  that  of  leading  the  van  of  a  return  movement 
to  the  old  faith  in  man,  the  truth,  and  God. 


V. 

MODERN  IDEALISM: 


The  method  of  thought  which  I  purpose  to  consider  regards  ideas  as  the 
only  objects  of  knowledge  and  denies  the  independent  existence  of  the  ex- 
ternal world.  It  is  the  development  of  a  principle  found  as  far  back  as 
Locke.  Locke  derived  all  our  knowledge  from  sensation.  If  any  object  to 
this  account  of  Locke's  system,  and  insist  that  he  recognized  reflection  also 
as  a  source  of  knowledge,  we  reply  that  this  reflection  is  with  Locke  only  the 
mind's  putting  together  of  ideas  derived  from  the  senses  or  from  its  own 
operations  about  them.f  The  mind  brings  no  knowledge  with  it,  has  no 
original  power  ;  it  is  merely  the  passive  recipient  and  manipulator  of  ideas 
received  from  sensation,  finding  in  its  own  operations  no  new  material,  but 
only  the  reflection  of  what  originally  came  from  sense.  I  do  not  mean  that 
Locke  is  always  consistent  with  himself  ;  this  he  could  not  be,  for,  with  all 
his  effort  to  derive  knowledge  from  the  senses,  there  were  objects,  such  as 
substance  and  cause,  right  and  God,  which  persistently  refused  to  be 
explained  in  this  way.  To  Locke's  statement  "There  is  nothing  in  the 
intellect  which  was  not  beforehand  in  the  sense,"  Leibnitz  well  replied  : 
"Nothing  but  the  intellect  itself."  But  this  reply  recognized  original 
powers  of  the  mind,  and  the  mind's  cognition,  upon  occasion  of  sensation, 
of  realities  not  perceived  by  sensation  or  derived  from  sensation.  Locke's 
denial  of  such  original  powers  and  cognitions  opened  the  way  to  the  exclu- 
sive sensationalism  of  the  French  Condillac  and  Baron  d'Holbach.  So  his 
system  led  to  utilitarianism  in  morals  and  to  skepticism  in  religion ;  for 
how  could  the  ideas  of  right  or  of  God  be  derived  from  sense  ?  and,  if  they 
did  not  come  from  sense,  what  right  had  they  on  this  theory  to  exist  at  all  ? 

Bishop  Berkeley,  alarmed  at  what  he  thought  the  necessarily  materialistic 
implications  of  Locke's  philosophy,  attempted  to  save  the  idea  of  spirit  by 
giving  up  the  idea  of  matter  ;  or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  by  maintaining 
that  we  have  no  evidence  that  matter  exists  except  in  idea.  The  sensations 
which  lead  us  to  infer  the  existence  of  an  outer  world  are  themselves  the 
direct  objects  of  our  knowledge  —  why  postulate  external  matter  as  causing 
them  ?  They  may  be  caused  directly  by  God,  whose  omnipresent  intelli- 
gence and  power  are  capable  of  producing  uniform  and  consistent  impres- 
sions in  or  upon  the  minds  of  his  creatures.  This  thought,  existence,  or 
ideal  existence,  Berkeley  would  say,  is  the  only  existence  of  the  outer  world 
worth  contending  for.  An  existence  like  this  being  assumed,  materialism 
is  vanquished,  for  the  cause  of  ideas  is  to  be  found  not  in  matter  but  in 
spirit,  not  in  a  self -existent  nature  but  in  a  living  God.  No  one  who  has 


*  Printed  in  the  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  January,  1888. 
t  Essay,  book  ii.  chap.  xii. 


MODERN    IDEALISM.  59 

read  Berkeley's  "Principles  of  Human  Knowledge"  can  fail  to  admire  the 
spirit  and  aim  of  its  author.  That  his  theory  can  be  held  side  by  side  with 
the  profoundest  belief  in  special  divine  revelation  is  plain,  not  only  from 
the  fact  that  Berkeley  so  held  it,  regarding  his  view  as  a  bulwark  of  reli- 
gious faith,  but  from  the  fact  that  it  was  also  the  philosophy  of  Jonathan 
Edwards. 

Hume,  however,  regarded  Berkeley's  application  of  the  principle  as  only 
a  partial  one.  Berkeley  had  said  that  externally  we  can  be  sure  only  of 
sensations  —  cannot,  therefore,  be  sure  that  a  world  independent  of  our 
sensations  exists  at  all.  Hume  carried  the  principle  further,  and  held  that 
internally  also  we  cannot  be  sure  of  anything  but  phenomena.  We  do  not 
know  mental  substance  within,  any  more  than  we  know  material  substance 
without.  John  Stuart  Mill  only  follows  Hume,  when  he  makes  sensations 
the  only  objects  of  knowledge  ;  defines  matter  as  "a  permanent  possibility 
of  sensation,"  and  mind  as  "a  series  of  feelings  aware  of  itself."  Thomas 
Huxley  follows  Hume,  when  he  calls  matter  "  only  a  name  for  the  unknown 
cause  of  states  of  consciousness."  Spencer,  Bain  and  Tyndall  are  also 
Humists.  All  these  regard  the  material  atom  as  a  mere  centre  of  force  — 
the  hypothetical  cause  of  sensations.  In  their  view,  matter  is  a  manifesta- 
tion of  force ;  while,  to  the  old  materialism,  force  is  a  property  of  mat- 
ter. Unlike  these  later  thinkers,  Berkeley  held  most  strenuously  to  the 
existence  of  spirit — for  of  spirit  he  thought  we  had  direct  knowledge  in 
ourselves.  The  supposition  of  an  unperceivable  material  substance  was 
inconsistent  with  common  sense  ;  but  the  recognition  of  a  personal  and  self- 
determining  ego  was  a  part  of  our  common  sense.*  Yet  Berkeley  in  certain 
passages  verges  towards  Hurnism,  as,  for  example,  where  he  says:  "The 
very  existence  of  ideas  constitutes  the  soul.  Mind  is  a  congeries  of  percep- 
tions. Take  away  perceptions,  and  you  take  away  mind.  Put  the  percep- 
tions, and  you  put  the  mind."t  All  we  can  say  of  Hume,  therefore,  is  that 
he  logically  and  consistently  developed  a  principle  which  in  germ,  at  least, 
is  found  in  Berkeley  himself.  And  the  agnostic  and  materialistic  idealism 
of  the  present  day  is  lineally  descended  from  Locke,  through  Berkeley.  It 
defines  matter  and  mind  alike  in  terms  of  sensation,  and  regards  both  as 
opposite  sides  or  manifestations  of  one  underlying  and  unknowable  force. 
So,  as  Sydney  Smith  says,  "Bishop  Berkeley  destroyed  the  world  in  one 
volume  octavo,  and  nothing  remained  after  his  time  but  mind,  which  expe- 
rienced a  similar  fate  from  the  hand  of  Mr.  Hume  in  1737." 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  mischievous  must  be  the  effect  of  such  a  system  as 
this.  If  matter  be  only  a  permanent  possibility  of  sensations,  then  the 
body  through  which  we  experience  sensations  is  itself  nothing  but  a  possi- 
bility of  sensations.  If  the  human  spirit  be  only  a  series  of  sensations, 
then  the  divine  spirit  also  can  be  nothing  more  than  a  series  of  sensations. 
There  is  no  body  to  have  the  sensations ;  and  no  spirit,  either  human  or 
divine,  to  produce  them.  Kant,  in  Germany,  revolted  from  these  skeptical 
conclusions,  and  sought  to  reclaim  philosophy  by  an  examination  of  the 
sources  of  human  knowledge.  He  went  back  to  Locke,  and  showed  that 


*  Mansel,  Letters,  Lectures  and  Reviews,  p.  382. 

•f-  Works,  vol.  iv.,  p.  438  —  quoted  in  Frazer's  Berkeley,  p.  72. 


60  MODERN    IDEALISM. 

all  sense-perception  involves  elements  not  derived  from  sense,  elements 
rather  which  are  presupposed  by  sense.  "Synthetic  conceptions  or  judg- 
ments a  priori  "  —  space,  time,  cause,  for  example  —  are  the  conditions  of 
all  our  intellectual  operations.  We  cannot  cognize  the  outer  or  the  inner 
world,  without  finding  these  conceptions  woven  into  the  fabric  of  our 
knowledge.  So  far  Kant  did  good  service  to  science.  He  vindicated  the 
intuitions,  and  showed  that  without  them  no  knowledge  is  possible.  But 
he  erred  in  not  going  far  enough.  He  claimed  for  these  intuitions  only  a 
subjective  existence  and  validity  —  they  are  necessities  of  our  thinking,  but 
they  cannot  be  shown  to  have  objective  existence  or  validity.  They  are 
regulative  principles  merely  —  whether  space,  time,  cause,  substance,  God, 
exist  outside  of  us,  mere  reason  cannot  determine.  But  we  reply  that 
when  our  primitive  beliefs  are  found  to  be  simply  regulative  they  will  cease 
to  regulate.  The  forms  of  thought  are  also  facts  of  nature.  The  mind 
does  not,  like  the  glass  of  the  kaleidoscope,*  itself  furnish  the  forms ;  it 
recognizes  these  as  having  an  existence  external  to  itself.  Kant  failed  to 
see  that,  in  cognizing  the  qualities  of  objects,  the  mind  equally  cognizes  a 
substance  to  which  the  qualities  belong ;  failed  to  see  that  the  testimony 
of  the  reason  to  the  existence  of  noumena  is  just  as  valid  as  the  testimony 
of  sense  to  the  existence  of  phenomena.  Substance  is  knowable  to  God  and 
also  to  man ;  and,  in  and  with  our  knowing  phenomena,  substance  is  actually 
and  equally  known. 

Just  this  failure  of  Kant  led  Fichte  to  reduce  all  knowledge  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  self ;  for,  if  our  own  ideas  are  the  sole  objects  of  knowledge,  it  is 
only  by  making  the  outer  world  a  part  of  ourselves  that  we  can  rescue  it 
from  the  category  of  the  unknown.  Schelling  could  find  no  medium 
between  self  and  the  world,  or  between  self  and  God  ;  hence  he  assumed  a 
direct  intuition  of  both  ;  it  was  an  intuition,  however,  which  merged  the 
ego  in  the  Absolute,  as  Fichte  had  merged  the  Absolute  in  the  ego  ;  there 
is  identity  between  them.  But  if  identity,  how  can  the  One  ever  become 
the  many  ?  Here  we  have  the  impulse  to  the  system  of  Hegel,  in  which 
subjective  idealism  becomes  complete.  Hegel  explains  the  development 
of  the  One  into  the  many  by  saying  simply  that  the  laws  of  thought  require 
this  development,  and  that  thought  and  being  are  one.  So,  without  giving 
any  explanation  of  the  origin  of  these  laws,  life  becomes  logic,  and  logic 
becomes  life.  The  Rational  is  the  Real.  All  things  are  but  forms  of 
thought,  and  not  only  man  and  the  world,  but  God  himself,  are  made 
intelligible.  If  it  were  not  for  the  fact  of  sin,  and  for  personal  wills  that 
war  against  the  rational  and  involve  themselves  in  death,  the  scheme  of 
Hegel  would  be  very  attractive.  We  need  only  set  against  it  the  lines  of 
Wordsworth,  which  Frazer  quotes  :  t 

"  Look  up  to  heaven  !  the  industrious  sun 
Already  half  his  race  hath  run ; 
He  cannot  halt  nor  go  astray, 
But  our  immortal  spirits  may." 

Thus  Hegel  revives,  and  carries  to  its  extremest  conclusions,  the  idealis- 
tic principle  whose  development  it  was  Kant's  purpose  to  check.  As  Berke- 

*  Bishop  Temple,  Bampton  Lectures  for  1884,  p.  13. 
t  Frazer's  Berkeley,  p.  205. 


MODERN    IDEALISM.  61 

ley  had  declared  that  things  are  only  thoughts,  Hegel  declared  that  think- 
ing thinks.  So  there  can  be  thinking  without  a  thinker,  thoughts  that  are 
not  thought.  It  seems  to  us  that  in  his  system  there  are  two  fundamental 
errors,  first,  that  of  assuming  a  concept  without  any  mind  to  form  it ;  and, 
secondly,  that  of  assuming  that  a  concept  can  work  itself  out  into  reality 
without  any  will  to  execute  it.  Thoughts  take  the  place  of  things,  both  as 
to  cause  and  effect  —  all  resting  on  the  prior  assumption  that  identity  is 
causality,  i.  e. ,  that  the  constituent  elements  of  a  thought  are  necessarily 
the  cause  of  the  thing  which  the  thought  represents.  Yet  the  system  of 
Hegel  has  had  a  strong  influence  upon  later  philosophy.  Its  monistic  basis 
gratifies  the  speculative  intellect.  Its  easy  reduction  of  the  facts  of  the  uni- 
verse to  logical  order  satisfies  the  aspiring  spirit  of  man.  We  may  even 
grant  that  its  omniscient  idealism  has  been  a  valuable  counter- weight  to  the 
agnostic  materialism  of  our  day.  Together  with  the  evolutionary  hypothe- 
sis of  the  origin  of  the  world,  it  has  found  able  advocates  in  Caird,  Green 
and  Seth,  in  Great  Britain,  and  in  Harris,  Bowne  and  Royce  in  America. 
Unfortunately  it  requires  of  its  consistent  defenders,  though  fortunately  its 
defenders  are  generally  not  consistent,  a  rejection  of  the  facts  of  history  and 
of  our  moral  nature.  Sin  is  a  necessity  of  finiteness  and  progress.  Even 
Jesus,  as  he  was  a  man,  must  be  a  sinner.  The  sense  of  remorse  and  the 
belief  in  freedom  are  alike  illusions.  It  can  hold  no  view  of  God  which 
regards  him  as  a  veritable  moral  personality,  or  as  the  author  of  a  supernat- 
ural revelation.  Conscience  with  its  testimony  to  the  voluntariness  and  the 
diinmableness  of  sin,  as  it  is  the  eternal  witness  against  Pantheism,  is  also 
the  eternal  witness  against  the  Idealism  of  Hegel.  We  may  believe  that 
the  utter  inability  of  Hegelianism  to  explain  or  even  to  recognize  the  eth- 
ical problems  of  the  universe  is  the  chief  reason  for  the  recent  cry,  '  'Back 
to  Kant !  "  by  which  the  younger  thinkers  are  summoned  to  return  to  the 
feet  of  a  master  who  at  least  recognized  a  moral  law  and  a  God  who  vindi- 
cates it. 

As  it  is  these  younger  thinkers  whose  position  is  matter  of  most  present 
interest,  I  desire  to  retrace  my  steps  for  a  moment,  and  to  go  back  to  Eng- 
land and  to  those  who  came  after  Hume.  As  Kant  in  Germany  thought  to 
set  up  a  barrier  to  Hume's  skepticism  by  pointing  out  the  a  priori  elements 
in  all  knowledge,  so  Reid  in  England  maintained  against  Hume  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  Philosophy  of  Common  Sense.  Reid,  though  with  some  inac- 
curacies of  statement,  held  to  the  doctrine  of  Natural  Realism,  reducing 
perception  to  an  act  of  immediate  and  intuitive  cognition.  The  notion  of 
representative  ideas  as  the  object  of  perception  was  excluded.  The  mind 
comes  directly  in  contact  with  external  things.  How  it  knows  them  we  do 
not  know,  but  we  know  as  little  how  it  can  perceive  itself.  The  knowledge 
of  the  external  world  is  not  made  explicable,  it  is  rather  made  inexplicable, 
by  assuming  that  the  direct  object  of  perception  is  a  representative  idea, 
which  we  have  no  means  of  comparing  with  the  object  which  it  represents. 
Reid  did  not  distinguish  between  original  and  acquired  perceptions,  and  he 
sometimes  made  sensation  the  occasion  of  suggesting,  rather  than  the  con- 
dition of  perceiving,  extended  externality  ;  yet  his  services  to  Natural  Real- 
ism were  great,  and  philosophy  will  never  cease  to  be  his  debtor. 

Sir  William  Hamilton  sought  to  remedy  the  defects  of  Reid,  and  to  re- 


62  MODERN"   IDEALISM. 

duce  the  doctrine  of  common  sense  to  a  consistent  system.  He  showed  the 
absurdity  of  the  scheme  of  representative  perception,  which  declares  the 
external  world  to  be  real,  while  yet  it  makes  ideas  to  be  the  only  objects  of 
which  we  are  conscious.  Either  we  must  "  abolish  any  immediate,  ideal, 
subjective  object,  representing ;  —  or  we  must  abolish  any  mediate,  real, 
objective  object,  represented.  "  *  And  yet  even  Hamilton  was  not  self -con- 
sistent. Our  knowledge  of  an  external  object  is  made  up,  he  says  of  three 
factors,  of  which,  if  the  total  be  represented  by  the  number  twelve,  the  ob- 
ject may  be  said  to  furnish  six,  the  body  three,  and  the  mind  three.  Here 
an  ideal  element  is  admitted  which  may  so  vitiate  the  result  as  to  render  it 
impossible  to  say  that  we  correctly  apprehend  the  object  at  all.  The  sec- 
ondary qualities  of  matter,  such  as  color,  sound  and  smell,  he  grants  to  be 
"not  objects  of  perception  at  all,  being  only  the  unknown  causes  of  sub- 
jective affections  in  the  percipient,  and  therefore  incapable  of  being  imme- 
diately perceived.  "  t  Even  the  primary  qualities  of  matter  in  external 
objects  we  do  not  apprehend  directly,  but  only  through  "the  consciousness 
that  our  locomotive  energy  is  resisted,  and  not  resisted  by  aught  in  the  or- 
ganism itself.  For  in  the  consciousness  of  being  thus  resisted  is  involved, 
as  a  correlative,  the  consciousness  of  a  resisting  something.  "  Porter  also 
remarks  that  Hamilton  does  not  explain  how,  in  the  necessity  of  finding  for 
this  effect  an  extra-organic  cause,  this  "  correlative,  "  "resisting  something  '' 
must  be  shown  to  be  also  extended.  ' '  The  agent,  the  ego,  as  percipient 
and  actor,  is  not  extended  ;  why  may  not  the  extra-organic  agent  and  non- 
ego  be  non-extended,  or  why  must  it  be  extended  ?  "  \ 

If  we  add  now  to  this  statement  of  Hamilton's  doctrine  the  fact  that  in 
his  view  "sensation  proper  has  no  object  but  a  subject-object,  "  in  other 
words,  an  affection  of  the  animated  organism,  we  shall  see  that  his  Natural 
Realism  limits  itself  to  a  knowledge  of  primary  qualities  in  our  own  organ- 
ism. If  we  go  further  and  consider  his  concessions  to  Idealism,  we  shall  be 
able  to  narrow  down  the  controversy  still  more.  In  that  remarkable  table 
of  systematic  schemes  of  external  perception  which  he  has  appended  to  his 
edition  of  the  Works  of  Reid,  §  he  has  defined  Idealists  as  those  who  view 
the  object  of  consciousness  in  perception  as  ideal,  that  is,  as  a  phenomenon 
in  or  of  mind.  As  denying  that  this  ideal  object  has  any  external  proto- 
type, they  may  be  styled  Absolute  Idealists.  The  chief  merit  of  Hamil- 
ton's classification,  however,  is  to  be  found  in  his  subdivision  of  Absolute 
Idealists  into  two  subordinate  classes,  according  as  the  Idea  is,  or  is  not, 
considered  a  modification  of  the  percipient  mind.  We  have  then  the  two 
schemes  of  Egoistical  and  Non-egoistical  Idealism.  The  former  is,  in  gen- 
eral, the  scheme  of  the  German  thinkers  ;  the  latter  the  scheme  of  the  Eng- 
lish thinkers,  notably  of  Berkeley.  Of  the  former  we  have  already  said  all 
that  is  needful ;  with  regard  to  the  latter  we  wish  to  point  out  a  fact  that  is 
not  so  generally  understood,  namely,  that  this  form  of  Idealism  regards  the 
Idea  not  as  a  mode  of  the  human  mind.  While  it  is  not  a  mode  of  the 
mind,  it  may  yet  be  in  the  mind  —  infused  into  it  by  God  ;  or  it  may  not 


*  Dissertations  on  Reid,  note  C,  pp.  816,  817. 
t  Porter,  Human  Intellect,  p.  237. 
$  Porter,  Human  Intellect,  pp.  184, 185. 
§  Note  C,  p.  817. 


MODERN    IDEALISM.  63 

be  in  the  perceiving  mind  itself,  but  in  the  divine  Intelligence,  to  which 
the  perceiving  mind  is  intimately  present,  and  in  which  the  perceiving 
mind  views  it.  Lotze,  of  all  the  Germans,  seems  to  hold  to  this  latter  form 
of  Idealism.  The  world  to  him  is  a  series  of  phenomena,  without  value  in 
itself,  and  having  value  only  as  its  meaning  is  valuable  ;  and  the  mind  of 
man  is  "like  a  spectator  who  comprehends  the  aesthetic  significance  of  that 
which  takes  place  on  the  stage  of  a  theatre,  and  would  gain  nothing  essen- 
tial if  he  were  to  see,  besides,  the  machinery  by  means  of  which  the  changes 
are  effected  on  the  stage.  "  * 

Bishop  Berkeley  in  his  earlier  writings  seemed  to  regard  all  knowledge 
as  conversant  with  the  affections  of  the  percipient  mind.  He  hardly  dis- 
tinguished between  the  idea  as  an  object  and  the  idea  as  an  act.  The  first 
statements  seem,  therefore,  to  be  statements  of  subjective  idealism.  ' '  Sense- 
percepts  differ  from  the  ideas  of  the  imagination  only  in  degree,  not  in 
kind ;  and  both  belong  to  the  individual  mind.  "  t  But  in  later  years 
Berkeley  saw  what  some  of  his  followers  have  not  seen,  namely,  that  things 
are  not  mere  possible  sensations  —  these  would  afford  no  explanation  of  the 
permanent  existence  of  real  objects.  He  came,  therefore,  to  regard  exter- 
nal things  as  caused  in  a  regular  order  by  the  divine  will,  and  indepen- 
dently of  our  individual  experience.  When  we  look  at  external  things,  we 
look  at  ideal  existences  in  the  divine  mind  —  archetypes  —  of  which  sense- 
experience  may  be  said  to  be  the  recognition  and  realization  in  our  intelli- 
gence. So  Berkeley's  later  statements  are  statements  of  objective,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  subjective,  idealism.  The  world  without  has  the  best  guar- 
antee for  its  reality  and  permanence  in  that  it  is  the  constant  expression  of 
an  omnipresent  and  eternal  Mind.  The  non-ego,  in  fact,  is  God,  mani- 
festing his  intelligence  and  his  will.  As  we  live,  move  and  have  our  being 
in  God  physically,  so  we  live,  move  and  have  our  being  in  God  mentally. 
Even  self-consciousness  has  its  basis  in  God's  ideas  of  us  ;  and  memory  i» 
only  the  reading  of  our  past,  in  God's  record-book.  The  existence  of  the 
inner  as  well  as  the  outer  world  in  God,  while  it  is  an  ideal  existence,  is  yet 
the  most  secure  and  permanent  that  can  possibly  be  conceived. 

Here  then  we  have  an  objective  Idealism  which  is  free  from  some  of  the 
objections  to  which  the  common  German  Idealism  is  exposed.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  note  how  gently  Sir  William  Hamilton  treated  it.  In  a  foot-note 
to  the  last-mentioned  of  his  Dissertations  he  says  :  — 

"The  general  approximation  of  thorough-going  Eealism  and  thorough- 
going Idealism  here  given  may,  at  first  sight,  be  startling.  On  reflection, 
however,  their  radical  affinity  will  prove  well-grounded.  Both  build  upon 
the  same  fundamental  fact  —  that  the  extended  object  immediately  per- 
ceived is  identical  with  the  extended  object  actually  existing  ;  —  for  the 
truth  of  this  fact,  both  can  appeal  to  the  common  sense  of  mankind  ;  and 
to  the  common  sense  of  mankind  Berkeley  did  appeal,  not  less  confidently, 
and  perhaps  more  logically,  than  Eeid.  Natural  Bealism  and  Absolute 
Idealism  are  the  only  systems  worthy  of  a  philosopher  ;  for,  as  they  alone 
have  any  foundation  in  consciousness,  so  they  alone  have  any  consistency 
in  themselves.  " 


*  Lotze,  Outlines  of  Metaphysics  (Ladd),  p.  152. 

t  Adamson  on  Berkeley,  in  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 


64  MODERN    IDEALISM. 

And  in  his  reply  to  the  Berkeleian,  T.  Collyns  Simon,  Hamilton  expressly 
says  :  *  — 

"If  Berkeley  held  that  the  Deity  caused  one  permanent  material  universe 
(be  it  supposed  apart  or  not  apart  from  his  own  essence),  which  universe,  on 
coming  into  relation  with  our  minds  through  the  medium  of  our  bodily  organ- 
ism, is  in  certain  of  its  correlative  sides  or  phases,  so  to  speak,  external  to  our 
organism,  objectively  or  really  perceived  (the  primary  qualities),  or  deter- 
mines in  us  certain  subjective  affections  of  which  we  are  conscious  (the  sec- 
ondary qualities)  ;  in  that  case  I  must  acknowledge  Berkeley's  theory  to  be 
virtually  one  of  natural  realism,  the  differences  being  only  verbal.  But 
again,  if  Berkeley  held  that  the  Deity  caused  no  permanent  material  uni- 
verse to  exist  and  to  act  uniformly  as  one,  but  does  himself  either  infuse 
into  our  several  minds  the  phenomena  (ideas)  perceived  and  affective,  or 
determines  our  several  minds  to  elicit  within  consciousness  such  appre- 
hended qualities  or  felt  affections,  in  that  case  I  can  recognize  in  Berkeley's 
theory  only  a  scheme  of  theistic  idealism,  —  in  fact,  only  a  scheme  of  per- 
petual and  universal  miracle,  against  which  the  law  of  parcimony  is  conclu- 
sive, if  the  divine  interposition  be  not  proved  necessary  to  render  possible 
the  facts.  " 

Hamilton  here  seems  to  grant  that  Absolute  Idealism,  if  it  be  non-egois- 
tical, and  if  it  regard  the  ideal  object  as  not  in  the  mind  itself,  is  virtually 
the  same  with  Natural  Realism.  Whether  this  was  the  philosophy  of 
Berkeley  may  be  matter  of  question  ;  but  it  is  at  any  rate  along  this  line  ' 
that  our  younger  thinkers  in  philosophy  are  working.  A  world  of  ideas, 
indistinguishable  by  us  from  external  realities,  constituting  in  fact  the  only 
external  realities,  is  open  to  our  minds  by  virtue  of  our  living,  moving,  and 
having  our  being,  in  God.  In  our  investigations  of  nature  as  well  as  in  our 
examination  of  our  own  consciousness,  we  are  only,  as  Kepler  said,  "  think- 
ing of  God's  thoughts  after  him,  "  or  rather  perceiving  the  ideal  realities  of 
God's  being.  Such  a  conception  is  not  necessarily  merely  logical,  like 
Hegel's  :  God  may  be  heart,  as  well  as  mind  ;  may  be  conscience  and  will, 
as  well  as  intellect.  But  creation,  on  this  view,  is  an  ideal  process  ;  the 
world,  before  finite  intelligences  existed,  had  only  an  ideal  existence  in 
God's  mind,  even  as  it  now  exists  only  in  the  minds  of  God  and  of  his 
creatures. 

There  is  a  reason  for  this  increasing  prevalence  of  Idealism.  Science  has 
resolved  the  sensible  universe  into  various  modes  of  motion.  Smell,  sound, 
color,  equally  with  pleasure  and  pain,  are  subjective  sensations.  The  causes 
of  them  are  not  like  in  nature  to  the  effects  —  they  are  only  vibrations  of 
some  external  medium, — 

"  What  sees  is  Mind,  what  hears  is  Mind ; 
The  ear  and  eye  are  deaf  and  blind.  " 

What  is  true  of  the  so-called  secondary  qualities  of  matter  is  equally  true 
of  the  primary.  Even  extension  and  impenetrability  can  be  conceived  of 
only  in  relation  to  some  sentient  being  which  experiences  resistance  to  its 
locomotive  energy  or  which  resists  some  locomotive  energy  from  without. 
In  fine,  "matter  can  be  defined  only  in  terms  of  sensation;  yet  without 


Veitch,  Memoir  of  Sir  William  Hamilton,  p.  346, 


MODERN    IDEALISM.  65 

miud  sensation  is  impossible."  Hence  the  idealist  concludes  that  all  that 
we  know  of  matter  is  ideal.  Certain  sensations  in  ourselves  comprise  the 
whole  of  our  knowledge.  The  causes  of  these  sensations  are  unknown. 
Vibrations,  motions,  molecules,  atoms,  aye,  even  force  itself,  are  but  names 
for  the  unknown  causes  of  our  subjective  states.  Here  is  the  refutation  of 
materialism  ;  for  matter  can  have  no  meaning  except  in  connection  with 
percipient  mind.  Materialism  can  never  explain  the  nature  of  atoms  ;  they 
can  be  conceived  of  neither  as  indivisible  nor  as  infinitely  divisible.  Even 
the  materialistic  conception  of  law  involves  the  idea  of  mind  as  ordering  the 
arrangements  of  the  universe.  The  cause  of  our  sensations  does  not  need 
to  be  material  —  it  may  be  spiritual  instead.  What  we  call  the  world  out- 
side of  us  may  be  the  constant  product  of  a  divine  activity  working  upon 
our  own  minds  ;  better  still,  it  may  be  a  constant  ideal  divine  presentation 
to  our  minds. 

There  are  many  considerations  once  urged  against  Idealism  which  we 
must  pronounce  invalid  against  this  new  form  of  idealistic  doctrine.  It  has 
been  said  that  ideas,  as  given,  presuppose  an  objective  reality  as  cause. 
The  new  idealism  accepts  the  dictum,  but  declares  the  world  of  ideas,  as 
neither  in  the  mind  nor  a  modification  of  the  mind,  to  be  just  such  an  ob- 
jective reality.  In  other  words,  objective  idealism  declines  any  longer  to 
be  treated  as  subjective  idealism  ;  it  regards  ideas  as  something  distinct 
from  the  cognition  of  them ;  it  may  even  hold  that  these  ideas  are  them- 
selves extended,  and  that  they  have  all  the  qualities  which  we  now  attribute 
to  the  material  and  external  object.  May  not  God  suggest  ideas  to  me, 
which  are  not  in  me  nor  of  me  ?  Do  we  not,  by  words,  suggest  such  ideas 
to  one  another  ?  It  may  seem  strange  to  hear  of  ideas  which  are  not  of  the 
mind  ;  but  the  idealist  would  regard  such  ideas  as  actually  constituting  the 
objective  reality  which  we  perceive.  Of  such  a  sort  he  would  regard  even 
the  extended  matter  which  we  see.  It  is  an  ideal  object,  existing  only  for 
intelligence,  and  as  inseparable  from  intelligence  as  the  pleasure  or  pain  we 
feel  in  viewing  it.  The  apple,  for  example,  exists  for  mind  and  only  for 
mind  ;  yet  it  has  an  objective  existence  to  the  mind,  and  is  not  a  mere  mode 
of  the  mind.  The  best  illustration  of  the  theory,  however,  is  derived  from 
the  mind's  relation  to  abstract  truth.  This  truth  exists  by  virtue  of  the 
minds  that  perceive  it ;  yet  it  is  neither  in  nor  of  the  human  mind  alone. 
While  it  is  objective  to  man,  it  is  subjective  to  God.  So,  it  may  be  argued, 
does  the  universe  exist.  God's  ideas  constitute  its  reality,  its  permanence, 
its  stability.  It  is  as  little  the  product  of  the  finite  individual  mind,  as  is  the 
law  of  gravitation,  or  the  existence  of  space,  or  the  truth  that  right  is 
obligatory.  And  yet  it  exists  only  in  intelligence,  and  for  intelligence  ;  for, 
whether  man  is  or  is  not,  all  things  subsist  eternally  in  God. 

Here  is  the  theory  which  claims,  equally  with  natural  realism,  that  objects 
are  perceived  directly.  The  objection  has  frequently  been  made  to  the 
theory  of  representative  perception,  that  either  in  spite  of  the  idea  objects 
remain  unknown,  or  by  means  of  it  they  become  known,  in  which  case  there 
must  be  a  comparison  of  ideas  with  their  objects  —  a  comparison  which  can 
have  no  meaning  or  value  except  upon  the  hypothesis  that  the  objects  are 
known  already.  But  the  theory  we  are  considering  is  a  theory  of  presenta- 
tive,  and  not  of  representative,  idealism.  In  this  theory  the  ideas  are  them- 
5 


66  MODERN   IDEALISM. 

selves  the  objects,  and  the  only  objects  ;  as  such  they  are  perceived  directly, 
and  there  can  be  no  talk  about  comparing  them  with  any  reality  beyond . 
Over  against  this  simplest  form  of  Idealism  we  desire  to  put  the  simplest 
form  of  Natural  Realism,  in  order  that  we  may  compare  the  merits  of  the 
two.  This  simplest  form  of  Natural  Realism  holds  only  that  we  know  some- 
thing in  space  and  time,  something  distinguishable  from  God  as  well  as 
from  ourselves,  something  which  has  permanent  power  to  produce  sensa- 
tions in  us,  something  which  continues  to  exist  whether  we  perceive  it  or 
not.  In  short,  Natural  Realism  holds  to  the  existence  of  a  somewhat  inter- 
mediate between  God  and  the  soul,  even  though  this  somewhat  be  nothing 
more  than  force.  God  and  the  soul  are  not  the  only  entities.  The  world 
exists  not  only  ideally  but  also  substantially,  and  this  substantial  world  ex- 
ists in  the  form  of  extended  externality. 

The  first  consideration  which  suggests  itself  in  comparing  these  two  op- 
posing views  is  that  Objective  Idealism  rests  upon  the  exceedingly  precari- 
ous assumption  that  the  mind  is  capable  of  knowing  only  Ideas,  while 
Natural  Realism  has  in  its  favor  the  universal  belief  of  mankind  that  we 
know  thing.?  as  well.  Certainly  the  presumption  is  that  the  universal  belief 
of  mankind  is  a  correct  one  ;  and  this  belief  is  not  to  be  surrendered  until  it 
be  shown  self -contradictory.  To  say  that  things  are  ideas,  is  to  common 
sense  a  yet  greater  absurdity.  Men  in  general  make  a  perfectly  clear  dis- 
tinction between  thoughts  and  external  objects,  and  they  cannot  be  per- 
suaded to  confound  the  one  with  the  other.  They  may  be  persuaded  to  ac- 
cept a  thousand  vagaries  with  regard  to  the  ultimate  constitution  of  matter ; 
they  may  believe  in  ultimate  atoms  and  vortex-rings ;  even  the  fourth 
dimension  of  space  may  come  to  seem  credible  to  them  ;  but  to  dissolve  the 
external  world  into  a  dream,  even  though  that  dream  be  a  permanent  one 
and  the  very  image  of  reality,  is  beyond  the  utmost  stretch  of  their  cre- 
dulity. 

Idealism  is  inconsistent  with  itself.  It  is  compelled  to  admit  that  in  know- 
ing ideas  the  mind  knows  self.  We  cannot  know  ideas  except  by  projecting 
them  as  it  were  from  the  mind.  *  Thus  we  cannot  know  the  non-ego,  even 
in  the  shape  of  ideas,  without  also  knowing  the  ego  that  has  the  idc;is. 
Self -consciousness  then  is  a  witness  to  the  existence  of  a  permanent  some- 
what underneath  all  ideas,  and  which  all  ideas  presuppose.  But  this  per- 
manent somewhat  which  manifests  itself  in  mental  phenomena  and  is  the 
subject  of  them,  which  in  fact  is  known  in  and  by  the  same  concrete  act  in 
which  we  know  our  ideas,  cannot  possibly  be  conceived  in  any  other  way 
than  as  an  indivisible,  identical  entity.  It  cannot  itself  be  an  idea,  or  a 
combination  of  ideas,  for  the  very  first  idea  presupposes  it.  It  cannot  be  a 
mere  succession  of  feelings,  for  the  mind  never  knows  itself  as  a  succession 
of  feelings  —  if  it  could  do  so,  it  would  know  itself  as  that  which  was  not  I. 
It  cannot  be  simply  a  relation,  for  relation  is  inconceivable  unless  there  ar<> 
things  or  ideas  to  be  related,  and  these  things  or  ideas  must  go  before  the 
relation,  whereas  self  is  known  not  as  the  product  of  ideas  but  as  producing 
ideas.  So  idealism  is  forced  to  grant  the  existence  of  something  before 
ideas,  and  more  than  ideas,  namely,  the  self.  But  this  permanent  some- 


*  J.  Clark  Murray,  Hand-book  of  Psychology,  p.  279. 


MODERN    IDEALISM.  6? 

what  which  we  call  self  is  just  such  an  entity  as  we  designate  by  substance  ; 
and  the  concession  of  the  existence  of  mental  substance  logically  carries 
with  it  the  concession  that  material  substance  may  exist  also. 

Idealism  of  the  objective  sort  tries  in  vain  to  maintain  the  purely  ideal 
character  of  the  external  world,  and  at  the  same  time  to  declare  that  the 
object  perceived  is  different  from  the  act  of  perception.  But  if  the  object 
perceived  be  different  from  the  act  of  perception  —  in  other  words,  if 
objective  idealism  be  not  resolved  into  subjective  idealism,  if  non-egotistic 
idealism  be  not  resolved  into  egotistic  idealism  —  then  the  existence  of  the 
object  cannot  be  dependent  upon  the  percipient  act,  its  esse  cannot  be  per- 
cipi.  Its  intellectual  existence,  if  we  may  so  speak,  is  contingent  upon  the 
existence  of  a  perceiving  intellect.  But  this  is  only  to  say  that  it  cannot  be 
known  without  knowledge,  cannot  be  apprehended  without  mind,  cannot  fulfil 
its  purpose  without  being  perceived,  either  by  God  or  man.  The  error  of  the 
theory  is  in  confounding  intellectual  existence,  or  the  existence  of  the  object 
as  known,  with  its  real  existence.  As  Professor  Knight  has  said  :  "  That 
the  object  perceived  has  a  relation  of  intellectual  dependence  on  the  percip- 
ient subject  is  obvious,  so  far  as  his  cognition  extends ;  but  if  the  object 
perceived  be  different  from  the  act  of  perception,  it  cannot  be  in  any  sense 
dependent  on  it,  or  oil  a  similar  act,  for  its  existence."  And  so  we  agree 
with  Veitch,  when  he  says  that  Hamilton  granted  too  much  to  Berkeley, 
in  saying  that  a  non-egotistical  idealism  is  hardly  distinguishable  from 
natural  realism.* 

Idealism  gives  no  proper  account  of  the  distinction  between  the  non-ego 
in  the  shape  of  ideas  and  the  non-ego  in  the  shape  of  our  bodily  organism  ; 
in  other  words,  it  ignores  the  difference  between  body  and  the  idea  of 
body.  Nothing  can  be  plainer  to  the  common  mind  than  that  it  knows 
something  outside  of  itself  and  different  from  itself,  something  extended, 
something  in  space,  something  which  causes  ideas  but  which  is  not  itself 
ideas.  The  mind  not  only  distinguishes  itself  from  the  body  it  inhabits, 
but  it  distinguishes  its  ideas  of  body  from  the  body  of  which  it  forms  ideas. 
It  ascribes  to  the  body  externality  and  extension.  These  properties  cannot 
be  conceived  as  belonging  to  ideas.  The  idea  of  body  and  the  actual  body 
are  no  less  distinct  than  are  the  idea  of  a  house  and  the  actual  house.  Body 
is  apprehended  as  something  permanent  and  independent  of  our  perception 
of  it ;  but,  more  than  this,  it  is  apprehended  as  existing  over  against  the 
percipient  mind,  as  capable  of  measurement  by  the  mind,  as  having  spatial 
relations  in  a  way  that  the  mind  has  not.  This  belief  in  the  existence  of  a 
real  in  distinction  from  a  merely  ideal  body,  a  body  that  is  extended  and 
external  to  the  mind,  is  the  most  primary  and  important  fact  of  sense- 
perception.  Idealism,  by  failing  to  explain  this  belief,  fails  at  the  most 
critical  point  of  all.  It  attempts  to  confound  outness  with  distance,  whereas 
distance  is  only  a  peculiar  degree  of  outness,  and  itself  presupposes  outness. 
And,  as  Veitch  has  well  shown,  the  externality  of  the  object  of  sense  is  no 
more  unintelligible  than  is  the  externality  of  one  mind  to  another  mind,  or 
to  God.t  Here  we  are  persuaded  that  Natural  Kealism  has  a  stronghold 
from  which  no  speculative  Idealism  can  ever  dislodge  it.  Reduce  the 


*  Veitch's  Hamilton,  p.  178. 

t  Veitch's  Hamilton,  pp.  186-188. 


68  MODEKN    IDEALISM. 

problem  to  its  simplest  terms  if  you  will  —  put  on  the  one  side  an  objective 
idealism  of  divine  ideas  independent  of  our  causation  and  perceived  as 
something  permanent  and  separate  from  our  perceiving  minds  —  put  on  the 
other  side  a  natural  realism,  holding  that  we  perceive  an  actually  extended 
object  in  space,  at  least  in  our  own  organism,  whose  existence,  as  real,  we 
distinguish  from  any  possible  ideal  existence  —  and  we  must  decide  that  the 
latter  represents  the  facts  of  our  experience,  while  the  former  contradicts 
them. 

Idealism  finds  in  self  the  ground  of  unity  for  mental  phenomena.  It 
should  find  in  material  substance  the  ground  of  unity  for  material  phenom- 
ena. Not  that  this  knowledge  of  mental  or  material  substance,  as  the  case 
may  be,  is  reached  in  either  case  by  any  process  of  inference  or  argument. 
It  is  the  inevitable  and  universal  judgment  of  the  reason,  in  connection 
with  self-consciousness,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  sense-perception  on  the 
other.  When  we  recognize  thoughts,  we  recognize  the  self  as  thinking  ; 
when  we  perceive  qualities  of  matter,  we  perceive  that  they  belong  to  some- 
thing which  they  qualify.  The  qualities  and  the  substance  qualified  are 
known  in  the  same  concrete  act ;  though  we  ascribe  to  sense  the  cognition 
of  quality,  to  reason  the  cognition  of  substance.  Without  this  cognition  of 
substance  the  impressions  of  sense  could  have  no  unity  and  could  give  us 
no  knowledge  of  things.  Sensation  brings  us  in  contact  only  with  points. 
These  points  would  be  heterogeneous  and  disconnected  if  they  were  not 
recognized  by  some  power  as  related  to  each  other.  Our  knowledge  of  an 
object  is  not  a  knowledge  of  these  points,  but  rather  of  a  whole  which  these 
points  manifest ;  these  points  can  be  related  to  each  other,  and  fused  into 
•a  whole,  only  by  the  recognition  of  a  somewhat  to  which  they  belong  and 
of  which  they  are  phenomena.  The  soul's  judgment  that  there  is  a  material 
substance,  in  which  material  qualities  inhere  and  which  gives  these  quali- 
ties their  ground  of  unity,  is  just  as  inevitable  an  act  of  reason  as  that  other 
judgment  which  accompanies  the  thoughts  within  and  finds  for  them  a 
ground  of  unity  in  the  cognition  of  a  mental  substance  which  we  call  the 
conscious  self. 

Idealism  confounds  the  conditions  of  external  knowledge  with  the  objects 
of  knowledge.  What  is  the  object  of  knowledge  in  sense-perception  ? 
This  theory  replies:  "The  object  of  sense-perception  is  sensations  or 
ideas;"  and  it  propounds  the  dilemma:  "Either  the  object  is  unknown 
tmd  the  mind  knows  only  ideas,  or  ideas  are  known  and  there  is  no  need  of 
assuming  the  existence  of  any  other  object  whatever. "  But  the  same  rule 
should  work  equally  well,  or  ill,  when  applied  to  the  world  within.  We 
should  then  be  compelled  to  say  :  ' '  Either  the  ego  is  unknown  and  the 
mind  knows  only  ideas,  or  the  ideas  are  known  and  there  is  no  need  of 
assuming  the  existence  of  any  ego  at  all."  The  majority  of  idealists  will 
not  say  this.  Berkeley  would  have  denied  it,  for  he  strenuously  held  to  the 
existence  of  spirit  and  to  our  consciousness  of  its  existence.  But  it  was  by 
an  inconsistency  in  his  logic  that  he  so  held,  and  Hume  remorselessly 
exposed  this  inconsistency.  In  self-consciousness  we  have  the  key  to  the 
problem.  Mysterious  as  it  might  speculatively  seem  that  mind  should 
know  self  in  knowing  its  own  thoughts,  it  is  still  a  fact  that  mind  does  thus 
know  self ;  and  to  say  that  the  thoughts  are  the  only  objects  of  knowledge 


MODERN    IDEALISM.  69 

is  to  confound  objects  of  knowledge  with  conditions  of  knowledge.  So,  in 
the  external  world,  we  cannot  know  matter  except  through  sensations  and 
ideas;  but  to  make  sensations  and  ideas  the  only  objects  of  knowledge  is 
here  also  to  confound  objects  of  knowledge  with  conditions  of  knowledge. 
In  sense-perception,  my  ideas  and  sensations  are  mere  conditions  of  knowl- 
edge. In  and  through  them  I  cognize  that  which  is  beyond,  that  which 
produces  in  me  the  ideas  and  sensations,  namely,  external  objects,  at  least 
in  my  own  organism  —  objects  which  by  analysis  I  see  to  include  both  sub- 
stance and  quality.  I  see  the  moon  in  like  manner  through  the  telescope  ; 
the  telescope  is  the  means  or  condition  of  my  seeing  the  moon.  I  may,  it 
is  true,  turn  my  attention  exclusively  to  the  telescope  and  make  that  the 
object  of  my  thought ;  yet  he  would  talk  very  absurdly  who  should  say  that 
either  the  moon  is  unknown  and  I  know  only  the  telescope,  or  the  telescope 
is  known  and  there  is  no  need  of  assuming  the  existence  of  any  moon 
beyond  it.  The  truth  is  that  I  cognize  the  moon  through  the  telescope ; 
if  I  choose  I  can  think  of  both  telescope  and  moon  together;  but  the 
absurdest  of  all  things  is  to  say  that,  in  looking  through  the  telescope,  I  see 
the  telescope  only  and  not  the  moon.  So  Idealism  confounds  the  condi- 
tions of  knowledge  with  the  objects  of  knowledge.  That  through  ideas  and 
sensations  we  have  knowledge  of  things,  is  one  of  the  most  indubitable  facts 
of  consciousness. 

The  Idealist  cannot  be  consistent  without  denying  the  existence  of  any 
other  intelligent  being  besides  himself.  He  claims  that  the  mind  can  know 
only  ideas.  What  we  call  the  external  world  is  only  a  succession  or  combi- 
nation of  ideas,  and  hence  no  material  substance  can  be  known.  But  what 
we  call  our  fellow-beings — are  not  they  also  only  successions  or  combina- 
tions of  ideas  in  wlu\ch  by  the  same  rule  no  mental  substance  can  be 
known  ?  Self-consciousness  compels  the  Idealist  to  recognize  a  self  which 
is  the  permanent  basis  and  habitat  of  his  own  ideas ;  but  why  should  he 
recognize  the  existence  of  other  people  ?  If  material  things  are  nothing 
but  ideas,  then  our  fellow-men  are  nothing  but  ideas.  If  my  neighbor's 
body  exists  only  in  idea,  then  his  soul  must  also  exist  only  in  idea.  The 
mere  fact  that  the  highway  robber,  when  he  attacks  me,  seems  to  be  a 
conscious  personality,  must  not  blind  me  to  the  fact  that  he,  like  the  club 
which  he  carries,  is  but  a  series  or  combination  of  ideas.  I  shall  be  a  very 
inconsistent  Idealist  if  I  regard  that  series  of  ideas  as  responsible  or  guilty  ; 
for  responsibility  and  guilt  imply  something  more  than  a  series  or  combina- 
tion of  ideas  —  they  imply  a  subject,  a  mind,  a  permanent  self,  endowed 
with  conscience  and  free  will.  In  short,  we  must  become  solipsists,  believ- 
ers only  in  our  own  existence.  But  we  cannot  stop  even  here.  The  solip- 
sist  cannot  long  believe  even  in  the  existence  of  himself,  if  by  "himself 
he  means  a  permanent,  identical,  substantial  soul.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact 
the  new  Psychology  in  Germany  —  the  psychology  of  Wundt  and  Fechner, 
describes  itself  as  "psychology  without  a  soul." 

The  new  Idealism  seeks  to  avoid  the  solipsistic  conclusion  by  taking 
refuge  in  the  consciousness  of  God,  and  by  making  that  the  guarantee  for 
the  objective  existence  of  our  fellow-men.  It  is  a  vain  resource.  The  same 
rule  which  deprives  us  of  all  guarantee  for  the  existence  of  our  fellow-men 
deprives  us  also  of  all  guarantee  for  the  existence  of  God.  If  we  know  only 


70  MODERN    IDEALISM. 

ideas  in  the  case  of  our  fellow-men,  we  can  know  only  ideas  in  the  case  of 
God.  And  if  God  is  only  a  series  or  combination  of  ideas,  what  possible 
meaning  is  there  in  the  phrase  "consciousness  of  God,"  the  utterance  of 
which  seems  such  a  relief  to  the  Idealist  ?  A  consciousness,  with  no  being 
to  be  conscious  ;  consciousness  without  a  self  ;  universal  thinking  without  a 
thinker  —  ah,  it  is  our  old  Hegelian  acquaintance:  "thinking  thinks!" 
Notice  how  completely  this  philosophy  merges  the  affectional  and  the 
volitional  elements  of  the  divine  Being  in  the  merely  intellectual,  and  then 
transmutes  even  that  into  the  vague  phrase  "universal  consciousness."  It 
is  the  God  without  personality  or  moral  character,  without  love  or  will, 
which  the  purely  speculative  intellect  ever  seeks  to  substitute  for  the  living 
God,  the  God  of  holiness  who  denounces  and  punishes  sin,  the  God  of  love 
who  redeems  from  sin  by  his  own  atoning  sacrifice.  Did  I  say  that  this 
theory  gave  us  a  non-moral  God — a  stone  in  place  of  bread?  It  does  not 
even  give  us  this  —  a  consistent  idealism  can  give  us  no  God  at  all,  it  can 
give  us  only  the  idea  of  him.  If  we  know  only  ideas,  we  can  have  no  more 
guarantee  that  God  or  man  objectively  exists  than  we  can  have  for  the 
objective  existence  of  matter. 

Idealism  is  monistic  in  its  whole  conception  of  the  universe.  It  claims 
to  be  a  "one-substance"  theory,  although  it  should  in  consistency  call 
itself  a  "  no-substance  "  theory  instead.  It  repudiates  the  doctrine  of  two 
substances,  matter  and  mind,  because  it  cannot  understand  how  mind 
should  ever  in  that  case  be  able  to  know  matter.  Materialism  declares  that 
mind  knows  matter  because  mind  is  matter  ;  idealism  declares  that  mind 
knows  matter  because  matter  is  mind.  The  one  is  just  as  much  an  arbitrary 
assumption  as  is  the  other.  Both  are  argumenta  ad  ignorantiam. 
Because  we  cannot  explain  how  we  know  that  which  is  other  than  ourselves, 
shall  we  deny  that  we  do  know  things  and  beings  other  than  ourselves  ? 
It  is  not  essential  to  knowledge  that  there  be  identity  or  even  similarity  of 
nature  between  the  knower  and  the  known.  God  can  know  what  sin  is  — 
aye,  only  God  can  fully  know  the  nature  of  evil.  It  is  just  as  much  a  prob- 
lem how  we  can  know  ourselves,  as  it  is  how  we  can  know  the  external 
world.  "  The  primitive  dualism  of  consciousness  "  is  just  as  inexplicable 
as  the  primitive  dualism  of  substance.  ' '  The  mental  act  in  which  self  is 
known  implies,  like  every  other  mental  act,  a  perceiving  subject  and  a  per- 
ceived object.  If  then  the  object  perceived  is  self,  what  is  the  subject 
that  perceives  ?  or,  if  it  is  the  true  self  which  thinks,  what  other  self  can  it 
be  that  is  thought  of  ?  "  But  this  very  consciousness  of  personality,  this 
very  cognition  of  self  of  which  Herbert  Spencer  speaks,  in  the  words  I 
have  quoted,  he  declares  in  the  next  sentence  to  be  "a  fact  beyond  all 
others  the  most  certain,  "  *  and  in  spite  of  his  subsequent  attempts  to 
explain  it  away,  we  may  take  his  testimony  as  to  the  universal  fact  of  its 
existence.  But  if  man  knows  a  non-ego  in  his  own  thoughts,  he  may  know 
a  non-ego  in  other  beings  or  in  the  world  outside  of  him  ;  and  our  inability 
to  explain  the  mode  of  this  knowledge  should  not  for  a  moment  shake  our 
confidence  in  the  fact. 

Idealism  is  compelled  to  recognize  an  action  of  the  ivill  upon  matter, — 


*  First  Principles,  p.  65. 


MODERN    IDEALISM.  71 

why  should  it  not  with  equal  readiness  recognize  an  action  of  the  intellect 
upon  matter  ?  If  I  can  move  something  outside  myself,  why  can  I  not 
know  something  outside  myself  ?  It  seems  absurd  to  suppose  that  I  pro- 
duce effects  only  upon  an  ideal  world  when  I  exert  my  powers  of  volition, 
—  why  is  it  not  equally  absurd  to  suppose  that  I  know  only  an  ideal  world 
when  I  exert  my  powers  of  sense-perception  ?  I  come  in  contact  with  real 
things  and  real  beings  when  I  use  my  will,  —  what  right  have  I  to  say  that 
I  come  in  contact  only  with  ideas  when  I  use  my  mind  ?  And,  when  we  rise 
to  the  consideration  of  God's  relation  to  the  world,  what  right  have  we  to 
say  that  God's  power  exhausts  itself  in  mere  thinking,  or  that  God  is  capa- 
ble of  no  creation  but  the  creation  of  ideas  ?  Man  can  make  a  thing  whose 
existence  continues  after  his  own  act  upon  it  has  ceased, —  cannot  God  do 
the  same?  Man  can  give  his  thoughts  objective  shapes  —  Phidias  and 
Praxiteles  put  their  ideas  into  form  and  make  them  live  forever, —  cannot 
God  give  substantive  expression  to  his  thoughts  also  ?  Must  God  be  shut 
up  to  an  eternal  process  of  thinking,  without  the  power  to  create  substances 
other  than  himself  which  shall  in  their  various  degrees  reflect  his  wisdom 
and  his  love  ?  Berkeley  believes  that  God  is  himself  a  Spirit,  and  that  he 
creates  finite  spirits  of  a  different  substance  from  himself.  Why  cannot  he 
who  has  thus  in  finite  spirits  disjoined  from  himself  a  certain  portion  of 
spiritual  force  and  given  to  it  a  relative  independency, — why  cannot  he  also 
and  just  as  easily  in  material  substance  disjoin  from  himself  a  certain  por- 
tion of  physical  force  and  give  to  it  a  relative  independency  ? 

I  have  thus  far  treated  Modem  Idealism  from  a  philosophical  point  of 
view,  and  I  have  endeavored  to  show  that  even  from  this  point  of  view  it 
possesses  no  advantages  over  the  doctrine  of  Natural  Realism.  But  we  are 
bound  to  look  further,  and  to  judge  the  new  system  by  its  probable  influ- 
ence upon  Christian  faith.  Is  it  consistent  with  the  things  "which  have 
been  fully  established  among  us  " —  the  accepted  teachings  of  Scripture?  I 
do  not  now  ask  whether  noted  Christian  thinkers  here  and  there  have  or 
have  not  held  to  the  idealistic  scheme.  Here  I  have  to  do,  not  with  the 
actual  results,  but  with  the  logical  tendencies  of  the  system,  while  at  the 
same  time  it  may  be  well  remembered  that  in  the  long  run  these  logical  ten- 
dencies make  themselves  practically  felt.  The  first  of  these  tendencies 
which  I  notice  in  the  new  philosophy  is  the  tendency  to  merge  all  things  in 
Ood.  Dr.  Krauth  *  very  properly  calls  it  the  weakness  of  idealism  that  it 
finds  unity  not  in  the  harmony  of  the  things  that  differ,  but  in  the  absorp- 
tion of  the  one  into  the  other.  Instead  of  tracing  all  things  to  one  source, 
it  prefers  the  shorter  and  easier  method  of  asserting  that  all  things  are  but 
forms  of  one  substance.  The  conception  of  a  God  who  is  all,  seems  to  it 
preferable  to  that  of  a  God  who  creates  aU.  In  this,  the  doctrine  runs 
directly  counter  to  the  Scripture  teaching  that  "  in  the  beginning  God  cre- 
ate.! the  heaven  and  the  earth,  "  and  so  removes  the  barrier  which  God  him- 
self has  set  up  against  a  pantheistic  confounding  of  himself  with  his  works. 
But  further  than  this,  idealism  destroys  all  distinction  between  the  possible 
and  the  actual.  A  possible  universe,  as  already  in  God's  thoughts,  is 
already  an  actual  universe ;  and,  vice  versa,  an  actual  universe,  as  only  in 


*  R.-rkeley's  Principles  of  Knowledg-e,  Krauth's  Prolegomena,  p.  130. 


72  MODERN    IDEALISM. 

God's  thoughts,  is  nothing  more  than  a  possible  universe.  The  whole  geo- 
logic and  astronomic  history  of  the  universe  before  man  came  upon  the 
planet  was  only  a  thought-history, — events,  aside  from  God's  thought  of 
them,  there  were  none.  Such  as  they  were,  they  always  were ;  and  the 
universe  is  as  eternal  in  the  past  as  is  God's  thought  of  it,  for  God's  thought 
is  the  universe.  And  since  the  future  universe  exists  only  in  God's  thought 
it  is  existent  now  as  much  as  it  will  ever  be.  Preservation  is  only  continu- 
ous creation  ;  continuous  creation  is  nothing  but  God's  thinking  ;  and  God's 
thinking  is  from  eternity  to  eternity.  Second  causes  do  not  exist ;  for,  as 
things  are  but  the  ideas  of  God,  all  changes  in  these  things  are  but  the  direct 
effects  of  a  divine  efficiency.  All  causal  connections  between  different  objects 
of  the  universe  are  at  an  end .  No  such  things  as  physical  forces  exist. 
Nature  becomes  a  mere  phantom,  and  God  is  the  only  cause  of  all  physical 
events.  Science  becomes  at  once,  not  the  study  of  nature,  but  the  study 
of  God. 

I  have  said  that  Idealism  destroys  all  distinction  between  the  possible  and 
the  actual ;  I  must  go  further,  and  say  that  it  destroys  all  distinction 
between  truth  and  error.  It  holds  that  ideas  alone  are  the  objects  of  knowl- 
edge ;  the  world  without  and  the  world  within  are  alike  ideas  ;  these  ideas 
constitute  the  world  ;  and  the  existence  of  these  ideas  is  due  directly  to  the 
causative  intelligence  of  God.  But  if  ideas  are  the  reality,  how  can  man 
have  false  ideas  ?  Is  it  not  beyond  dispute  that  we  have  ideas  which  do 
not  correspond  to  the  objective  truth  ?  Are  these  realities  also  ?  and  is  God 
the  author  of  them  ?  Men  have  selfish,  sensual,  murderous  thoughts  ;  they 
hate  and  malign  God ;  they  slander  and  destroy  his  creatures.  Are  these 
lying  ideas  and  representations  eternal  truths  and  realities  also  ?  Have  wr 
not  here  the  proof  that  the  divine  ideas  must  differ  from  sense-ideas  in  us, 
and  that  our  ideas  are  not  the  realities  but  only  individual  interpretations 
of  reality,  born  of  our  wilfulness  and  moral  perversion  ?  Berkeley  seems  at 
times  aware  that  there  is  a  difficulty  in  identifying  our  ideas  with  the  divine 
archetypes ;  but  the  fear  of  recognising  in  these  divine  archetypes  a  new 
sort  of  "things  in  themselves"  seems  to  have  prevented  him  from  making 
further  explanations.  Is  it  not  plain  that  no  explanation  is  possible  that 
identifies  the  idea  with  the  object  ?  Does  not  this  abolish  the  distinction 
between  truth  and  error,  and  make  both  our  right  and  our  wrong  the  direct 
product  of  the  divine  will  ? 

Why  should  not  Idealism  go  further,  and  declare  that  God  is  the  only 
cause  in  the  realm  of  spirit  as  well  as  in  the  realm  of  matter  ?  If  Idealism  be 
not  logically  self -contradictory,  it  must  do  this.  If  my  body,  so  far  as  it  is 
objective  to  me,  may  be  a  mere  idea  of  God,  then  my  soul,  so  far  as  it  is 
objective  to  me,  may  be  a  mere  idea  of  God  also.  All  my  ideas  are  ideas  of 
God,  and  God  causes  them.  What  becomes  of  my  personal  identity? 
What  is  to  prevent  Jonathan  Edwards,  as  he  does,  from  basing  identity 
upon  the  arbitrary  decree  of  God,  and  from  declaring  that  God,  merely  by 
so  decreeing,  makes  Adam's  posterity  one  with  their  first  father  and  respon- 
sible for  his  sin  ?  What  is  to  prevent  the  necessitarian  from  declaring  that, 
since  all  motives  are  ideas,  and  all  ideas  are  due  to  direct  divine  causation, 
the  soul  has  no  permanent  existence  of  its  own  and  no  freedom  that  can 
furnish  the  slightest  basis  for  responsibility  ?  What  we  call  the  moral  law 


MODERN    IDEALISM.  73 

is  nothing  but  the  presentation  of  a  sublime  divine  idea  ;  and  what  we  call 
sin  is  nothing  but  the  presentation  of  another  divine  idea  which  is  given  us 
simply  to  contrast  with,  and  to  emphasize,  the  first.  Both  evil  and  good 
are  purely  ideal.  Not  our  wills  but  our  thoughts  are  to  be  purged,  and  that 
by  imparting  to  us  both  the  good  thoughts  and  the  evil  thoughts  that  are 
in  the  mind  of  God.  The  freedom  to  choose  the  good  and  to  refuse  the 
evil  —  this  does  not  exist ;  for  this  would  imply  the  existence  of  a  substance 
separate  from  that  of  God.  God  is  equally  the  source  of  evil  and  of  good, 
—  the  morally  pure  and  the  morally  impure  are  both  alike  to  him.  What 
we  have  usually  regarded  as  the  greatest  of  blasphemies  is  only  simple  fact, 
for  God  is  not  only  the  author,  but  the  sole  author,  of  sin  ;  he  is  not  only 
the  sum  and  source  of  all  good,  he  is  also  the  sum  and  source  of  all  evil. 

All  this  is  to  deny  the  testimony  of  conscience,  and  to  strike  at  the  roots 
of  all  morality.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  the  whole  Christian  doctrine  of 
redemption  goes  by  the  board,  when  once  sin  is  regarded  as  a  natural  neces- 
sity, and  ideas  are  held  to  be  the  only  real  objects  of  knowledge.  It  is  no 
longer  necessary  to  believe  in  an  external  revelation  of  God's  will.  Internal 
revelation,  Christian  consciousness,  the  direct  presentation  to  our  minds  of 
new  ideas  from  God,  takes  the  place  of  outward  Scripture,  or  assumes  coor- 
dinate importance  and  authority  with  it.  It  is  no  longer  necessary  to  make 
a  clear  distinction  between  ideal  characterization  and  real  history.  Jesus 
Christ,  with  his  resurrection  from  the  dead,  his  atoning  death  and  ascen- 
sion to  the  Father,  can  now  be  conceived  of  after  an  ideal  fashion.  These 
things  never  were,  as  they  are  pictured  to  be  ;  but  that  makes  little  differ- 
ence,—  the  object  is  attained  —  namely,  the  fostering  of  an  idea  in  our 
minds.  Historical  testimony  becomes  of  little  account  when  it  contradicts 
a  preconceived  theory  ;  the  idea  is  better  than  the  fact  —  for  the  fact  itself 
is  only  an  idea.  And  if  it  be  suggested  that  to  the  man  who  thus  turns 
God's  facts  into  mere  ideas,  by  denying  the  record  that  God  gives  of  his 
Son,  there  will  come  the  sure  and  certain  punishment  of  his  unbelief,  the 
reply  is  easy,  that  since  punishment  can  come  only  in  idea,  and  ideas,  so 
far  as  we  know,  end  with  this  life,  there  is  little  to  fear,  for  since  this  life  is 
but  a  dream,  immortality  is  something  still  less  substantial  —  even  the 
dream  of  that  dream.  With  the  evidence  of  personal  identity  the  evidence 
of  personal  immortality  is  lost  also. 

So  the  Idealism  of  the  present  day  tends  to  Solipsism  which  is  mere  self- 
deification  on  the  one  hand,  or  to  Pantheism  which  is  the  abolition  of  all 
moral  distinctions  on  the  other.  It  is  the  natural  recoil  from  Materialism, 
and  yet  it  contains  in  itself  germs  of  as  great  evil  as  did  that  foe  with  which 
the  last  generation  so  stoutly  fought.  It  is  the  drift  of  our  current  philoso- 
phy, and  the  antagonist  with  which  Christianity  has  to  cope,  and  which 
Christianity  will  surely  conquer,  in  the  few  decades  to  come.  Sir  William 
Hamilton  opposed  Idealism  simply  because  he  believed  that  it  contradicted 
our  consciousness  and  so  destroyed  the  foundation  of  all  knowledge  and  of 
all  faith.  And  yet  I  know  of  no  process  of  mere  argument  which  to  an 
idealistic  sceptic  will  demonstrate  that  material  substance  exists.  I  can  tell 
him  that  in  his  very  perception  of  quality  he  intuitively  cognizes  substance  ; 
but  he  may  deny  it.  I  can  tell  him  that  his  ideas  of  the  external  world 
require  a  cause  ;  but  he  may  refer  me  to  God  as  their  cause.  I  may  say, 


74  MODERN    IDEALISM. 

with  Aristotle,  that  "  things  are  not  born  of  concepts;  "  but  he  may  reply 
that  to  him  this  is  the  most  intelligible  explanation  of  the  universe.  When 
I  come  to  the  results  of  his  doctrines  in  ethics,  I  may  have  greater  hope  of 
convincing  him  ;  but  even  here  I  can  make  little  progress,  if  he  has  blunted 
his  conscience  and  schooled  himself  into  a  belief  in  determinism.  Prac- 
tically I  know  of  no  better  remedy  for  his  disease  than  the  acceptance  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  It  is  remarkable  how  the  submission  of  the  will  to 
him  as  a  divine  Teacher,  Savior,  and  Lord,  results  in  a  renewal  and  recre- 
ation of  the  will, — how  the  man  who  previously  regarded  himself  as  a  victim 
of  necessity,  a  mere  waif  swept  upon  the  current,  when  once  he  has  received 
the  Savior  into  his  heart,  finds  that  he  is  now  a  free  man,  and  becomes  con- 
scious of  his  substantial  manhood.  For  the  first  time  he  knows  that  he  has 
a  soul.  And  as  at  the  ^Reformation  those  who  had  become  sceptical  of  the 
existence  of  objective  truth  and  righteousness,  aye,  even  of  the  existence  of 
God  himself,  when  they  once  found  by  believing  in  Christ  that  they  had 
God  sure,  proceeded  to  the  discovery  and  recognition  of  objective  realities 
outside  of  them  and  opened  the  way  to  the  progress  of  modern  science ; 
so  now,  in  the  individual  heart,  again  and  again,  the  reception  of  Christ, 
giving  the  first  sense  of  reality  within,  leads  the  soul  outward  to  the  recog- 
nition of  a  real  world  and  of  a  real  morality  outside  of  it.  So  Christ  is  the 
way  and  the  truth  and  the  life,  and  he  whom  the  Son  makes  free  becomes 
free  indeed.  * 


*  Gunsaulus,  Transfiguration  of  Christ,  pp.  18,  19. 


VJ. 

SCIENTIFIC  THEISM: 


It  is  iny  aim  in  this  paper  to  discuss  the  possibility  of  a  scientific  theism, 
or  in  other  words,  the  nature  of  our  belief  in  the  existence  of  God,  the 
sufficiency  of  the  grounds  upon  which  it  rests,  and  the  adequacy  of  this 
belief  for  the  purposes  of  science. 

Mr.  Huxley,  if  I  mistake  not,  has  discoursed  pleasantly  upon  the  absurd- 
ity of  devoting  any  great  share  of  our  attention  to  lunar  politics.  But 
against  selenology,  or  the  science  of  lunar  physics,  he  would  probably  urge 
no  serious  objections.  The  possibility  of  such  a  science  he  would  admit  to 
depend  upon  three  things,  first,  the  actual  existence  of  such  a  body  as  the 
moon ;  secondly,  the  fact  that  the  human  mind  has  powers  which  fit  it  for 
knowing  the  moon  ;  and  thirdly,  the  provision  of  means  by  which  the  moon 
is  brought  into  contact  with  the  mind.  The  eye,  or  the  telescope,  or  both, 
may  bridge  the  gulf,  and  give  us  actual  knowledge  where  there  was  only  the 
possibility  of  knowledge  before.  A  synthesis  of  the  facts  thus  discovered, 
and  the  exhibition  of  them  in  their  relations  as  parts  of  a  system,  might 
justly  be  called  selenology. 

I  use  this  illustration,  not  by  any  means  to  indicate  the  nature  of  our 
knowledge  of  God,  but  only  to  point  out  the  natural  conditions  of  it.  As 
in  the  case  just  mentioned,  a  scientific  theism  is  possible  only  upon  condi- 
tion, first,  that  such  a  Being  as  God  exists  ;  secondly,  that  the  human  mind 
has  capacities  for  knowing  God ;  and  thirdly,  that  God  has  been  brought 
into  intelligible  contact  with  the  human  mind  by  revelation.  If  this  revela- 
tion be  an  external  one  and  assure  us  of  facts  which  exist  independently  of 
our  consciousness  of  them,  we  have  in  them  the  proper  material  for  science  ; 
and  theology,  in  this  department  of  it,  does  nothing  more  than  put  these 
facts  in  their  appointed  places,  as  the  builders  of  Solomon's  temple  took  the 
stones  made  ready  to  their  hand  and  put  them,  without  the  sound  of  saw  or 
hammer,  into  the  places  for  which  they  had  been  designed  by  the  architect. 

It  is  to  the  first  of  these  conditions  of  a  scientific  theism,  and  to  the  first  only, 
that  I  wish  at  present  to  direct  attention.  Does  God  exist  ?  We  find  ourselves 
compelled  at  the  very  outset  to  define  the  term  we  use.  What  do  we  mean 
by  God  ?  By  that  name  we  designate  not  the  abstract  Absolute  or  Infinite 
of  the  metaphysicians,  nor  the  necessarily  developing  life-principle  of 
nature,  to  which  the  Pantheist  holds,  but  rather  the  absolutely  perfect 
Being  —  a  Being  whose  very  perfection  involves  a  power  of  self -limitation 
— a  Being  who  is  absolute,  not  in  the  sense  that  he  exists  in  no  relation,  but 
that  he  exists  in  no  necessary  relation  ;  a  Being  who  is  infinite,  not  in  the 

*  An  essay  read  before  "  The  Club, "  Rochester,  February  1(5, 1875. 

75 


70  SCIENTIFIC   THEISM. 

sense  of  excluding  all  coexistence  of  the  finite,  but  as  constituting  the 
ground  and  condition  of  the  finite,  so  that  nothing  exists  beside  himself 
except  by  his  sufferance  or  under  his  control.  God  is  not  all  things,  finite 
as  well  as  infinite,  material  as  well  as  spiritual,  foolish  as  well  as  wise, 
unholy  as  well  as  pure.  In  one  sense  he  is  the  most  limited  being  in  the 
universe,  since  he  can  never  be  otherwise  than  he  is.  But  whatever  limita- 
tions there  are  to  his  nature  are  imposed  from  within,  never  from  without. 
That  he  cannot  lie,  or  cease  to  be,  is  a  part  of  his  infinite  perfection. 

God  is  the  absolutely  perfect  Being, —  but  more  than  this  must  go  to  our 
definition,  before  it  answers  to  our  conception  or  becomes  of  practical  use 
in  our  inquiry.  By  God,  we  mean  not  only  a  being  who  may  exist  in 
relation  to  the  universe  and  to  us,  but  a  being  who  does  exist  in  such 
relation.  This  Being,  whose  perfection  answers  to  and  transcends  our  high- 
est conceptions,  and  to  whom  we  are  notwithstanding  so  closely  related,  we 
recognize  in  three  aspects  :  first,  as  a  power  above  us  upon  which  we  are 
dependent ;  secondly,  as  an  authority  which  imposes  law  upon  our  moral 
natures ;  and  thirdly,  as  a  personality  which  we  may  recognize  in  prayer 
and  worship.  As  we  reflect  upon  the  matter,  we  perceive  that  the  spiritual 
energy  of  such  a  Being  must  be  inexhaustible  ;  trying  to  find  its  bounds,  we 
become  speedily  convinced  that  it  reaches  on  and  on  forever  ;  immature- 
thought  may  set  limits  here  and  there,  or  conceive  of  other  like  powers  and 
personalities  ;  but  more  thorough  investigation  into  the  contents  of  our  own 
conception  assures  us  that  this  Being,  whom  we  name  God,  is  both  infinite 
and  one. 

The  belief  that  such  a  Being  as  this  exists,  a  Being  upon  whom  we  are 
dependent,  to  whom  we  are  morally  bound,  whom  we  may  address  in  prayer 
—  a  Being  who,  as  Author,  Lawgiver,  End,  answers  to  our  highest  notions 
of  perfection  —  is  in  itself  a  remarkable  fact.  The  idea  of  God,  if  it  should 
be  found  in  a  single  human  mind,  would  deserve  all  attention.  But  it  is- 
found  in  many  human  minds  —  in  so  many  human  minds  that  we  may 
characterize  human  nature,  and  difference  it  from  the  lower  orders  of 
intelligence,  by  its  possession  of  this  idea  of  God,  just  as  truly  as  by  its 
possession  of  the  ideas  of  right  and  wrong.  As  this,  however,  is  an  impor- 
tant link  in  the  discussion,  and  as  it  has  been  matter  of  controversy,  let  us 
ask  explicitly  to  what  extent,  and  in  what  sense,  the  belief  in  God's 
existence  prevails  among  men. 

We  are  all  aware  that  there  are  certain  truths  which  men  universally 
accept  without  thinking  of  putting  them  into  words,  and  without  always 
being  able  to  understand  them  when  propounded  in  scientific  form.  Men 
who  have  no  notion  what  you  mean  when  you  say  that  there  is  a  principle 
of  causality,  that  every  action  implies  an  agent,  every  change  an  efficiency 
that  produced  it,  still  show  their  practical  belief  in  the  law  of  cause  and 
effect,  by  their  language,  actions  and  expectations.  The  formal  denial  of 
certain  truths  does  not  by  any  means  prove  that  men  do  not  believe  them. 
Deniers  of  freedom  like  necessitarians,  of  substance  like  idealists,  of  their 
own  existence  like  nihilists,  all  practically  acknowledge  what  they  specula- 
tively  deny.  In  the  case  of  the  fatalist,  all  that  is  needed  to  show  this  is  the 
knock-down  argument.  The  fatalist,  knocked  down,  rises  to  vow  vengeance 
or  sue  for  damages  —  that  is,  he  holds  his  assailant  responsible  —  that  is,  he 


SCIENTIFIC   THEISM.  77 

recognizes,  in  practice,  that  the  assailant's  action  is  not  necessitated  but  free. 
In  judging  of  the  evidence  that  the  knowledge  of  God's  existence  is  univer- 
sal, it  is  not  necessary  to  require  that  each  human  being  should,  on  interro- 
gation, respond  that  he  knows  that  God  exists.  Though  he  may  never  have 
formulated  his  belief,  he  may  still  show  by  the  language  he  employs,  the 
actions  he  performs,  and  the  expectations  he  cherishes,  that  he  has  the  idea 
of  a  power  above  him  on  which  he  is  dependent,  an  authority  that  binds  his 
moral  action,  a  personality  whom  he  may  address  in  prayer  and  worship. 

Certain  beliefs,  moreover,  which  belong  to  man  as  man,  are  not  developed 
in  the  earliest  stages  of  the  mind's  growth,  and  that  simply  because  the 
objects  with  which  they  have  to  do  cannot  be  apprehended  until  the  mind 
has  reached  a  certain  degree  of  intelligence.  The  moral  ideas,  for  example, 
are  apparently  slumbering  in  the  mind  of  the  young  child,  but  only  because 
the  notion  of  intelligent  and  voluntary  action  is  not  yet  fully  formed.  The 
moment  that  conception  in  formed,  you  have  with  it  another  knowledge  of 
right  and  wrong,  derived,  not  from  any  experience  of  utilities,  but  from  an 
original  cognitive  power  of  the  mind.  And  even  when  once  awakened, 
these  beliefs  are  capable  of  indefinite  education.  They  grow  in  strength 
and  clearness.  But  the  germ  was  there  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  mental 
history,  just  as  the  full-grown  apple  existed  in  embryo  even  before  the 
blossom  had  fallen  from  the  tree. 

\V.  should  not  therefore  be  warranted  in  denying  the  universality  of  the 
knowledge  of  God's  existence,  simply  because  we  found  that  this  knowledge 
existed  in  children  and  savages  in  a  rudimentary  and  undeveloped  form. 
The  mere  fact  that  the  perfection  ascribed  to  the  Being  above  them  does 
not  answer  to  our  ideas  of  perfection,  or  the  range  assigned  to  the  divine 
attributes  to  our  ideas  of  infinity,  proves  only  that  the  child  and  the 
savage  have  not  yet  expounded  to  themselves  the  contents  of  their  own 
notions,  —  it  does  not  prove  that  they  have  no  real  idea  of  God.  So  long 
as  there  does  exist  the  idea  of  a  Being  above,  of  greatness  and  perfectness 
answering  to  the  highest  conceptions  of  which  the  mind  is  at  the  time 
capable,  the  rudimentary  nature  of  this  knowledge  should  not  blind  us  to 
the  fact  that  it  exists, 

With  these  precautionary  suggestions,  let  us  ask  what  is  the  exact  state  of 
the  evidence  with  regard  to  the  belief  in  God's  existence.  This  is  a  matter 
of  testimony.  We  find  it  to  be  simple  historical  fact,  not  only  that  the  vast 
majority  of  men  have  actually  believed  in  a  God,  but  that  there  never  has 
been  an  atheistic  age  or  an  atheistic  people.  Men  in  the  mass  have  every- 
where and  always  recognized  a  power,  perfection,  personality  above  them, 
though  they  have  often  clothed  that  power  with  wrong  attributes.  The  race 
has  bowed  to  priests  more  than  it  ever  has  to  kings.  The  instinct  of  relig- 
ion has  been  stronger  than  the  instinct  of  either  government  or  society  ;  for 
religious  ideas  have  dominated  in  the  formation  and  progress  of  both. 
Deprive  men  of  one  religion,  they  seek  another.  Abandoning  the  old  gods, 
they  seek  new.  Even  Comte  and  Mill  cannot  be  content  without  something 
to  worship,  and  the  one  must  deify  a  woman,  and  the  other  universal 
humanity. 

Quatrefages,  the  French  anthropologist,  who  has  made  this  subject  a  mat- 
ter of  special  study,  says  distinctly  that,  "  obliged  as  he  has  been,  to  pass 


78  SCIENTIFIC   THEISM. 

in  review  the  race  of  men,  he  has  sought  for  atheism  in  the  lowest  and  in 
the  highest,  but  has  nowhere  met  it  except  in  an  individual  or  at  most  in 
some  isolated  school  of  philosophers  ;  everywhere  and  always,"  he  says, 
"the  masses  of  the  people  have  escaped  it."  It  is  true  that  now  and  then 
reports  are  printed  with  regard  to  some  savage  tribe,  like  the  Andaman 
Islanders,  declaring  that  at  last  a  people  has  been  found  who  know  no  God. 
But  closer  examination  has  in  most  cases  proved  that  those  who  seem  at  first 
sight  destitute  of  such  a  knowledge  do  really  possess  it.  Ignorance  of  the 
language  and  of  the  mental  and  moral  habitudes  of  a  people  very  frequently 
leads  to  these  superficial  and  incorrect  judgments.  Moffat,  the  missionary  to 
Africa,  declared  that  he  had  found  tribes  who  had  no  religious  rites  and  no 
belief  in  a  power  above  them.  But  his  son-in-law  and  successor,  upon 
further  investigation,  showed  that  Moffat's  judgment  was  based  upon 
imperfect  knowledge,  and  that  these  tribes  had  both ;  Livingstone  declares 
plainly,  in  so  many  words,  that  ' '  the  existence  of  a  God  and  of  a  future  Life 
are  universally  recognized  in  Africa.  " 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  witnesses,  but  there  is  no  need.  We  are 
mainly  concerned  with  the  exceptional  cases.  In  what  way  shall  we  account 
for  the  fact  that  individuals  are  not  rare  who  profess  atheism  ?  Or,  granting 
that  some  tribe  like  the  Andaman  Islanders  were  to  prove  destitute  of  any 
clear  conception  of  a  supreme  Being,  how  should  we  explain  this  ?  Upon 
the  principles  already  laid  down.  Either  they  practically  admit  what  they 
speculatively  deny,  or  their  minds  are  yet  in  a  state  like  that  of  childhood, 
in  which  the  intellectual  faculties  are  not  yet  sufficiently  developed  to  permit 
the  awakening  of  this  consciousness  of  God's  existence.  David  Hume  was  a 
professed  skeptic,  yet,  when  walking  in  the  fields  with  his  friend  Ferguson 
on  a  starlit  night,  he  exclaimed,  "Adam,  there  is  a  God!"  Even  the 
degraded  tribes  which  we  have  mentioned  do  indirectly  manifest  in  various 
ways  the  existence  in  their  minds  of  the  idea  of  God,  and  its  positive  influ- 
ence over  them.  The  sense  of  responsibility,  the  notion  of  right  and 
wrong,  the  reproaches  of  conscience,  these  are  but  reflections  in  the  human 
soul  of  the  authority  and  presence  of  God.  Wherever  there  is  fear  after 
wrong  doing,  there  is  an  implicit,  if  not  explicit,  recognition  of  the  existence 
of  One  who  hates  the  wrong  and  will  punish  the  wrong.  So  far  as  explora- 
tion has  yet  gone,  no  tribe  has  been  discovered  that  is  utterly  destitute  of 
conscience.  Until  we  learn  of  such,  we  must  maintain  that  all  men  have,  at 
least  in  germ  and  capable  of  development,  the  knowledge  of  the  existence 
of  God. 

And  this  knowledge  is  certain  to  be  developed  so  soon  as  the  proper 
occasions  and  conditions  present  themselves,  that  is,  so  soon  as  the  mind 
devotes  the  requisite  attention  to  the  considerations  which  demand  the  idea 
of  God  for  their  explanation.  In  contemplating  existence  as  finite,  there  is 
inevitably  suggested  to  the  mind  the  idea  of  an  infinite  Being.  In  danger, 
men  instinctively  cry  to  God  for  help.  When  we  speak  of  this  belief  as 
being  universal,  we  do  not  assert  that  the  existence  of  God  is  a  truth  always 
present  before  the  mind.  It  is  possible  to  engross  the  mind  with  objects 
which  do  not  call  forth  the  belief.  Men  naturally  avoid  the  occasions  which 
suggest  it.  What  we  claim  is  simply  this,  that  everywhere  and  always, 
when  the  proper  occasion  comes,  and  the  facts  which  require  it  for  their 


SCIENTIFIC    THEISM.  7£ 

complement  are  presented  to  the  mind,  the  knowledge  of  God's  existence 
leaps  forth  from  latency  into  power, —  a  storm  at  sea  and  the  approach  of 
death  have  dissipated  many  an  atheistic  delusion.  It  is  this  universal, 
though  often  unacknowledged,  faith  in  the  existence  of  a  cause,  a  law,  an  end, 
above  the  merely  transient  and  bounded  beings  which  we  see  about  us,  that 
constitutes  man's  capacity  for  religion.  Without  this  faith,  there  would  be 
,  nothing  to  which  religion  could  appeal.  When  we  say  that  man  is  by  nature 
a  religious  being,  we  offer  the  strongest  proof  that  the  knowledge  of  God's 
existence  is  universal.  He  who  has  not  this  knowledge,  either  potential  or 
actual,  may  be  idiot  or  brute,  —  he  is  not  man. 

For  this  knowledge,  universal  in  the  sense  we  have  mentioned,  we  have 
to  account.  What  is  its  origin  ?  By  what  process  have  men  everywhere 
acquired  it  ?  In  attempting  an  answer  to  this  question,  it  will  be  useful  to 
review  the  various  theories,  and  to  pass  rapid  judgment  upon  them.  First 
comes  the  theory  which  holds  that  the  source  of  all  our  knowledge  of  God 
is  external  revelation,  communicated  to  us  either  through  the  Scriptures 
or  through  tradition.  It  might  be  a  sufficient  reply  to  the  first  form  of 
the  theory  —  that  which  holds  that  we  believe  in  a  God  because  Scripture 
certifies  us  of  his  existence  —  to  say  that  the  belief  in  a  God  prevails  to-day, 
and  has  prevailed  for  ages,  where  the  Scriptures  were  never  known.  But 
it  is  a  more  vital  objection  still  that  the  theory  presupposes  and  takes  for 
granted  the  very  thing  to  be  proved,  namely,  that  God  exists.  Why  do 
I  believe  in  a  God  ?  Because  the  Bible  tells  me  that  he  exists.  Why  do  I 
believe  the  Bible  ?  Because  I  believe  that  a  God  exists  who  speaks  authori- 
tatively in  it.  The  Bible  can  be  no  authority  to  me,  unless  I  have  previous 
knowledge  of  the  existence  of  a  God  from  whom  such  a  revelation  can  come. 
.lust  as  a  miracle  cannot  establish  the  divine  existence,  because  it  presup- 
poses it,  so  the  Scriptures  cannot  establish  the  divine  existence,  because  they 
presuppose  it.  And  especially  so  with  a  revelation  handed  down  from  gen- 
eration to  generation  by  word  of  mouth, —  it  can  have  no  power  to  convince 
me  of  God's  existence,  unless  I  have  from  some  other  source  a  previous 
knowledge  of  a  God  from  whom  such  a  revelation  might  come.  To  believe 
in  God's  existence  upon  the  ground  of  revelation,  and  then  to  believe  in  rev- 
elation upon  the  ground  of  God's  existence,  is  to  argue  in  an  incurably 
vicious  circle.  And  yet  to  just  this,  amount  all  attempts  to  account  from 
external  influences  for  the  belief  in  God.  "  Eeligion  in  the  world  is  a  delu- 
sion inspired  and  fostered  by  priests."  "Fear  produced  the  gods."  But 
a  uniform  fact  requires  a  uniform  cause.  Something  in  the  nature  of  man 
leads  him  to  religion  —  else  there  is  nothing  for  education,  culture,  priest- 
craft to  work  upon.  Without  such  a  demand  in  the  nature,  the  religions  of 
the  world  could  never  have  been  devised,  received,  believed,  propagated. 
Some  knowledge  of  a  higher  power  must  be  presupposed  to  make  either 
true  or  false  priests  possible. 

Or  shall  we  say  that  the  knowledge  of  God  comes  from  experience,  in  the 
sense  of  Locke's  philosophy  ?  Locke,  we  remember,  held  that  all  our  ideas 
came  directly  or  indirectly  from  the  senses.  They  were  either  notions  of 
sensible  and  material  objects,  or,  combinations  of  these  formed  by  the  mind 
itself.  Can  sense-perception  or  reflection,  then,  account  for  the  idea  of 
God  ?  We  must  answer  in  the  negative,  for  the  idea  of  God  is  not  that  of  a 


"80  SCIENTIFIC   THEISM. 

sensible  or  material  object,  nor  is  it  a  combination  of  such  ideas.  Since  the 
spiritual  and  infinite  are  the  direct  opposites  of  the  material  and  finite,  no 
experience  of  the  latter  can  account  for  our  idea  of  the  former.  Does  it 
help  the  matter  to  say  that  we  know  the  existence  of  God  from  conscious- 
ness ?  No,  because  consciousness  is  only  a  con-knowing,  an  accompanying 
knowledge  —  a  knowing  of  the  mind's  acts  and  states  as  its  own.  We  are 
not  properly  conscious  of  facts  or  beings  out  of  the  mind.  To  say  that  we* 
are  conscious  of  the  existence  of  God  is  simple  tautology.  It  can  mean 
only  that  we  are  conscious  of  knowing  that  God  exists  ;  and  the  question  as 
to  the  origin  of  this  knowledge  comes  up  as  before.  The  Germans,  indeed, 
use  the  term  Gottesbewuastsein,  without  being  guilty  of  this  tautology ; 
but  only  because  this  Gottesbewusstsein  means,  not '  consciousness  of  God,' 
but  'knowledge  of  God.'  Bewusstsein  is,  not  a  '  con-knowing,'  but  a  'be- 
knowing. ' 

Does  the  knowledge  of  God's  existence,  then,  arise  from  reasoning? 
Since  it  is  very  frequently  maintained  that  our  belief  has  its  source  in  argu- 
ment, it  will  be  necessary  to  consider  this  view  somewhat  more  at  length. 
We  may  appeal  here  to  our  own  mental  history,  while  we  confidently  affirm 
that  the  rise  of  this  knowledge  in  the  great  majority  of  minds  is  not  the  result 
of  any  conscious  process  of  reasoning.  We  say,  in  the  great  majority  of 
minds.  Some  unquestionably  do  have  this  conviction  wakened  within  them 
in  the  course  of  argumentative  investigation,  but  even  then  the  investiga- 
tion is  commonly  reckoned  as  the  occasion,  not  the  cause,  of  the  new  knowl- 
edge. Among  men  who  reason  about  God,  the  majority  do  not  rest  their 
belief  in  his  existence  upon  argument,  any  more  than  they  rest  upon  argu- 
ment their  belief  in  right  and  wrong.  On  the  other  hand,  upon  occurrence 
of  the  proper  conditions,  in  hearing  the  thunder  or  being  brought  face  to 
face  with  a  past  transgression,  the  conviction  of  God's  existence  flashes 
upon  the  soul  with  the  quickness  and  force  of  an  immediate  revelation. 

If  the  belief  in  God's  existence  were  the  product  of  reasoning,  it  would 
seem  that  the  strongest  reasoners  should  be  men  of  the  strongest  faith.  But 
we  all  know  that  the  strength  of  men's  faith  in  that  existence  is  not  propor- 
tioned to  the  strength  of  the  reasoning  faculty.  On  the  other  hand  men  of 
greatest  logical  power  are  often  inveterate  sceptics,  while  men  of  unwaver- 
ing faith  are  found  among  those  who  cannot  even  understand  the  theistic 
arguments.  Ask  the  mass  of  Christian  people  what  is  the  foundation  of 
their  belief  in  God,  and  whatever  else  they  may  or  may  not  say,  they  will 
refer  its  origin  to  anything  but  reasoning.  The  mass  of  Christians  can  no 
more  follow  the  a  priori  or  a  posteriori  arguments,  than  they  can  appre- 
ciate the  demonstrations  of  a  great  physical  truth  like  the  shape  of  the 
moon's  orbit,  or  the  distance  of  the  earth  from  the  sun.  Yet  this  does  not 
prevent  their  having  a  knowledge  of  God.  John,  with  his  insight,  has 
more  faith  than  logical  Thomas.  And  the  converted  barbarian  has  often  a 
stronger  conviction  of  God's  existence  than  the  undevout  philosopher. 

But  it  is  time  to  examine  the  arguments  themselves.  It  is  possible  for  us 
to  overrate  the  value  of  mere  argument,  even  to  the  minds  that  comprehend 
and  conduct  it.  I  believe  that  a  careful  review  of  the  chief  arguments  for 
the  existence  of  God  will  convince  us  that,  valuable  as  they  are  for  purposes 
to  be  shown  hereafter,  they  are  not  sufficient  of  themselves  to  demonstrate 


SCIENTIFIC   THEISM.  81 

the  existence  of  the  Being  whom  we  call  God.  The  arguments  are  four. 
Let  us  begin  with  the  argument  commonly  called  the  Cosmological.  This 
is  not  properly  an  argument  from  effect  to  cause  ;  for  the  proposition  that 
every  effect  must  have  a  cause  is  simply  identical,  and  means  only  that 
every  caused  event  must  have  a  cause.  It  is  rather  an  argument  from  the 
contingent  to  the  necessary,  and  may  be  stated  as  follows :  Everything 
begun,  whether  substance  or  phenomenon,  owes  its  existence  to  some  pro- 
ducing cause.  The  universe  is  a  thing  begun,  and  owes  its  existence  to  a 
Cause  which  is  equal  to  its  production.  And  this  mighty  Cause  must  be 
God. 

Now  the  chief  difficulty  with  this  argument  is  in  the  minor  premise.  It 
cannot  be  shown  that  the  universe,  so  far  as  its  substance  is  concerned,  has 
had  a  beginning.  Hume  urged,  with  reason,  that  we  never  saw  a  world  made. 
Science  knows  nothing  of  the  origin  of  substance.  Creation  is  purely  a 
truth  of  revelation.  It  is  "  through  faith  "  that  "we  understand  the  worlds 
wore  made  by  the  word  of  God,  so  that  things  that  are  seen  are  not  made 
of  things  which  do  appear."  But  we  cannot  use  Scripture  in  our  argument. 
Aside  from  the  Scriptures,  we  do  not  know  that  the  world  ever  had  a 
beginning.  Many  philosophers  besides  Hume,  in  Christian  lands,  and  the 
prevailing  opinion  of  ante-Christian  times,  have  held  that  matter  is  eternal. 
Or  do  we  mistake  the  principle  of  causality  ?  Does  that  teach  us,  not  that 
every  begun  thing,  but  that  every  thing,  must  have  a  cause  ?  Then  God 
himself  must  have  been  caused.  No.  Our  principle  is  right.  A  cause  is 
to  be  postulated  only  for  what  has  clearly  a  beginning  ;  but  the  universe,  so 
far  as  its  substance  is  concerned,  has  no  known  beginning. 

But  have  the  phenomena  of  the  universe  a  beginning?  Yes,  we  see 
HiMiiges  which  come  and  go  with  every  passing  day.  Do  they  not  require 
a  cause  ?  Yes,  but  even  here  it  is  difficult  to  show  that  any  other  cause  is 
requisite  than  a  cause  within  the  universe  itself  —  a  cause  such  as  the  Pan- 
theist supposes.  The  Pantheist  holds  all  change  to  be  only  modification  of 
one  universal,  necessary,  self-existent,  eternal  substance ;  and  the  Cosmo - 
logical  Argument  alone  cannot  refute  it.  Or,  if  we  grant  that  the  universe 
has  had  a  cause  outside  of  itself,  it  is  difficult  to  show  that  this  cause  has 
not  itself  been  caused  —  that  is,  that  it  consists  of  an  infinite  series  of 
dependent  causes.  And,  if  the  cause  of  the  universe  has  not  itself  been 
omsed,  it  is  impossible  to  show  that  this  cause  is  not  finite  like  the  universe 
itself .  We  are  warranted  in  assigning  only  a  cause  just  sufficient  to  produce 
the  effect.  But  what  we  know  of  the  universe  is  finite.  To  say  that  it  is 
infinite  is  pure  assumption, — and  it  is  of  little  use  to  assume  an  infinite  to 
prove  an  infinite.  From  a  finite  effect,  therefore,  we  can  argue  only  a  finite 
cause  ;  and  a  merely  finite  cause  cannot  be  God. 

The  value  of  the  Cosmological  Argument  is  therefore  simply  this  —  it 
proves  the  existence  of  some  Cause  of  the  universe  indefinitely  great ;  when 
we  go  beyond  this,  and  ask  whether  this  cause  is  a  cause  of  being  or  merely 
a  cause  of  change  to  the  universe,  whether  it  is  a  cause  apart  from  the  uni- 
verse or  one  with  it,  whether  it  is  an  eternal  cause  or  a  cause  dependent 
upon  some  other  cause,  whether  it  is  intelligent  or  unintelligent,  infinite  or 
finite,  one  or  many,  this  argument  cannot  assure  us. 

Let  us  consider,  next  in  order,  the  Teleological  Argument.  This  is  not 
6 


82  SCIENTIFIC    THEISM. 

properly  an  argument  from  design  to  a  designer ;  for  that  design  implies  a 
designer  is  simply  an  identical  proposition.  It  may  be  more  correctly  stated 
as  follows  :  Order  and  useful  collocation,  pervading  a  system,  prove  the 
existence  of  intelligence  and  purpose  as  the  author  of  this  order  and  collo- 
cation. Since  order  and  useful  collocation  pervade  the  universe,  there  must 
exist  an  Intelligence  adequate  to  the  production  of  this  order,  and  a  Will 
adequate  to  direct  this  collocation  to  useful  ends.  This  Intelligence  and 
Will  must  be  divine.  There  are  certain  common  objections  to  the  premises 
of  this  argument  which  are  clearly  invalid, —  for  example,  the  objection  that 
order  and  useful  collocation  may  exist  without  being  purposed  ;  for  we  are 
compelled  by  our  very  mental  constitution  to  deny  this,  where  the  order  and 
collocation  pervade  a  system.  Nor  is  the  objection  that  order  and  useful 
collocation  may  result  from  the  operation  of  mere  physical  forces  and  laws 
any  the  more  tenable,  for  the  operation  of  physical  forces  and  laws  does  not 
exclude  but  implies  an  originating  intelligence  and  will.  Before  evolution, 
there  must  be  involution.  If  anything  is  to  come  out,  something  must 
first  be  put  in, — and  if  there  is  to  be  any  certain  progress  to  cosmos,  instead 
of  to  chaos,  there  must  be  a  guiding  wisdom  all  along  the  line. 

That  order  and  useful  collocation  do  pervade  the  universe  is  assumed  in 
science.  The  physical  investigator  could  not  proceed  for  a  day  without 
taking  it  for  granted  that  the  methods  of  nature  are  rational  methods,  that 
the  properties  and  qiialities  of  matter  are  uniform,  that  all  things  have  their 
uses.  Let  science  busy  herself  with  the  what,  as  much  as  she  may  ;  it  is  the 
why,  and  the  prudens  quwstio  with  regard  to  it,  that  have  been  her  most 
useful  clues  to  nature's  labyrinth  ;  and  the  scientific  imagination  which  Prof. 
Tyndall  lauds,  is  nothing  else  than  insight  into  the  thought  and  purpose  of 
which  nature  is  the  embodiment.  We  have  evidences  of  this  order  and  us«- 
f  ul  collocation  in  the  correlation  of  the  chemical  elements  to  each  other  ; 
sweep  away  all  the  proofs  of  intelligence  in  the  existing  universe  ;  pass  over 
all  the  intervening  history, —  go  back  to  the  nebula  if  you  will ;  yet  even 
here,  an  atom  of  oxygen  is  an  atom  of  oxygen  —  an  atom  of  hydrogen  is  an 
atom  of  hydrogen ;  and  in  the  fitness  of  both  to  combine,  with  results  s<  > 
wonderful,  you  have  proof  of  a  designing  intelligence.  And  this  same 
intelligence  appears  in  the  fitness  of  the  inanimate  world  to  be  the  basis  and 
support  of  life ;  in  the  typical  forms  and  unity  of  plan  apparent  in  the 
organic  creation  ;  in  the  existence  and  cooperation  of  natural  laws  ;  in  cos- 
mical  order  and  compensations  —  the  precessions  and  retrograde  movements 
that  from  age  to  age  secure  the  safety  of  the  system,  even  while  they  seem 
to  threaten  it. 

It  does  not  invalidate  the  argument  for  intelligence  to  say  that  we  often 
misunderstand  the  end  actually  subserved  by  natural  events  and  objects; 
for  the  principle  is,  not  that  we  necessarily  know  the  actual  end,  but  that  we 
necessarily  believe  that  there  is  some  end,  in  every  case  of  systematic  order 
and  collocation.  Nor  does  it  invalidate  the  argument  to  say  that  the  order 
of  the  universe  is  manifestly  imperfect ;  for  this/ if  granted,  would  argue,, 
not  absence  of  contrivance,  but  some  special  reason  for  imperfection,  either 
in  the  limitations  of  the  contriving  intelligence  itself,  or  in  the  nature  of  the 
end  sought.  And  just  here  Mr.  Mill,  in  his  posthumous  essay  on  Theism, 
plants  himself,  and  recognizing  the  blights  and  cruelties  and  devastations 


SCIENTIFIC   THEISM.  S3 

of  nature,  the  hurricanes  that  destroy  the  fruits  of  man's  labor,  the  beasts 
that  live  only  by  torturing  and  devouring  others  weaker  than  themselves, 
the  thousand  blossoms  that  perish  for  the  one  that  brings  forth  fruit,  he 
declares  that,  if  nature  proves  a  God,  it  proves  one  who  lacks  either  love  or 
power ;  and,  since  there  are  signs  of  love,  he  who  rules  the  universe  must 
be  a  God  in  fetters  —  working  with  intractable  material  —  bearing  uphill  a 
heavy  burden  that  more  than  taxes  his  utmost  strength. 

But  Mr.  Mill's  conclusion  is  not  the  only  one.  The  Pantheist's  conclu- 
sion is  just  as  logical  as  his.  So  long  as  there  is  such  a  thing  as  impersonal 
intelligence,  and  we  see  the  bee  building  her  hexagons  and  storing  for  the 
winter,  yet  without  self -consciousness  or  freedom,  but  bound  to  lines  of 
necessitated  action  by  its  very  physical  structure  and  conditions,  why,  says 
the  pantheist,  may  not  the  whole  universe  be  only  the  unconscious  work  of 
:i  sublimer  impersonal  intelligence,  that  fashions  forms  of  beauty  and 
adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  by  an  inexorable  law  of  its  own  nature  ?  And 
we  must  confess  that  either  Mr.  Mill's  theory,  or  the  theory  of  the  pantheist, 
is  logically  consistent,  and  cannot  be  successfully  combated  upon  the 
ground  of  the  Teleological  Argument  alone.  Leave  out  of  the  estimate 
entirely  the  self -consciousness,  moral  ideas,  and  free  will  of  man  —  and  we 
cannot  prove,  either  that  God  is  absolute  sovereign  of  the  universe,  or  that 
an  impersonal  intelligence  may  not  suffice  for  its  production.  And  as  this 
sirgument  cannot  prove  personality  or  sovereignty  in  God,  so  it  cannot 
prove  unity,  creatorship,  eternity,  or  infinity. 

What  then  is  its  exact  value  ?  Simply  this.  It  proves,  from  certain  use- 
ful collocations  and  instances  of  order  which  have  clearly  had  a  beginning, 
or,  in  other  words,  from  the  present  harmony  of  the  universe,  that  there 
exists  an  intelligence  and  will  adequate  to  its  contrivance.  But  whether 
this  intelligence  and  will  are  personal  or  impersonal,  creative  or  fashioning, 
one  or  many,  finite  or  infinite,  eternal  or  owing  their  being  to  another,  this 
argument  cannot  assure  us.  In  it,  however,  we  take  a  step  forward.  The 
causative  Power,  which  we  have  proved  by  the  Cosmological  Argument,  has 
now  become  an  intelligent  Power. 

The  third  argument  is  commonly  called  the  Moral,  though  we  should 
prefer  to  call  it  the  Anthropological  Argument.  It  is  an  argument  from  the 
mental  and  moral  constitution  of  man  to  the  existence  of  a  divine  Author, 
Lawgiver,  and  End.  Man's  intellectual  and  moral  being  have  had  a 
beginning  upon  the  planet.  Material  and  unconscious  forces  do  not  afford 
a  sufficient  cause  for  his  reason,  conscience,  and  free  will.  As  an  effect, 
therefore,  man  can  be  referred  only  to  a  cause  possessing  self-consciousness 
and  a  moral  nature,  or  in  other  words,  personality.  This  is  the  first  part 
of  the  argument.  It  is  held  to  prove  a  divine  Author  of  man's  higher 
being.  But  there  is  a  second  part  which  argues  from  the  existence  of  man's 
moral  nature  to  the  existence  of  a  holy  Lawgiver  and  Judge.  Conscience 
recognizes  the  existence  of  a  moral  law  which  has  supreme  authority. 
Known  violations  of  this  moral  law  are  followed  by  feelings  of  ill  desert  and 
fears  of  judgment.  But  this  moral  law,  since  it  is  not  self-imposed,  and 
these  threats  of  judgment,  since  they  are  not  self-executing,  respect- 
ively argue  the  existence  of  a  holy  Will  that  has  imposed  the  law,  and 
of  a  punitive  Power  that  will  execute  the  threats  of  the  moral  nature. 


84  SCIENTIFIC   THEISM. 

"But  why,"  says  Murphy,  "  should  we  suppose  conscience  to  be  the  voice  of 
a  will,  or  personal  authority?  Why  should  we  suppose  conscience  to  be 
anything  more  than  the  voice  of  impersonal  reason,  when  it  speaks  on  the 
subject  of  duty  ?"  And  Murphy  answers  his  own  question  as  follows  : 
Because  "unlike  impersonal  abstract  reason,  conscience  speaks  with  a 
command.  Eeason  speaks  in  the  indicative  mood ;  conscience  in  the 
imperative.  The  intuitions  of  the  reason  do  not  come  into  consciousness 
as  if  made  known  by  a  voice,  but  rather  as  knowledge  coines  through  the 
eye,  and  do  not  suggest  personality  in  their  origin.  A  voice  of  command,  on 
the  contrary,  at  least  suggests  personality  in  its  origin.  It  is  this  proof  that 
has  had  greatest  effect  on  mankind.  "The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of 
God, " —  but  they  declare  it  only  to  those  who  believe  in  God.  The  light  from 
the  heavens  is  really  the  reflected  light  of  conscience,  though  men  often 
mistake  its  origin. " 

But  beyond  this,  and  as  the  third  part  of  the  Moral  Argument,  man's 
emotional  and  voluntary  nature  proves  the  existence  of  a  Being  who  can 
furnish  in  himself  a  satisfying  object  of  human  affection,  and  an  end  which 
will  call  forth  man's  highest  activities  and  ensure  his  highest  progress. 
Only  a  Being  of  power,  wisdom,  holiness  and  goodness,  and  all  these 
indefinitely  greater  than  any  that  we  know  upon  earth,  can  meet  this 
demand  of  the  human  soul.  Such  a  Being  must  exist.  Otherwise  man's 
greatest  need  would  be  unsupplied,  and  belief  in  a  lie  be  more  productive 
of  virtue  than  belief  in  the  truth. 

Such  is  a  strong  statement  of  the  Moral  Argument.  Its  defects  are  that 
it  cannot  prove  a  creator  of  the  material  universe ;  nor  can  it  prove  the 
infinity  of  God,  since  man  from  whom  we  argue  is  simply  finite.  Its  value 
is  that  it  assures  us  of  the  existence  of  a  personal  Being,  who  rules  us  in 
righteousness,  and  who  is  the  proper  object  of  supreme  affection  and 
service.  Among  the  arguments  for  the  existence  of  God,  however,  we  give 
to  this  the  chief  place,  since  it  adds  to  the  idea  of  causative  Power  (which 
was  derived  from  the  Cosmological  Argument),  and  of  contriving  Intelligence 
(which  was  derived  from  the  Teleological),  the  far  wider  ideas  of  Personality 
and  righteous  Lordship. 

These  arguments  are  the  only  ones  to  which  we  can  assign  any  logical 
value  as  proving  the  existence  of  a  Being  above  us  whom  we  can  in  any 
sense  call  God.  The  Ontological  or  a  priori  Argument,  from  the  abstract 
and  necessary  ideas  of  the  human  mind,  has  had  currency  in  past  ages,  but 
is  now  generally  abandoned.  Because  I  have  the  idea  of  an  absolutely 
perfect  Being,  it  does  not  follow  that  that  Being  exists.  If  it  were  so, 
Kant's  analogous  argument  might  be  valid  :  because  I  have  a  perfect  idea 
of  a  hundred  dollar  bill,  it  would  follow  that  I  actually  possessed  one,  which 
is  far  from  being  the  case.  And  so  we  may  come  to  a  conclusion  from  the 
arguments  as  a  whole.  It  appears  that  the  a  priori  argument  is  capable 
of  proving  only  an  abstract  and  ideal  proposition,  but  can  never  conduct  us 
to  the  existence  of  real  being.  It  appears  that  the  arguments  a  posteriori 
which  we  have  considered  in  detail,  since  they  are  arguments  from  merely 
finite  existence,  can  never  demonstrate  the  existence  of  the  infinite.  In  the 
words  of  Sir  Wm.  Hamilton  :  "A  demonstration  of  the  absolute  from  the 
relative  is  logically  absurd  ;  as,  in  such  a  syllogism,  we  must  collect  in  the 


SCIENTIFIC   THEISM.  85 

conclusion  what  is  not  distributed  in  the  premises."  And  the  same  consid- 
erations apply  to  the  attempt  to  explain  our  knowledge  of  God  as  an  infer- 
ence from  the  facts  of  nature  or  of  mind, —  for  either  this  inference  is  what 
is  called  in  logic  "an  immediate  inference,"  and  so  is  a  mere  restatement  in 
other  words  of  some  proposition  with  regard  to  the  finite  and  is  not  a  process 
of  reasoning  at  all,  —  or  it  is  a  process  of  reasoning,  and  so  is  only  a 
condensed  deductive  syllogism,  which,  because  it  is  condensed,  may  be 
expanded  into  regular  syllogistic  form.  In  this  case,  since  it  is  a  process 
of  reasoning,  it  is  open  to  the  objections  which  have  been  previously 
mentioned. 

But  to  all  arguments  for  the  existence  of  God,  we  have  a  still  more  radical 
objection  to  urge,  namely  that  all  reasoning  presupposes  the  existence  of 
God  as  its  logical  condition  and  foundation.  Not  only  does  the  trustworthi- 
ness of  the  simplest  mental  acts,  such  as  sense-perception,  self-conscious- 
ness and  memory,  depend  upon  the  assumption  that  a  God  exists  who  has  so 
constituted  our  minds  that  they  give  us  knowledge  of  things  as  they  are  ; 
but  the  more  complex  processes,  such  as  induction  and  deduction,  can  be 
relied  upon  only  by  presupposing  a  thinking  Deity,  who  has  made  the 
various  parts  of  the  universe  to  correspond  to  each  other  and  to  the  investi- 
gating  faculties  of  man.  Upon  what  warrant  do  I  perform  the  simplest  act 
of  induction,  and  infer  from  one  or  more  particular  instances  a  truth 
universal  in  its  nature  ?  What  right  have  I  to  conclude,  from  two  or  three 
facts  within  my  observation,  that  unsupported  bodies  always  fall,  and  that 
tire  burns,  and  arsenic  kills?  Only  upon  the  ground  that  the  universe  is  a 
solidarity,  that  part  corresponds  to  part,  that  laws  of  nature  here  are  also 
laws  of  nature  there,  that  there  is  a  thought  running  through  the  universe, 
and  that  there  is  a  thinker  who  thinks  that  thought.  In  the  words  of  Dr. 
Peabody  :  "Induction  is  a  syllogism  with  the  immutable  attributes  of  God 
for  a  constant  term."  Or  as  Dr.  Porter  expresses  it:  "Induction  rests 
upon  the  assumption,  as  it  demands  for  its  ground,  that  a  personal  or 
thinking  Deity  exists. "  It  has  no  meaning  or  validity,  unless  we  assume 
that  the  universe  is  so  constituted  as  to  presuppose  an  absolute  and  uncon- 
ditioned Originator  of  its  forces  and  laws."  And,  as  all  deduction  rests 
upon  previous  processes  of  induction  or  upon  the  intuitions  of  space  and 
time,  it  follows  that  every  sort  and  kind  of  reasoning  toward  the  existence 
of  God  actually  presupposes  that  existence,  and  begs  the  whole  question  in 
the  very  attempt  to  prove  it. 

Much  new  light  is  thrown  from  this  point  back  upon  our  arguments  for 
God's  existence.  We  see  that  it  is  impossible  to  argue  from  man's  wants  to 
a  supply,  impossible  to  argue  from  conscience  to  a  lawgiver,  impossible  to 
argue  from  adaptation  in  nature  to  a  designing  intelligence,  without  taking 
for  granted  that  indications  do  not  deceive  us  —  that  there  is  a  correlation 
between  the  human  mind  and  the  universe,  as  well  as  between  the  human 
mind  and  the  divine.  Imagine  an  evil  being  to  sit  upon  the  throne  of  the 
universe,  and  to  constitute  all  things  so  as  to  falsify  our  observations, 
expectations  and  reasonings,  and  all  our  arguments  yield  no  fruit.  It  is 
because  we  take  for  granted  that  God  is,  that  he  exists  in  truth  and  right- 
eousness, that  the  rational  methods  of  the  divine  mind  bear  analogy  to  our 
own,  that  we  are  made  in  God's  image, —  it  is  because  of  these  assumptions, 


86  SCIENTIFIC   THEISM. 

that  any  theism  or  any  science  is  possible.  In  other  words,  we  cannot 
demonstrate  that  God  is,  but  we  can  show  that  in  order  to  the  existence  of 
any  other  knowledge,  men  must  assume  that  God  is. 

But  a  knowledge  thus  fundamental,  necessary  and  universal,  we  call  an 
intuitive  knowledge.  Of  this  sort  we  consider  the  knowledge  of  God's 
existence.  We  hold  God's  existence  to  be  a  first  truth,  like  the  conviction 
of  our  own  personal  existence,  or  the  belief  in  causality,  or  the  knowledge 
of  substance  as  the  reality  in  which  attributes  inhere  and  find  their  unity. 
But  we  hold  this  truth  to  be  a  deeper  and  more  fundamental  truth  than 
any  one  of  the  others  we  have  mentioned,  and  for  that  very  reason  the  easiest 
to  overlook  and  the  last  to  be  formulated.  It  is  a  knowledge  which  logically 
precedes  all  observation  and  all  reasoning, —  yet  only  reflection  upon  the 
phenomena  of  nature  and  of  mind  occasions  its  rise  in  consciousness.  There 
is  a  prejudice  against  the  doctrine  of  intuitive  knowledge  of  any  kind  which 
arises  too  frequently  from  an  imperfect  conception  of  what  is  meant  by  an 
intuition.  When  we  say  that  God  is  known  intuitively,  we  do  not  hold  that 
this  knowledge  will  develope  itself  apart  from  observation  and  experience, 
but  only  that  it  will  develope  itself  upon  occasion  of  observation  and  experi- 
ence. A  first  truth  is  a  knowledge,  which,  though  developed  upon  occasion 
of  sense-perception  and  reflection,  is  not  derived  from  these, —  a  knowledge 
which  on  the  contrary  has  such  logical  priority  that  it  must  be  assumed  or 
supposed  to  make  either  sense-perception  or  reflection  possible.  Such 
truths  are  therefore  not  recognized  first  in  order  of  time ;  some  of  them  are 
assented  to  somewhat  late  in  the  mind's  growth  ;  by  the  great  majority  of 
men  they  are  never  consciously  formulated  at  all.  Yet  they  constitute  the 
necessary  assumptions  upon  which  all  other  knowledge  rests,  and  the  mind 
has  not  only  the  inborn  capacity  to  evolve  them  so  soon  as  the  proper 
occasions  are  presented,  but  the  recognition  of  them  is  inevitable  so  soon  us 
the  mind  begins  to  give  account  to  itself  of  its  own  knowledge. 

The  doctrine  of  this  paper,  therefore,  is  that  all  men  have  at  the  very 
basis  of  their  being,  and  as  the  deepest  principle  of  all  their  thinking,  a 
knowledge  of  the  existence  of  God,  as  a  Power  upon  which  they  are 
dependent,  a  Perfection  which  imposes  law  on  their  moral  natures,  and  a 
Personality  which  they  may  address  in  prayer  and  worship.  It  is  a  knowl- 
edge, however,  which  more  than  any  other  has  been  dimmed  and  obscured 
by  transgression,  and  by  the  loss  of  that  love  to  God  which  is  the  condition 
of  its  clearest  and  strongest  exercise.  In  an  unfallen  state,  we  may  believe 
that  it  manifested  itself  as  naturally  and  spontaneously  as  the  intuition  of 
self  does  now.  God  was  seen  in  all  things,  and  all  things  were  seen  in  God. 
With  the  exercise  of  this  intelligence,  there  was  also  the  knowledge  of  affec- 
tion and  communion.  But  with  sin,  the  knowledge  of  friendship  and  man- 
ifestation ceased,  and  only  the  necessary  and  intuitive  remained.  There  is 
no  longer  an  extensive  knowledge  of  the  divine  attributes  —  no  longer  a 
seeing  God  face  to  face,  only  the  cold,  blank  apprehension  of  fear,  and  the 
effort  to  rid  the  soul  of  the  thought  of  God.  But  still  in  every  mind  the 
knowledge  remains.  It  is  dim,  yet  it  burns  —  a  light  ready  to  flame  forth 
in  time  of  danger,  or  sinning,  or  judgment.  It  is  like  a  choked-up  well 
from  which  you  have  only  to  remove  the  debris,  and  the  water  that  has  been 
flowing  so  long  in  secrecy  and  silence  can  be  seen  once  more  and  drawn  up 
to  quench  the  thirst. 


SCIENTIFIC    THEISM.  87 

And  this  is  the  object  of  God's  twofold  revelation  iii  nature  and  in  the 
'Scriptures.  Arguments  drawn  from  nature  and  the  human  mind  awaken, 
-confirm  and  enlarge  a  conviction  of  God's  existence,  which  may  have  been 
.slumbering  for  lack  of  reflection.  Arguments  can  never  conduct  us  to  God, 
or  account  for  our  idea  of  God.  Both  ends  of  the  ladder  are  wanting.  The 
top  does  not  reach  to  heaven,  since  argument  can  give  us  not  the  infinite 
but  only  the  finite.  The  foot  has  no  firm  basis  on  the  earth,  since  all  logic 
presupposes  the  existence  of  God  and  without  this  is  invalid.  Arguments 
cannot  conduct  us  to  God.  They  are  not  the  bridge  itself  —  they  are  only 
the  guys  that  steady  and  strengthen  it.  Intuition  is  the  great  suspension- 
bridgr  that  spans  the  gulf.  The  arguments  are  indeed  only  the  efforts  of 
tin-  mind  that  already  has  a  conviction  of  God's  existence  to  give  to  itself  a 
formal  account  of  its  belief.  As  such  they  will  always  be  helps  to  faith, 
and  means  of  bringing  out  into  clearer  light  the  deliverances  of  our  inmost 
nature.  This  intuitive  knowledge  the  Scriptures  always  take  for  granted. 
They  never  attempt  to  prove  the  existence  of  God.  They  address  men  as 
already  knowing  it.  They  bring  a  new  revelation  of  the  grace  of  God,  and 
promises  of  a  special  work  of  God's  Spirit,  to  turn  this  knowledge,  which 
now  is  only  a  knowledge  of  intellect  and  of  fear,  into  the  knowledge  of 
assured  friendship  and  of  sacred  communion.  Only  in  Christ  are  we 
brought  back  to  our  lost  sonship  and  made  possessors  of  that  saving  knowl- 
edge which  is  identical  with  eternal  life. 

But  is  a  knowledge  like  this  adequate  to  the  purposes  of  science?  When 
we  know  God  by  intuition,  have  we  a  right  to  use  the  materials  thus  gath- 
er- d  as  foundation  stones  of  theology?  Herbert  Spencer  denies  it,  upon 
tin-  ground  that  this  intuition  is,  like  all  the  rest,  a  mere  accretion  of  past 
experience,  a  hereditary  tendency  of  thought,  a  result  of  multitudes  of  sense- 
perceptions  ami  awe-strieken  feelings  of  past  generations — trancendental  for 
the  individual  but  empirical  for  the  race,  a  representation  after  all  of  the  tran- 
sient and  earthly,  a  representation  that  in  time  may  be  outgrown.  But  this 
theory  can  l.e  maintained  only  by  wholly  mistaking  the  nature  and  contents 
of  the  intuition  itself.  It  is  not  merely  a  hereditary  tendency,  like  that  of 
the  brutes,  for  the  brutes  have  no  intuitions— least  of  all,  the  intuition  of  a 
God.  It  is  the  intuition  not  of  the  finite  or  of  the  indefinite,  but  of  the 
1  ••  -sitively  infinite  ;  and  this,  as  we  have  seen,  can  in  no  manner  be  derived 
from  experience,  either  in  the  present  or  the  past.  Just  as  the  idea  of  right 
and  wrong  can  be  explained  by  no  combination  of  utilities,  and  the  idea  of 
cause  by  no  combination  or  uniformity  of  sequences,  and  the  idea  of 
material  or  spiritual  substance  by  no  succession  of  sensations,  so  the  idea 
of  the  infinite  cannot  be  explained  by  any  combinations  or  successions  of 
the  finite.  For  the  very  reason  that  it  is  too  great  an  idea  for  so  mean  an 
origin,  Herbert  Spencer  is  obliged  to  reduce  its  scale  in  his  representations 
of  it,  until  it  is  small  enough  to  be  reasonably  supposed  to  have  emerged 
from  the  narrow  aperture  of  sense.  In  other  words,  the  intuition  of  God, 
and  all  the  other  intuitions,  are  explained  by  simply  denying  their  existence. 
The  trick  is  too  old  a  one,  and  too  fatal  to  Mr.  Spencer's  own  system.  For, 
if  the  validity  of  causation  and  of  logical  laws  and  of  our  knowledge  of  God 
be  denied,  what  rule  can  save  Mr.  Spencer's  belief  in  the  Unknowable  and 
in  the  Persistence  of  Force,  the  corner-stones  of  his  philosophy,  since  these 


88  SCIENTIFIC   THEISM. 

are  not  truths  of  experience  but  postulates  of  the  reason  ?  And  whither  i&- 
philosophy  tending,  if  the  most  fundamental  knowledges  of  all,  which  it  has 
taken  uncounted  ages  to  build  up  and  consolidate,  are  to  be  proved  utterly- 
invalid  by  the  latest  research  ?  In  this  doctrine,  we  have  the  reductio  ad 
absurdum  of  the  Spencerian  philosophy.  Evolution  is  proved  to  be  a 
progress  from  knowledge  to  ignorance,  from  certainty  to  doubt.  With  the 
sweeping  away  of  a  single  intuition,  all  the  rest  must  also  perish,  for  the 
mind  certifies  to  none  if  not  to  all,  and  with  them  Herbert  Spencer  too,  with 
his  philosophy,  must  be  consigned  to  the  abyss  of  absolute  skepticism. 

There  is  another  denial  which  we  must  mention —  that  of  Sir  William 
Hamilton.  He  virtually  ruled  our  conviction  of  God's  existence  out  of  the 
realm  of  science  by  calling  it  faith,  and  then  denning  faith  as  that  organ  of 
the  mind  by  which  we  apprehend  that  which  is  not  an  object  of  knowledge. 
Of  course,  if  God  is  not  an  object  of  knowledge,  then  science,  which  is 
knowledge,  cannot  have  theism  for  one  of  its  departments.  Now  we  accept 
the  title  of  faith  for  the  peculiar  apprehension  which  we  have  of  God.  Not- 
withstanding this,  we  claim  that  this  faith  furnishes  proper  material  for 
science.  And  that,  simply  for  the  reason  that  faith  is  not  mere  opinion  or 
imagination,  but  a  higher  kind  of  knowledge.  All  physical  science  rests 
upon  faith,  faith  in  human  testimony  and  in  our  primitive  cognitions,  but  is 
not  invalidated  thereby.  And  why  ?  Simply  because  this  faith,  though 
unlike  sense-perception  or  logical  deduction,  is  yet  a  cognitive  act  of  the 
reason.  Faith,  in  this  lower  sense,  may  be  defined  as  certitude  with  regard 
to  matters  in  which  verification  is  unattainable.  If  the  intuition  of  God  is 
to  be  excluded  from  the  realm  of  science  because  it  is  faith,  then  by  the 
same  rule  must  the  doctrine  of  the  uniformity  of  nature  and  the  facts 
received  upon  human  testimony  be  excluded  from  science  also.  Faith  in 
God's  existence  is  indeed  a  faith  of  higher  rank  than  these,  but  it  follows 
the  same  rule.  The  faith  which  constitutes  the  source  of  truth  with  regard 
to  God  is  simply  a  certitude  with  regard  to  spiritual  realities,  upon  the  tes- 
timony of  our  rational  nature  and  ujjon  the  testimony  of  God.  The  only 
feature  that  differences  it  from  the  lower  faiths  of  science  is  the  fact  that  it 
is  conditioned  upon  the  presence  of  a  holy  affection  toward  God.  Yet  even 
here  we  are  not  without  analogies.  There  is  a  knowledge  of  the  beautiful 
which  is  conditioned  upon  a  love  for  beauty.  Only  one  who  loves  beauty 
can  ever  see  it,  whether  in  sunset  sky  or  on  the  poet's  page.  There  is  a 
knowledge  of  the  morally  good  which  is  conditioned  upon  love  for  the  mor- 
ally good.  Only  one  who  loves  moral  excellence  can  recognize  it  in  char- 
acter, or  truly  set  forth  its  principle  and  nature.  So  there  is  a  knowledge 
of  God  which  is  conditioned  upon  love  for  God.  Only  one  who  loves  God 
can  see  God  or  truly  know  God.  As  the  sciences  of  aesthetics  and  ethics 
respectively  are  products  of  reason,  but  of  reason  as  including  in  the  one 
case  a  power  of  recognizing  beauty  practically  inseparable  from  a  love  for 
beauty,  and  on  the  other  hand  a  power  of  recognizing  the  morally  right 
practically  inseparable  from  a  love  for  the  morally  right,  so  a  scientific 
theism  is  a  product  of  reason,  but  of  reason  as  including  a  power  of  recog- 
nizing God  practically  inseparable  from  a  love  for  God.  This  cognitive  act 
of  the  reason  by  which  we  apprehend  God,  under  the  condition  of  a  holy 
affection  toward  God,  is  faith.  As  an  operation  of  man's  higher  rational 


SCIENTIFIC   THEISM.  89 

nature,  though  distinct  from  ocular  vision  or  from  reasoning,  it  is  a  kind  of 
knowledge,  and  so  may  furnish  proper  material  for  a  scientific  theism. 

A  single  question  yet  remains.  If  this  right  affection  toward  God  be  a 
condition  of  all  scientific  knowledge  of  him,  in  what  sense  can  those  who 
have  no  such  affection  know  God,  and  what  claim  can  such  theism  have 
upon  them,  since  they  lack  the  affectional  conditions  which  alone  can  enable 
them  to  understand  it  ?  We  answer  that  all  men  have  a  knowledge  of  God, 
dimmed  and  obscured  though  it  be.  A  thorough  and  clear  and  vivid  acquaint- 
ance with  the  truth,  however,  belongs  only  to  those  who  look  through  eyes 
of  love,  and  have  their  vision  purged  with  the  "  euphrasy  and  rue"  of  divine 
revelation.  But  we  can  better  answer  by  a  parable.  A  certain  man  afflicted 
with  cataract  still  perceived  faint  rays  of  light  piercing  the  curtain  that  ever 
hung  before  him.  He  could  tell  daylight  from  dark,  and  the  comparative 
dimness  of  his  dwelling  from  the  brightness  of  the  outer  world.  One  of  his 
sons  was  an  optician,  and  another  was  a  painter.  The  father  tried  to  under- 
stand their  work  and  to  help  them  in  it,  but  he  could  not.  What  could  the 
blind  man  know  of  lenses  or  of  colors  ?  At  last  he  began  to  deny  that  there 
was  any  such  thing  as  optics,  or  any  such  thing  as  painting.  His  sons 
vainly  argued  with  him.  They  urged  that  the  little  light  that  reached  his 
retina  should  be  evidence  to  him  that  something  existed  outside  of  and  beyond 
his  eyes ;  that  he  ought  to  take  their  word  for  it  that  they  saw  shape  and  beauty 
where  none  appeared  to  him  ;  that  whole  sciences  had  been  constructed  out 
of  simple  matters  of  form  and  light ;  that,  with  the  cataract  removed,  he 
might  see  it  all,  and  know  it  all,  for  himself.  But  the  old  man  had  been 
born  blind ;  he  believed  nothing  ;  he  had  no  trust  in  oculists,  as  he  had  no 
trust  in  science  ;  the  veil  before  him  grew  thicker  and  his  scepticism  more 
inveterate,  till  at  last  with  neither  eyes  nor  mind  could  he  see  at  all.  Was 
there,  therefore,  no  science  of  painting  or  of  optics  ?  and  had  these  sciences, 
no  claim  upon  him  ? 


VII. 

THE  WILL  IN  THEOLOGY, 

OR,  AN   EARLIER  VIEW   OF  THE   WILL.* 


We  purpose  in  this  paper  to  discuss  the  subject  of  the  Will  and  its  rela- 
tions to  Theology.  Philosophy  has  no  more  difficult  problem  than  this  with 
which  to  deal.  All  agree  that  consciousness  testifies  to  human  freedom. 
But  when  this  consciousness  is  to  be  interpreted,  we  find  division.  Some 
look  so  exclusively  to  the  uniformities  of  man's  action,  that  they  settle  down 
into  determinism ;  freedom,  to  them,  is  but  the  seeming  self-movement  of 
the  summer  cloud,  which  is  borne  onward  by  forces  external  to  it,  and  is 
driven  by  atmospheric  currents  even  when  it  appears  to  be  following  an 
impulse  of  its  own.  Others  eye  so  closely  the  central  source  of  power  within 
us,  that  they  lose  sight  of  the  laws  under  which  that  power  is  exerted,  and 
identify  freedom  with  caprice  ;  to  them  no  act  can  be  free  which  is  the  inva- 
riable sequence  of  fixed  motive,  and  God  cannot  be  free  unless  he  is  able 
to  sin. 

Fatalism  and  arbitrariness  —  these  are  the  two  extremes  between  which 
the  pendulum  of  thought  is  ever  swinging.  Both  of  these  extremes  are 
represented  in  the  schools  of  to-day.  And  let  us  frankly  acknowledge  that 
each  has  had  its  devoted  adherents  because  each  is  the  exaggeration  and  per- 
version of  a  truth.  That  is  an  easy  philosophy  which  accepts  the  one  and 
ignores  the  other,  but  it  is  as  shallow  and  false  as  it  is  easy.  It  is  a  harder 
task  to  analyze  both,  and,  after  having  set  aside  their  elements  of  error,  to 
combine  what  remains  of  truth  into  one  consistent  whole.  But  something- 
like  this  must  be  done  by  every  thinking  man  if  he  would  attain  to  mental 
quiet,  while  to  the  preacher  not  only  a  consistent  but  a  correct  view  of  the 
will  is  indispensable  if  he  would  present  the  gospel  with  completeness  and 
power. 

And  yet  our  method  of  investigation  should  not  be  the  method  of  eclecti- 
cism. We  may  be  taught  by  the  past  to  avoid  the  errors  of  the  past,  but  a 
clear  and  satisfactory  result  can  only  be  attained  by  the  new  examination  of 
the  facts  of  consciousness,  with  the  added  help  of  Christian  experience  and 
of  Scripture.  We  are  not  novices  enough  to  believe  that  we  can  clear  up  all 
the  dark  places  of  this  most  intricate  theme.  We  do  believe,  however,  that 
the  main  features  of  a  right  doctrine  of  the  will  may  be  discovered  and  intel- 
ligibly set  forth.  Error  has  commonly  arisen  because  inquirers  have  started 
from  a  priori  and  abstract  notions  of  liberty  or  of  law,  rather  than  from 
induction  of  the  facts  of  man's  actual  condition  according  to  conscience  and 


*  Printed  in  the  Baptist  Review.  1880 :  527-550.  and  1881 :  30-47. 

90 


THE    WILL   IN    THEOLOGY.  91 

the  Bible.  Let  our  first  aim,  then,  be  this,  to  examine  the  facts,  both  as 
regards  the  ordinary  operations  of  our  willing  faculty,  and  as  regards  its  con- 
duct in  matters  of  morality  and  religion.  Then,  secondly,  we  may  test  the 
results  thus  obtained  by  their  conformity  or  non-conformity  with  certain 
great  general  teachings  of  Scripture  respecting  God  and  man.  Finally,  we 
may  inquire  whether  the  objections  frequently  urged  against  our  view  are  of 
sufficient  force  to  compel  its  surrender,  or  can  be  met  by  counterbalancing 
considerations  if  not  by  direct  refutation. 

In  asking  what  are  the  facts  of  the  will's  action,  the  simplest  cases  are  the 
most  typical  and  the  most  instructive.  The  other  day  I  found  my  little  son 
executing  some  curious  gyrations  about  the  room.  "John,"  I  said,  "  what 
do  you  do  that  for?"  "Oh,  I  do  it  because  I  want  to,  father!"  was  his 
reply.  Now  my  question  and  his  answer  give  a  complete  formula  for  a 
doctrine  of  the  will.  I  will  take  them  for  my  text  in  what  follows.  The 
text  teaches  us  that  the  human  mind  is  the  efficient  cause  of  its  own  action. 
"  I  do  it."  John  refers  his  action  to  himself  as  its  author.  And  when  we 
-1  -oak  of  John's  will,  we  have  nothing  in  mind  but  John  himself,  as  a  person 
putting  forth  power. 

Let  us  observe  a  little  more  closely  what  John's  attributing  to  himself 
power  involves.  It  involves  a  consciousness  on  his  part  that  his  willing  is 
determined  by  nothing  outside  himself.  He  knows  that  when  he  turns  a 
somersault,  he  is  not  a  water-wheel  set  a  going  and  kept  a  going  by  an  exter- 
nal force.  It  is  he,  in  whom  the  effort  and  the  motion  originate.  Here  we 
get  a  glimpse  of  the  indestructible  barrier  in  human  consciousness  against 
all  schemes  of  materialistic  necessity.  Man  is  not  the  product  of  climate  and 
si  i  mmndiugs.  External  things  cannot  account  for  his  volitions.  The  spring 
of  action  is  within.  His  whole  mental  being  rises  up  in  protest  against  the 
doi-triiie  that  he  acts  only  as  he  is  acted  upon,  that  his  mental  movement  is 
determined  for  him  l>y  causes  apart  from  himself  and  beyond  his  control. 
Ho  knows  that  he  is  free,  in  the  sense  that  he  determines  himself ,  and  is  the 
efficient  cause  of  his  own  activities. 

Absence  of  outward  constraint  then  is  only  a  part,  and  a  small  part,  of  the 
idea  of  liberty.  Movement  from  within  belongs  to  it  also.  John  can  say  : 
"  I  do  it,"  not  only  with  regard  to  his  bodily  activity  but  with  regard  to  the 
inward  effort  of  his  soul.  His  body  may  be  in  fetters,  but  his  soul  may  be 
five.  Even  in  confinement  he  may  put  forth  mental  powers  in  longing  for 
deliverance  or  in  planning  an  escape.  The  freedom  of  the  will  is  shown  in 
choice  rather  than  in  the  execution  of  the  choice.  It  is  indeed  this  inward 
ivulm  of  mental  energy  to  which  we  need  to  confine  our  attention.  Not 
freedom  in  acting,  but  freedom  in  choosing  is  the  inalienable  prerogative  of 
will.  Take  from  me  the  power  of  originating  bodily  action,  and  I  am  still  man, 
with  mind  unconquered  and  directing  a  thousand  operations  within.  But 
take  from  me  the  power  of  originating  mental  action  and  I  cease  to  be  a 
rational  creature, —  I  become  as  much  a  prey  to  influences  from  without  as 
the  stick  or  the  stone.  We  call  this  freedom  formal  freedom,  because  it 
1  »elongs  to  us  as  the  very  form  of  our  being.  So  long  as  man  is  man,  he 
cannot  be  divested  of  it.  Hear  John  Calvin  declare  his  faith  in  it:  "I 
acknowledge,"  he  says,  "and  I  will  always  affirm,  that  there  is  a  free-will,  a 
will  determining  itself,  and  I  proclaim  any  man  who  thinks  otherwise  a 


92  THE    WILL    IN   THEOLOGY,    OR, 

heretic.  Let  the  will  be  called  free,  because  it  is  not  constrained  or  impelled 
irresistibly  from  without,  but  determines  itself  by  itself." 

Thus  my  son's  reply  :  "  I  do  it,"  indicates  his  consciousness  that  his  will,, 
or  his  mind  willing,  is  the  efficient  cause  of  his  inward,  and  so  of  his  outward, 
activity.  But  my  question  and  the  remaining  words  of  his  answer  indicate 
also  another  complementary  fact  in  his  consciousness.  I  ask  him  :  "  What 
do  you  do  that  for?"  He  recognizes  the  propriety  of  the  question,  and 
replies  :  ' '  Oh,  I  do  it  because, " —  and  then  follows  an  assigned  reason.  Now 
this  shows  that  while  the  will  is  an  efficient  cause  of  mental  action,  it  is 
never  an  adequate  or  sufficient  cause.  In  other  words,  the  will  never  acts 
without  some  material  to  work  upon,  some  reason  for  its  activity,  some  end 
in  view.  This  is  little  more  than  a  repetition  of  those  old  maxims  in  philos- 
ophy :  "An  act  of  pure  will  is  unknown  in  consciousness  ;  "  "  Willing  must 
have  some  object;"  "He  that  wills  must  will  something."  Dr.  H.  B. 
Smith  has  well  illustrated  the  difference  between  an  efficient  cause  and  an 
adequate  cause,  by  the  activity  of  the  laborers  in  the  building  of  a  house. 
This  activity  is  the  efficient  cause  of  the  building,  but  it  is  not  an  adequate 
cause.  Besides  this  there  must  be  a  material  cause,  in  the  shape  of  brick 
and  mortar,  and  a  final  cause,  in  the  end  which  the  house  is  designed  to  .sub- 
serve. So  to  call  the  will  an  efficient  cause  is  by  no  means  to  say  that  mere 
will  can  account  for  any  action  whatever.  There  must  be  occasion  for  its 
activity  and  reasons  for  its  effort.  No  power  was  ever  put  forth  by  any  will, 
human  or  divine,  with  regard  to  which  we  cannot  ask  the  question  :  "Why  ?  " 
and  with  regard  to  which  we  cannot  compel  from  the  willing  agent  the  answer  : 
"Because."  The  real  cause  of  an  action  is  made  up  of  two  things  :  first, 
the  power  that  did  it,  and  secondly,  the  reason  for  which  it  was  done.  Or, 
to  put  it  more  philosophically,  the  adequate  or  sufficient  cause  is  a  combina- 
tion of  two  elements  :  first,  the  efficient  cause  ;  and  secondly,  the  occasional 
cause. 

If  the  adequate  cause  of  an  action  or  volition  be  not  a  simple  but  a  com- 
plex thing,  we  can  see  why  one  action  or  volition  should  be  unlike  another. 
The  efficient  cause,  the  will,  is  the  same  in  both,  but  the  occasional  cause, 
the  reason  or  end  in  view,  is  different.  The  fact  that  I  have  a  will  explains 
the  fact  of  my  willing,  but  it  does  not  explain  the  fact  that  I  will  this  rather 
than  that.  Particularity  in  the  effect  demands  particularity  in  the  cause. 
When  I  ask  what  is  the  cause  of  the  uniformity  of  evil  action  in  the  case  of 
an  individual  or  of  the  race,  it  is  not  enough  to  tell  me  that  the  individual 
has  a  will,  and  that  each  member  of  the  race  has  a  similar  faculty  of  voli- 
tions. I  demand  to  know  why  this  faculty  acts  wrongly  with  such  persist- 
ent uniformity.  When  I  ask  the  secret  of  a  pure  and  consistent  life,  I  feel 
it  an  impertinence  to  be  told  simply  that  the  man  who  leads  that  life  chooses 
to  live  as  he  does.  The  everlasting  "why?"  comes  up  again  and  again 
until  it  is  answered.  And  when  the  advocates  of  arbitrariness  declare  that 
"nothing  whatever"  causes  one  man  to  put  forth  continuously  selfish  voli- 
tions, and  another  man  to  put  forth  continuous  efforts  of  self-sacrifice,  I  feel 
myself  disingenuously  dealt  with,  and  I  declare  that  such  a  theory  of  the 
will  wrecks  itself  upon  the  solid  rock  of  our  primitive  conviction  that  every 
effect  must  have  an  adequate  and  sufficient  cause. 

My  son  John  not  only  assents  to  this  principle  at  once  by  saying  :  ' '  Be- 


AN    EARLIER    VIEW    OF   THE    WILL.  93 

-cause,"  but  he  throws  great  light  upon  the  nature  of  human  volition,  by 
saying  :  "  Because  I  want  to  !  "  He  asserts  implicitly  that  want,  desire,  'dis- 
position, account  for  mental  act  or  effort.  He  declares  that  while  the  ego, 
the  will,  is  the  efficient  cause  of  his  action,  a  certain  wish,  preference,  affec- 
tion of  his  is  the  cause  which  determines  the  specific  character  of  the  action. 
Now  this  is  simply  to  say  that  every  volition  has  its  motive  ;  that  no  act  of 
will  is  ever  put  forth  except  in  accordance  with  the  soul's  prevailing  desire 
at  the  time  the  choice  is  made.  Certainly,  if  a  man  has  power  to  act  with- 
out motives,  it  is  a  power  which  is  never  exercised,  and  we  can  have  no  sci- 
entific warrant  for  claiming  its  existence.  Action  without  motive  is  irrational. 
What  dignity  or  value  is  there  in  a  wild  contingence  which  may  act  unin- 
telligently  to  its  own  ruin  ?  This  is  caprice  and  craziness,  but  not  freedom. 
It  is  immoral  as  well  as  irrational.  You  require  that  men  shall  choose  for 
reasons,  not  without  reason.  Only  as  you  assume  that  there  was  a  motive 
behind  the  deed,  do  you  regard  the  agent  responsible.  To  maintain  that  inde- 
terminedness  is  essential  to  liberty,  to  declare  that  in  order  to  freedom  man 
must  have  the  power  of  acting  contrary  to  all  motives  and  of  doing  what  on 
the  whole  he  does  not  wish  to  do,  is  to  contradict  all  experience  and  con- 
sciousness. Power  to  do  what  one  does  not  desire  to  do,  is  not  power,  but 
impotence.  Power  to  plunge  into  the  abyss  of  sin,  in  spite  of  all  inward 
tendencies  to  the  good,  only  indicates  that  the  soul  has  not  yet  reached  true 
freedom.  Freedom  never  shows  itself  except  in  the  choice  of  what  we  like. 
When  the  love  for  honor  is  so  strong  that  a  man  cannot  do  a  dishonorable 
act,  then  he  is  most  truly  free.  God  cannot  lie,  but  the  settled  love  for 
truth  that  renders  lying  forever  impossible  to  him  does  not  abrogate  his  free- 
dom. The  tmest  freedom  in  God,  and  in  the  just  made  perfect,  is  identical 
with  necessity.  In  short,  I  am  free  only  when  I  act  from  motives  and  do 
what  I  want  to. 

But  you  observe  that  when  John  says  "Because  I  want  to,"  the  motive  of 
which  he  speaks  is  something  internal  and  not  external.  Unless  we  stead- 
fastly maintain  this,  we  shall  be  avoiding  the  Charybdis  of  caprice  only  to 
full  upon  the  Scylla  of  fatalism.  Let  us  remember  that  all  motive,  in  the 
last  analysis,  is  witjiin.  Suppose  you  offer  to  George  Washington  a  million 
in  gold,  as  the  price  of  betraying  his  country.  Will  he  accept  it  ?  No.  But 
Benedict  Arnold  will.  The  gold  is  the  same  in  both  cases.  What  makes  it 
n  motive  in  the  one  case,  and  not  in  the  other?  Why,  evidently,  the  settled 
preferences,  affections  and  desires,  which  constitute  the  character  of  each. 
Thus  we  see  that  the  causes  of  volitions  lie,  after  all,  wholly  within  the  mind. 
Outward  things  have  value  and  attractiveness,  only  as  the  mind  seizes  upon 
them  with  its  desires,  only  as  they  are  the  objects  of  some  want  within. 
What  we  mean  by  the  strongest  motive  is  simply  the  bent  of  the  mind,  the 
fundamental  and  ruling  preference.  And  in  matters  of  morals  and  religion, 
this  fundamental  and  ruling  preference  is  of  one  or  another  sort,  either  a 
supreme  love  for  self  or  a  supreme  love  for  God.  Of  whichever  sort  it  is, 
it  is  the  man's  inmost  condition  and  character ;  in  short,  it  is  the  man  him- 
self. When  his  will  acts,  it  acts  under  the  influence  of  motives,  but  it  is 
the  character  that  makes  the  motives,  and  so  we  may  truly  say  that  the 
will  always  manifests  the  character.  The  inward  affections  which  consti- 
tute the  character  may  be  so  strong  and  fixed  that  the  acts  which  take  their 


94  THE   WILL  IN   THEOLOGY,    OK, 

direction  from  them  are  uniformly  good  or  bad.  The  immanent  preference 
or  moral  bias  of  the  soul  may  be  so  holy  that  a  being  cannot  sin,  or  may 
be  so  unholy  that  a  being  cannot  but  sin,  and  yet  this  certainty  of  good  or 
evil  action  may  be  the  result  of  no  outward  constraint  whatever.  The  will 
may  be  perfectly  free,  while  yet  the  direction  and  form  of  the  volitions  sire 
determined  by  the  inward  character. 

Thus  far  I  have  spoken  of  the  will  as  if  it  were  simply  the  faculty  of  voli- 
tions. I  have  not  thought  it  expedient  to  encumber  my  statement  of  the 
elements  of  the  doctrine  by  anticipating  the  prof ounder  and  more  unfamiliar 
phases  of  the  will's  activity.  When  we  come  to  consider  the  will  in  its 
moral  and  religious  aspects,  we  find  that  it  fills  a  range  of  our  being  very 
commonly  ignored,  but  far  more  extensive  and  important  than  that  of  mere 
volition.  John  intimates  this  when  he  says  :  "I  want  to. "  That  is  as  much 
as  to  say  that  the  person  John  puts  forth  another  power  than  that  of  actual 
volition  —  namely,  a  power  of  wish,  preference,  desire.  There  is  difference 
between  these  and  volitions.  The  latter  we  are  conscious  of  originating ; 
we  are  not  always  conscious  of  originating  the  former.  We  put  forth  the 
volition ;  we  find  ourselves  wishing.  And  yet  we  use  not  the  passive  but 
the  active  voice  ;  we  say  :  "  /wish,  /  want,  /  prefer."  We  call  our  dispo- 
sitions and  affections  voluntary,  though  we  never  speak  of  voluntary  knowl- 
edge. The  more  we  think  of  this  underlying  region  in  which  motive  chiefly 
originates,  the  more  we  see  that  here  is  the  heart,  the  true  self,  here  the 
most  intimate  going-forth  of  power.  We  perceive  that  there  are  optative 
states  as  well  as  optative  acts,  and  that  we  hold  others  and  ourselves  respon- 
sible for  them,  in  a  way  which  would  not  be  possible  if  the  will  did  not  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  enter  into  them  as  a  constitutive  element.  In 
short  we  come  to  see  that  to  define  will  as  the  mere  faculty  of  volitions  is  to 
regard  only  the  most  superficial  aspects  of  it,  while  it  is  really  nothing  less 
than  the  whole  principle  of  mental  movement,  conscious  or  unconscious,  the 
whole  impulsive  power  of  man's  being,  whether  latent  or  developed,  and  in 
its  moral  and  religious  aspects,  the  whole  tendency  and  determination  of  the 
soul  to  an  ultimate  end. 

Will,  then,  in  the  sense  of  the  faculty  of  volitions,  is  always  backed  and 
preceded  by  will  in  the  larger  and  prof  ounder  sense  of  the  immanent  pref- 
erence of  the  soul,  the  moral  gravitation  of  the  dispositions  and  affections, 
in  fine,  the  character  of  the  man.  So  that  we  properly  comprehend  in  the 
range  of  the  will  not  only  the  executive  acts,  but  also  the  settled  appetencies 
in  which  the  person  puts  forth  power.  The  desires  and  longings  of  the  soul 
are  states  of  the  will,  and  for  them  as  constituting  our  inmost  character,  we 
feel  ourselves  chiefly  responsible.  I  cannot  separate  myself  from  these  inner 
impulsions.  I  cannot  sunder  the  faculty  of  volitions  from  the  directive 
powers  beneath,  simply  because  I  cannot  escape  from  myself.  If  these  pow- 
ers are  evil  in  their  tendency  and  product,  I  accuse  myself  as  thus  evil. 
When  I  see  consummate  pride  and  haughtiness  in  others,  I  condemn  it 
because  it  is  a  tendency  of  soul  that  is  wicked,  whether  originated  by  the 
individual's  volition  or  not.  There  is  a  congenital  and  hereditary  egotism 
aud  self-assertion,  and  we  reprobate  it  without  respect  to  its  origin,  because 
we  feel  that  the  "territory  of  vice  and  of  virtue,"  to  use  the  words  of 
another,  "is  as  wide  as  the  mind  exercised  either  voluntary  or  optatively. '" 


AN    EARLIER   VIEW    OF   THE    WILL.  95* 

Many  of  our  dispositions  and  desires  are  but  imperfectly  conscious.  Some 
of  them  we  are  probably  altogether  unconscious  of,  until  some  unexpected 
emergency  reveals  our  character  in  action  ;  but  the  whole  stream  of  moral 
tendency,  even  apart  from  and  below  consciousness,  is  in  the  realm  of  the 
voluntary,  belongs  in  this  large  sense  to  will,  and  involves  responsibility  and 
guilt  if  it  be  evil,  as  it  is  worthy  of  love  and  approbation  when  good. 

If  you  have  followed  me  thus  far  you  will  be  able  to  see  how  freedom  of 
the  will  may  be  perfectly  compatible  with  the  certainty,  in  any  particular 
case,  of  a  definite  kind  of  action.  The  will  as  a  faculty  of  volitions  is  an 
efficient  cause,  a  causa  causans,  acting  from  within  by  a  power  of  its  own. 
But  the  will  in  this  narrow  sense  is  under  law  to  the  will  in  the  larger  and 
deeper  sense,  and  the  will  in  this  last  sense  is  a  causa  causata  ;  the  indi- 
vidual can  never  point  to  a  particular  volition  of  his  own  which  caused  his 
character.  He  causes,  and  he  is  caused.  He  determines,  but  he  finds  him- 
self determined.  He  acts  freely,  but  the  direction  of  his  acts  is  furnished 
by  a  voluntary  nature  that  stretches  away  beneath  his  consciousness.  He 
is  a  swimmer  in  the  stream,  but  the  current  is  strong,  and  the  current  is 
not  something  foreign  to  him  —  it  is  his  real  self,  as  much  as  his  conscious 
efforts  are.  While  no  restraint  whatever  is  laid  upon  him,  there  may  be  the 
most  perfect  certainty  that  he  will  act  in  one  way  rather  than  in  another. 
The  mean  person  may  be  incapable  of  generosity  and  the  truthful  person 
incapable  of  falsehood,  because  each  freely  acts  out  his  character.  In  each 
case  there  is  a  moral  necessity  which  is  perfectly  consistent  with  freedom. 
The  formal  freedom  of  the  will,  considered  as  the  faculty  of  volitions,  may 
still  subsist,  while  yet  the  will  considered  as  the  underlying  movement  and 
current  of  the  voluntary  being  is  in  bondage  by  reason  of  perverse  and 
unnatural  tendencies  and  inclinations.  And  this  is  the  real  condition  of 
man  —  formal  freedom,  but  a  real  necessity  of  evil  —  a  necessity  of  evil, 
however,  very  different  from  the  necessitarianism  maintained  by  the  mate- 
rialist, which  has  its  ground  in  things  external  to  human  nature  —  a  neces- 
sity of  evil  which  has  its  ground  rather  in  man  himself,  and  in  those  evil 
dispositions  and  desires  which  are  states  of  his  will,  and  which  were  caused 
by  human  nature  itself  when  it  first  fell  away  from  God  and  from  holiness. 

Ernest  Naville  has  well  said  that  man  cannot  cease  to  believe  in  liberty, 
because  it  is  his  true  nature,  nor  can  he  cease  to  doubt  his  liberty,  because  he 
does  not  realize  it.  Put  these  two  facts  together,  and  you  will  avoid  both  the 
extremes  of  controversy.  The  will,  as  a  power  of  putting  forth  individual 
choices,  can  choose  anything  not  inconsistent  with  its  previous  fundamental 
choice  or  preference.  Hence  we  grant  what  the  old  theologians  call  civil  free- 
dom. Every  man  chooses  unrestrainedly  the  method  in  which  he  will  act  out 
his  character.  A  thousand  forms  of  activity  are  open  to  him.  In  any  one  of 
these  according  to  his  pleasure  he  may  act  or  refuse  to  act.  It  is  with  this 
freedom  in  secular  matters,  and  with  this  only,  that  so  many  of  the  moral 
philosophies  of  our  day  concern  themselves.  They  are  philosophies  of 
man's  original  condition  —  of  the  metaphysical  possibilities  of  his  being. 
But  they  ignore  a  whole  hemisphere  of  fact,  when  they  profess  to  be  exhaus- 
tive accounts  of  man's  voluntary  nature.  Not  man  in  an  ideal  abstract  state, 
but  man  in  his  present  moral  state,  is  the  man  that  we  need  to  know ;  and 
real  concrete  man  can  be  studied  only  in  his  acts  and  his  consciousness. 


96  THE   WILL   IN   THEOLOGY,    OR. 

And  when  we  once  begin  this  study  either  in  ourselves  or  in  others,  we  find 
that  we  must  set  side  by  side  with  this  consciousness  of  freedom  in  volition 
another  consciousness  of  a  malign  will  beneath,  that  hinders  persistent 
choice  of  the  right  and  binds  us  to  a  deeper  necessity  of  evil. 

And  so,  when  we  ask  the  question  whether  this  causative  power  of  the 
will  as  the  faculty  of  volitions  is  equal  to  the  task  of  permanently  reversing 
the  underlying  tendency  and  current  of  the  will  considered  as  the  self-deter- 
mination of  the  being  to  an  ultimate  end,  experience  must  answer :  * '  No  !"  Man 
has  liberty, — liberty  to  enslave  himself  and  to  persevere  in  self-enslavement. 
His  liberty  is  not  ability  to  change  his  character  at  a  single  volition. 
Opposed  to  God  and  dominated  by  self-love  as  he  is,  he  cannot  of  himself 
choose  God  and  love  holiness  supremely.  Self-love  cannot  throttle  and 
slay  self-love.  The  affections  and  desires  remaining  what  they  are,  he  can- 
not love  God  with  all  the  heart.  Let  him  make  the  effort,  and  he  finds 
himself  as  powerless  as  a  man  standing  upon  the  surface  of  the  ground  over 
one  of  those  subterranean  Kentucky  rivers  would  be  to  turn  back  in  its 
course  the  rushing  torrent  that  flows  beneath  his  feet.  So  man  is  at  war 
with  himself  as  well  as  with  God.  He  has  a  formal  freedom,  but  he  is  in 
real  slavery. 

The  error  of  the  philosophy  we  are  combating  is  therefore  the  error  of 
dismembering  our  mental  nature,  of  sundering  the  powers  from  each  other, 
and  of  imagining  that  will,  as  the  faculty  of  volitions,  can  act  alone.  But 
man  is  a  complex  whole.  Whenever  he  acts,  he  acts  as  a  whole.  In  thought 
we  can  distinguish  between  his  different  powers  and  speak  of  their  functions 
and  products ;  but  to  suppose  that  the  power  of  executive  choice  can  some- 
how put  itself  outside  of  the  man  and  secure  a  KOV  CT&  from  which  it  may 
move  the  man  contrary  to  his  character,  is  an  error  only  a  little  less  gro- 
tesque than  that  of  personifying  the  divine  attributes  and  of  supposing  that 
Wisdom  speaks  to  Holiness  and  Holiness  to  Love.  And  so  we  have  a 
method  of  thought  with  regard  to  man's  faculty  of  volitions,  which  regards 
it  as  severed  from  reason  and  from  affection,  fancies  that  it  can  act  sover- 
eignly in  utter  independence  and  disregard  of  motives,  and  believes  that 
arbitrariness  and  uncertainty  are  of  the  very  essence  of  freedom.  And  this 
is  inseparable  from  and  rests  upon  a  narrow  and  defective  conception  of  the 
will  itself,  which  ignores  that  whole  sphere  of  mental  and  moral  movement 
which  we  call  the  preferences,  the  affections,  the  dispositions,  the  desires, 
into  which  we  put  more  of  power  than  we  put  into  our  imperative  volitions, 
and  which  conscience  holds  us  chiefly  accountable  for,  because  they  consti- 
tute the  real  self,  the  real  life,  from  which  our  outward  acts  spring  and  take 
their  character. 

I  am  aware  that  the  philosophy  of  the  will  which  I  am  advocating  enlarges 
the  sphere  of  will  and  of  responsibility  greatly  beyond  the  bounds  assigned 
to  it  by  superficial  thought.  But  be  sure  that  this  philosophy  is  the  phi- 
losophy of  the  future.  He  who  can  content  himself  with  saying  that  will  is 
the  author  of  volitions  only,  and  that  he  can  charge  himself  only  with  what 
he  has  personally  and  consciously  caused,  is  like  the  early  navigators  who 
described  the  continent  of  Africa  from  what  they  had  learned  by  touching 
here  and  there  along  the  coast.  He  who,  in  his  explorations  of  his  own 
nature,  has  fought  his  way,  like  Stanley,  through  endless  jungles  and 


AN    EARLIER   VIEW    OF   THE    WILL.  97 

malarial  swamps  and  mountainous  barriers  and  savage  enemies,  will  have  a 
sadder  but  also  a  grander  understanding  of  what  is  meant  by  Will.  To 
such  a  comprehensive  philosophy  of  will  we  are  coming  by  slow  degrees. 
Schopenhauer  and  Hartmann  in  Germany,  with  all  their  pessimism  and 
atheism,  are  bringing  out,  in  their  "  Philosophies  of  the  Unconscious," 
great  facts  of  our  nature  which  were  never  so  clearly  understood  before. 
The  fundamental  thing  in  the  universe,  according  to  their  systems,  is  not 
the  Idea,  as  Hegel  thought,  but  the  Will.  Not  only  is  there  unconscious 
cerebration  and  thought  in  our  walking  and  in  our  sleep,  but  there  is  also 
unconscious  will  and  the  putting  forth  of  power.  The  thoughtful  and 
conscientious  stiident  of  his  own  nature  will  recognize  here  the  gleams  of 
truth.  The  will  is  nothing  less  than  the  soul  in  movement  or  tending  to 
move.  And  responsibility  is  coextensive,  not  simply  with  our  volitions, 
but  with  the  whole  range  of  our  active  being. 

In  a  recent  French  Evangelical  Review  (Revue  Chretienne,  Jan.  1878  : 7) 
I  find  the  following  :  "We  have  no  initial  power  of  determination.  We  can 
only  yield  to  the  divine  impulse  or  to  the  attraction  of  sin.  Our  will  is  the 
effective  cause  of  our  conduct  because  these  impulses  solicit  without  con- 
straining us.  But  our  liberty  does  not  consist  in  producing  an  action  of 
which  it  is  the  only  source.  It  consists  in  choosing  between  two  preexistent 
impulses.  It  is  choice,  not  creation,  which  is  our  destiny."  The  doctrine 
here  taught  harmonizes  perfectly  with  the  view  thus  far  presented,  and 
enables  us  to  make  an  important  application  of  it.  The  will  has  sometimes 
been  called  a  creative  first  cause.  There  is  plausibility  in  such  a  definition, 
because  the  will  is  a  causa  causans.  But  this  is  only  the  superficial  aspect 
of  the  will.  It  is  also  a  causa  causata.  The  fundamental  bias  we  find  born 
in  us.  God  is  only  causa  causans,  never  causa  causata.  Let  us  then, 
with  all  reverence,  reserve  the  title  of  Creative  First  Cause  for  Him  who  is 
the  only  absolute  originator,  and  who  can  alone  call  substance,  as  well  as 
activity,  into  being. 

From  this  point  of  view  we  can  also  perceive  the  right  and  the  wrong 
meaning  of  the  current  phrase:  "the  power  of  a  contrary  choice."  The 
power  of  a  contrary  choice  is  possible  if  with  the  volition  you  include  the 
motive,  if  with  the  act  you  combine  the  desire.  There  is  indeed  an  abstract 
natural  possibility  of  choosing  in  either  of  two  ways.  But  as  another  has 
said  :  "  Actual  choosing  is  dependent  on  motives,  opportunities,  moral  bias, 
the  antecedent  state  of  the  will  itself.  And  this  generic  bias,  this  moral 
habit,  determines  the  special  volitions  until  some  great  crisis  comes  " —  comes, 
we  may  add,  as  the  result  of  aid  and  renewal  from  without.  We  say  some- 
times to  ourselves  :  "  If  I  had  this  to  do  over  again,  I  would  do  differently. " 
Yes,  if  we  could  put  ourselves  back  into  the  past  with  all  the  new  dispositions 
and  views  which  experience  has  given  us.  But  when  we  ask  ourselves 
whether,  if  we  were  put  back  there  with  just  the  views  and  feelings  we  had 
then,  we  should  do  differently,  we  are  compelled  to  answer  in  the  negative. 
But  because  we  chose  for  reasons,  and  would  not  choose  differently,  we 
blame  our  choice.  Our  choice  was  none  the  less  free  and  responsible  because 
it  was  the  natural  sequence  of  our  preceding  dispositions.  These  preceding 
dispositions  were  ourselves.  The  will  was  in  them.  Being  what  we  were 
we  could  not  have  chosen  differently,  but  the  power  to  choose  as  we  did  not 
7 


98  THE    WILL   IN   THEOLOGY,    OR, 

wish  to  choose,  was  not  necessary  to  make  our  action  free.  Indeed,  if  we 
could  have  acted  in  disregard  of  all  motive  and  reason,  the  choice  would 
have  been  devoid  of  all  real  freedom.  To  be  free  to  do  what  we  do  not  wish 
to  do  is  no  freedom  at  all.  It  is  to  be  the  blind  victim  of  chance,  or  to  play 
the  part  of  the  madman.  The  power  of  a  contrary  choice,  in  the  sense  of  a 
power  to  decide  against  one's  character  and  against  all  motives  operating  at 
the  time  upon  the  mind,  is  a  power  which  not  only  has  no  existence,  but  of 
which  we  have  not  even  the  ability  to  conceive.  The  only  actual  or  possible 
freedom  is  the  freedom  to  manifest  our  character  in  mental  action. 

It  has  not  escaped  your  notice  that  we  have  thus  far  studiously  avoided  all 
reference  to  Scripture.  It  has  been  our  aim  to  build  up  a  doctrine  of  the 
will  from  the  simple  facts  of  consciousness.  But  we  do  not  forget  that  we 
have  a  touchstone  by  which  to  determine  its  truth  or  error.  The  Bible  does 
not  indeed  teach  a  formal  scheme  of  mental  science.  Yet  certain  fundamental 
views  of  will  are  everywhere  implied  in  it.  Let  us  bring  our  results  to  the 
test  of  Scripture.  But  first  we  may  in  the  briefest  manner  state  what  these 
results  are.  They  are,  first,  that  the  will  as  a  faculty  of  volitions  is  the 
efficient  cause  of  mental  action ;  secondly,  that  this  faculty,  though  an 
efficient  cause,  is  not  an  adequate  and  sufficient  cause,  but  depends  for  its 
particular  direction  upon  occasional  causes  in  the  shape  of  objects  or  reasons 
for  its  activity  ;  thirdly,  that  these  objects  or  reasons,  which  we  call  motives, 
are  always,  in  the  last  analysis,  internal  and  not  external  to  the  mind  ; 
fourthly,  that  the  internal  dispositions  and  desires  which  give  to  motives  all 
their  force,  are  themselves  optative  states  of  the  soul  into  which  will,  as  well 
as  sensibility,  enters  as  a  constituent  element ;  fifthly,  that  will  must  there- 
fore be  regarded  as  including  not  only  the  faculty  of  individual  choices,  but 
also  the  states  of  immanent  preference  in  which  the  soul  puts  forth  its  power  ; 
sixthly,  that  since  the  will  as  an  efficient  cause  is  determined  as  to  the  char- 
acter of  its  action  by  the  will  in  the  larger  sense  of  the  soul's  fundamental 
preference,  freedom  in  its  executive  acts  may  coexist  with  certainty  and  even 
necessity  as  to  their  particular  nature ;  seventhly,  that  though  man  has  lib- 
erty in  manifesting  his  character,  he  is  unable  radically  to  change  this  char- 
acter if  it  be  evil,  or  to  reverse  the  self-determination  of  his  being  to  an 
ultimate  end,  and  that,  because  volition  can  never  sunder  itself  from  char- 
acter, nor  the  man  escape  from  himself ;  eighthly,  that  the  will's  freedom  is 
therefore  so  limited  by  the  law  of  its  own  character  and  condition,  which  it 
did  not  individually  originate,  that  man  cannot  justly  be  called  a  creative 
first  cause,  nor  be  credited  with  a  power  of  contrary  choice  in  matters  of 
morals  and  religion. 

This  view  of  the  will,  and  the  views  to  which  it  is  directly  opposed,  we  are 
now  to  test  by  the  teachings  of  Scripture.  And  first,  by  the  teachings  of 
Scripture  as  to  God's  foreknowledge.  By  foreknowledge  we  mean  the  knowl- 
edge of  something  in  the  future  that  is  certain  to  be.  We  must  distinguish 
it  clearly  from  ideal  knowledge,  or  knowledge  of  what  is  merely  possible. 
We  can  imagine  God  in  eternity  past  to  have  had  before  him  a  multitude  of 
plans  for  a  universe.  They  are  in  his  mind  as  merely  ideal  plans  ;  he  knows 
them  all  in  their  minutest  details.  But  so  long  as  no  one  plan  is  fixed  upon 
and  adopted,  he  cannot  be  said  to/oreknow  any  of  them,  or  any  of  the 
details  of  any  of  them.  He  cannot  foreknow  any  one  of  these  plans,  except 


AX    EARLIER    VIEW    OF   THE    WILL.  99 

when  it  ceases  to  be  merely  an  ideal  plan,  and  becomes  a  certainty  of  the 
future,  and  this  certainty  that  the  events  included  in  it  will  take  place  can 
only  be  the  result  of  his  adopting  the  plan.  The  Scriptures  declare  God's 
absolute  foreknowledge  of  the  future.  But  that  foreknowledge  presupposes 
that  the  future  is  not  simply  ideally  possible,  or  contingent,  but  is  a  thing 
of  certainty,  that  is  infallibly  to  be. 

"But,"  we  are  asked,  "does  not  God  foreknow  what  he  will  adopt,  and 
does  not  knowledge  precede  will  in  the  order  of  nature  ?  "  I  answer,  knowl- 
edge of  a  thing  as  certain  to  be,  cannot  precede  the  fact  of  such  certainty, 
for  it  would  then  be  knowledge  of  what  did  not  exist,  and  so  would  be  a 
falsity  and  a  delusion.  And  so  knowledge  of  a  plan  certain  to  be  carried 
out  ciiiinot  precede  the  certainty  of  that  plan,  nor  can  it  precede  God's 
adoption  of  it,  for  this  adoption  is  all  that  makes  it  certain.  The  knowledge 
which  God  has,  before  he  adopts  his  plan,  must  be  merely  ideal  knowledge 
of  this  plan  among  a  variety  of  plans  ;  it  cannot  be/oreknowledge,  for  there 
can  be  no  foreknowledge  when  there  is  as  yet  nothing  certain  in  the  future 
to  be  foreknown.  The  true  order  is  therefore  this  :  first,  God's  knowledge 
<  )f  various  ideal  plans  ;  secondly,  God's  adoption  of  one  of  these  plans  and 
his  consequent  rendering  it  a  certainty  of  the  future  ;  thirdly,  his  foreknowl- 
edge of  the  events  included  in  it,  as  certain  to  be.  So  we  perceive  that  the 
certain  future  existence  of  events  is  the  condition  and  prerequisite  of  God's 
foreknowledge.  In  other  words,  what  is  not  certain  to  be  cannot  be  fore- 
knmvn. 

Apply  this  now  to  the  doctrine  of  the  will.  If  there  be  no  certainty  about 
the  future  free  actions  of  men,  God  himself  cannot  foreknow  them.  The 
\ie\\  which  we  have  taken  of  the  will  permits  us  to  predicate  certainty  of 
man's  free  actions,  because  they  take  their  direction  from  permanent  influ- 
ences in  the  character.  But  the  view  opposed  to  this  denies  that  there  can 
be  freedom  where  there  is  such  certainty.  It  declares  that  the  action  that 
is  certain  cannot  be  free,  and  that  the  very  essence  of  freedom  is  that  the 
will  is  able  to  make  an  absolutely  new  beginning,  and  for  the  character  of 
this  new  beginning  no  cause  whatever  can  be  assigned.  Absolute  uncer- 
tainty, perfect  indeterminedness,  on  this  view,  is  the  only  alternative  to 
fatalism.  Unless  with  precisely  the  same  external  and  internal  states  and 
conditions  the  agent  may  just  as  easily  make  the  opposite  decision  to  that 
which  he  does  actually  make,  the  agent  has  no  liberty  at  all.  Now  to  this 
view  of  the  will  we  simply  oppose  the  Scripture  declarations  of  God's  abso- 
lute foreknowledge  of  the  smallest  decisions  of  his  free  creatures  to  the  end 
of  time.  If  he  foreknows  them,  then  they  are  certain  to  be.  Uncertain 
things  cannot  be  the  objects  of  foreknowledge.  ForeknoAvledge  is  of  things 
to  be,  not  of  what  may  be  or  may  not  be.  Even  intuition  cannot  see  what 
is  not.  God  cannot  foreknow  what  is  not  there  to  be  foreknown.  If  there 
is  nothing  certain,  then  nothing  can  be  foreseen  or  predicted,  except  that 
either  this  or  that  will  take  place,  and  a  contingent  foreknowledge  is  no  fore- 
knowledge at  all.  Omniscience  does  not  make  it  possible  for  God  to  know 
things  that  are  not  objects  of  knowledge.  Even  he  cannot  tell  what  the 
results  would  be  if  two  and  two  made  five,  or  what  would  happen  if  chance 
ruled  in  the  universe.  But  the  theory  we  are  opposing  enthrones  chance  in 
the  human  will.  And  to  declare  that  God  can  foreknow  what  this  chance 


100  THE   WILL  IN   THEOLOGY,    OK, 

will  bring  about  is  to  declare  that  lie  can  know  nonsense  and  self-contradic- 
tion. Only  upon  the  view  that  man's  free  actions  are  under  the  law  of  char- 
acter, and  therefore  are  out  of  the  category  of  chance  and  uncertainty,  can 
even  the  omniscient  God  know  what  they  are  to  be. 

Many  of  the  advocates  of  the  caprice-theory  of  the  will  perceive  their  view 
to  be  inconsistent  with  belief  in  God's  foreknowledge,  and  in  various  ways 
attempt  to  justify  their  surrender  of  this  fundamental  article  of  our  faith. 
One  of  the  most  notable  among  them  ( see  Hazard  on  Causation,  213 )  inti- 
mates that  foreknowledge  is  not  essential  to  the  supreme  governing  Power 
of  the  universe,  protests  his  repugnance  to  the  notions  of  election  and 
decrees,  fancies  that  God  may  adapt  means  to  ends  from  moment  to  moment, 
and  as  he  becomes  aware  of  the  necessities  of  each  case,  may  draw  out  from 
his  infinite  resources  the  plan  which  he  had  devised  to  meet  such  an  emer- 
gency should  it  ever  occur.  This  writer  conceives  that  the  freedom  of  crea- 
tures may  not  have  been  possible  except  at  the  cost  of  a  self-limitation  of 
the  divine  knowledge, — God  chose  not  to  know  beforehand  what  his  crea- 
tures would  do,  lest  he  should  impose  fetters  on  their  liberty.  Does  it  occur 
to  him,  that  upon  the  theory  that  the  human  will  is  necessarily  an  alterna- 
tive power  God  did  not  need  to  limit  himself,  since  he  could  not  surrender 
what  he  had  not,  namely,  the  power  to  foreknow  as  certain  that  which  is 
essentially  uncertain ?  To  quote  once  more  from  Dr.  Smith:  "God  him- 
self cannot  see  that  to  be  one  and  no  other,  which  is  essentially  and  neces- 
sarily one  or  another. "  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  Socinians,  with  greater 
logical  consistency,  reject  altogether  the  possibility  of  God's  foreknowing 
free  human  actions.  To  Him,  upon  their  view,  the  fall  of  Adam  and  the 
crucifixion  of  Christ  would  have  been  a  surprise,  had  it  not  been  that  "  com- 
ing events  cast  their  shadows  before,"  —  though  even  then  how  divine 
sagacity  itself  could  have  converted  chance  into  probability,  is  difficult  to 
say.  Prophecy  is  nothing  but  guess-work.  Even  God  may  be  disap- 
pointed, for  there  is  no  limiting  the  absolute  uncertainty  of  the  human  will. 
What  is  this  but  to  discrown  the  omniscient  One,  in  order  that  man  may 
have  a  freedom  as  wild  as  that  of  Bedlam  itself  ! 

Every  such  theory  when  tested  by  Scripture  is  found  to  contradict  the 
express  teachings  of  revelation.  God  foreknows  all,  because  it  is  certain 
what  human  action  will  be.  And  human  action  is  certain,  because  all  men 
have  character.  Human  character  is  not  beyond  the  control  of  circumstances 
and  influences  which  God  has  arranged  and  appointed.  If  man,  influenced 
by  man,  may  still  be  free,  then  man  influenced  by  divinely  appointed  cir- 
cumstances may  still  be  free.  Because  we  know  something  of  the  charac- 
ters of  our  fellow-men  and  of  the  influence  of  their  surroundings  upon 
them,  we  are  able  to  a  certain  extent  to  predict  their  actions,  and  statistical 
averages  may  be  compiled,  which  shall  make  known  to  us  beforehand  their 
action  in  masses.  All  this  witnesses  that  freedom  is  not  inconsistent  with 
laws  and  uniformities  of  action.  It  is  only  by  observing  these  laws  that  we 
control  our  own  mental  powers  or  induce  others  to  serve  us.  If  we  were 
wise  enough,  we  could  predict  all  human  action.  Much  more  is  every 
human  being  "naked  and  open  to  the  eyes  of  Him  with  whom  we  have  to 
do. "  How  he  executes  his  all-comprehending  plan  we  know  not.  But  we 
do  know  that  he  cannot  resign  his  sovereignty.  No  creature  can  be  inde- 


AN   EARLIER   VIEW    OF   THE   WILL.  101 

pendent  of  him.  Man's  freedom  cannot  wrest  the  sceptre  from  his  hand 
nor  bandage  the  eyes  of  his  omniscience.  But  God's  sovereignty  and  his 
foreknowledge  must  both  be  surrendered,  if  the  certainty  of  human  voli- 
tions be  incompatible  with  freedom. 

In  the  second  place,  let  us  test  the  doctrine  we  have  propounded  by  the 
teachings  of  Scripture  as  to  man's  responsibility  for  his  native  depravity. 
That  man  is  depraved  by  nature  and  is  condemnable  for  this  depravity,  the 
Scripture  distinctly  asserts  when  it  declares  that  we  are  "  by  nature  children 
of  wrath."  Nature  here  can  mean  only  that  which  is  inborn  and  original  in 
contrast  with  that  which  is  subsequently  acquired.  There  is  a  congenital 
bias  of  the  will  toward  evil,  an  unholy  bent  of  the  affections  away  from  God, 
and  a  supreme  preference  of  self,  at  the  very  basis  of  our  moral  being, 
apart  from  and  prior  to  our  consciousness.  Upon  this  original  depravity  of 
the  soul  the  wrath  of  the  holy  One  rests.  But  God's  wrath  rests  only  upon 
that  which  deserves  it.  This  nature  therefore  is  justly  condemnable  and  we 
are  responsible  for  it.  We  will  not  multiply  passages  to  prove  that  this  is 
the  teaching  of  Scripture,  although  we  might  show  that  this  is  God's  own 
explanation  of  the  universal  fact  of  death,  even  in  the  case  of  those  who 
have  not  come  to  moral  consciousness,  and  his  explanation  likewise  of  the 
uniformity  of  sinful  volitions  in  all  men  and  all  ages.  Actual  sins  are  the 
fruit,  and  actual  death  is  the  penalty,  of  a  depravity  with  which  we  are  born 
and  for  which  we  are  notwithstanding  held  responsible.  Nor  is  this  the 
place  to  justify  the  Scripture  teaching,  although  we  could  adduce  weighty 
confirmations  of  it  from  the  facts  of  history  and  from  the  testimony  of  most 
acute  and  holy  men  as  to  that  human  nature  which  in  themselves  and  others 
they  have  subjected  to  so  penetrating  and  pure  a  scrutiny.  We  might  bring 
forward  a  multitude  of  witnesses  from  the  ranks  of  law  and  literature  and 
philosophy,  and  all  of  them  outside  the  pale  of  professed  Christianity,  who 
would  with  one  voice  declare  that  they  felt  within  them  a  fatal  necessity  of 
evil,  a  taint  of  nature  below  conscious  choice,  a  moral  gravitation  to  the 
wrong,  which  they  did  not  personally  originate,  and  yet  for  which,  strangely 
enough,  they  are  not  able  to  shake  off  the  sense  of  blame  worthiness.  Aris- 
totle anticipates  Paul's  account  of  the  evil  law  in  the  members,  though  he 
is  not  able,  as  Paul  is,  to  answer  the  question  :  "  Who  shall  deliver  me  from 
the  body  of  this  death  ?  "  And  Seneca  in  certain  passages  seems  almost  to 
echo  David's  words  :  "Behold  I  was  shapen  in  iniquity  and  in  sin  did  my 
mother  conceive  me." 

Our  present  purpose  is,  however,  simply  to  make  plain  the  fact  that  this 
Scriptural  teaching  is  consistent  with  the  view  of  will  which  we  have  pre- 
sented, but  is  inconsistent  with  any  other.  If  our  view  be  true,  then  man 
may  be  responsible  for  his  nature, —  for  his  nature  is  will.  His  whole 
being,  in  moral  movement  or  tending  to  moral  movement,  is  within  the 
sphere  of  will,  and  for  this  current  of  tendency  he  is  accountable,  because 
it  is  his  inmost  self.  But  the  opposing  theory  denies  that  there  can  be  such 
a  thing  as  unconscious  will,  and,  limiting  will  to  the  mere  faculty  of  voli- 
tions, maintains  that  no  man  can  be  responsible  for  anything  that  he  has 
not  personally  and  consciously  originated.  If  it  take  the  Pelagian  form,  it 
uses  the  phrase  :  "  Non  pleni  nascimur,"  and  calls  the  soul  at  birth  a  "tab- 
ula rasa,"  void  of  all  evil  whatsoever.  Or  if  it  take  the  Arminian  form,  it 


102  THE    WILL    IN   THEOLOGY,    OR, 

speaks  of  a  depravity  for  which  we  are  not  responsible  except  as  we  by  con- 
scious act  appropriate  it.  The  Roman  Catholic  can  exclude  concupiscence 
from  the  list  of  sins,  because  forsooth  it  is  independent  of  our  volitions. 
Thus  nothing  but  presumptuous  choices  of  evil,  with  the  full  consciousness 
of  the  law  to  be  violated  and  a  wilful  determination  to  disobey  God,  is 
counted  by  many  to  be  a  sin  at  all.  On  this  view,  indeed,  the  only  sin  should 
be  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost. 

What  we  wish  to  point  out  most  plainly  is  that  the  view  of  the  will  which 
we  are  opposing  conflicts  with  Scripture  by  letting  off"  the  human  conscience 
from  the  main  part  of  the  burden  which  God  lays  upon  it  in  his  revelation. 
Who  can  draw  the  line  between  the  conscious  and  the  unconscious  ?  Who 
can  tell  what  we  have  originated  and  what  we  have  not  ?  Are  anger  and 
lust  always  conscious  ?  Yet  the  angry  feeling  is  murder,  and  the  impure 
look  is  adultery.  Out  of  the  heart  proceed  evil  thoughts,  and  the  heart 
from  which  they  come  is  evil.  Sin  is  not  simply  an  act  —  it  is  a  principle 
of  permanence  and  power,  that  reigns  in  the  nature,  that  exists  long  before 
it  revives  or  comes  to  light  in  the  consciousness.  These  are  the  represen- 
tations of  Scripture,  and  we  charge  the  view  of  will  which  regards  it  as  the 
faculty  of  volitions  alone  with  obscuring  from  men's  minds  these  facts  of 
God's  word.  If  sin  is  only  volition,  and  I  can  be  responsible  for  nothing 
else,  then  sin  has  but  limited  range  within  me  and  but  weak  hold  upon  me. 
It  cannot  be  so  serious  a  thing  as  Scripture  describes.  And  just  in  propor- 
tion as  the  sense  of  sin  is  blunted,  does  man  cease  to  feel  his  need  of  pardon 
and  renewal. 

If  man  is  responsible  only  for  what  he  wills,  and  will  is  only  his  power  of 
individual  choices,  it  follows  that  God's  law  requires  only  what  this  will  can 
render  in  the  way  of  obedience.  Law  ceases  to  be  the  perfect  transcript  of 
God's  holy  nature,  the  ideal  and  unchangeable  standard  for  all  moral  beings. 
It  reduces  its  majesty  to  the  limits  of  outward  enactment  and  known  enact- 
ment. Nothing  that  is  beyond  the  apprehension  of  the  blinded  intellect  or 
beyond  the  range  of  the  enfeebled  moral  powers  can  be  law  for  any  creature 
of  God.  Thus  law  becomes  a  sliding  scale  of  moral  requirement,  that  low- 
ers its  demands  as  the  sinner  becomes  more  blind  and  debased  and  guilty, 
and  gives  up  its  claims  altogether  when  he  becomes  totally  depraved  and 
beyond  recovery.  But  is  it  true  that  the  law  has  nothing  against  the  man 
who  has  so  sunk  himself  in  sin  that  he  has  lost  all  power  to  obey  ?  You 
know  such  persons ;  does  God's  justice  absolve  them  and  let  them  go  free 
of  punishment  ?  The  doctrine  that  man  is  responsible  only  for  his  acts  of 
volition,  and  that  power  to  do  right  is  always  essential  to  accountability  for 
doing  wrong,  comes  dangerously  near  to  these  conclusions.  Those  who  hold 
this  view  of  will  are  compelled  to  assume  a  "gracious  ability  "  specially  com- 
municated by  God,  in  order  to  render  men  guilty  at  all,  and  then  to  declare 
that  for  a  great  number  of  irresponsibles,  tender  in  age  or  weak  in  mind  or 
limited  in  opportunities,  salvation  must  be  a  matter  of  justice,  since  they 
'have  no  ability  to  obey.  So  there  shall  be  some  saved  without  Christ.  Why 
should  the  lost  suffer  penalty  when  their  power  to  turn  to  God  is  gone  for- 
ever ?  A  system  of  the  will  that  leads  logically  to  the  conclusion  that  men 
are  guilty  only  by  virtue  of  "gracious  ability,"  and  approved  when  their  sin 
has  taken  away  all  power  of  good  within  them,  carries  with  it  its  own  refu- 


AN"    EARLIER   VIEW    OF   THE    WILL.  103 

tation.  It  may  not  inaptly  be  described  as  a  scheme  in  which  men  are 
damned  by  grace  and  saved  by  sin. 

It  is  of  course  objected  to  our  own  view  that  to  hold  man  responsible  for 
an  inborn  state  of  the  will  which  he  did  not  originate  is  to  violate  all  princi- 
ples of  justice  and  to  expose  Christianity  to  ridicule  and  contempt.  We 
reply  that  if  this  is  the  teaching  of  Scripture,  we  may  trust  that  God  will 
vindicate  his  own  truth.  But  it  is  self-vindicated  also.  A  prof ounder  phil- 
osophy of  human  nature  is  found  to  correspond  precisely  with  the  ideas 
which  unlettered  Christians  had  drawn  from  the  Bible  long  before.  We 
must  not  forget,  moreover,  that  the  modern  scientific  notion  of  the  solidarity 
of  the  race  is  anticipated  in  Scripture,  and  furnishes  the  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion how  we  can  be  responsible  for  what  we  have  not  personally  and  con- 
sciously originated.  Men  are  not  separate  atoms,  like  grains  of  sand,  or 
bricks  set  in  a  row.  They  are  of  one  blood  and  origin,  and  are  bound 
together  in  an  organic  whole.  Look  down  upon  the  tree  from  above  and 
you  see  only  the  multitudinous  leaves  in  their  isolation  from  each  other. 
But  look  up  from  below,  and  you  perceive  that  each  leaf  springs  from  a 
twi.u:,  and  each  twig  from  a  branch,  and  each  branch  from  a  common  trunk, 
and  the  great  oak  is  only  the  product  of  a  single  acorn  that  the  foot  of  an  ox 
trod  into  the  soil  a  hundred  years  ago.  So  the  superficial  observer  regards 
the  human  race  only  as  a  company  of  individuals,  and  he  denies  all  organic 
connection  between  them.  But  they  are  sprung  from  a  common  stock,  and 
a  common  life  is  in  them.  The  only  explanation  of  universal  depravity  is 
the  fall  of  the  whole  race  when  it  existed  seminally  in  its  first  progenitor. 
We  have  drawn  our  life  from  him,  corrupted  as  it  was  by  his  sin.  The  will 
of  the  race  apostatized  from  God  when  it  was  concentrated  in  one  man,  and 
of  that  self -depraved  will  we  partake.  So  there  is  an  individual  responsibil- 
ity and  a  race  responsibility  also,  and  any  theory  of  will  which  regards  it  as 
the  mere  faculty  of  individual  volitions  must  ignore  a  whole  half  of  the  facts 
and  put  it  forever  beyond  our  power  to  explain  the  great  problem  of  our 
accountability  for  the  depravity  which  we  have  in  common  with  every 
member  of  the  race. 

We  now  proceed  to  consider  a  third  class  of  Scripture  passages  which 
perhaps  better  than  any  other  tests  the  truth  or  falsity  of  a  doctrine 
of  the  will.  We  mean  the  teachings  of  the  Bible  with  regard  to  God's 
initiative  in  human  salvation.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  declared  that  man 
cannot  of  himself  provide  a  salvation,  nor  lay  hold  of  it  after  it  is  pro- 
vided. On  the  other  hand,  God  gives  man  all  the  power  by  which  salvation 
is  ever  accepted,  and  from  the  first  step  to  the  last  he  claims  all  the  glory. 
Of  the  first  sort  are  passages  like  these  :  "  Can  the  Ethiopian  change  his 
skin,  or  the  leopard  his  spots  ?  Then  may  ye  also  do  good  that  are  accus- 
tomed to  do  evil."  "  The  carnal  mind  is  enmity  against  God,  for  it  is  not 
subject  to  the  law  of  God,  neither  indeed  can  be. "  "No  man  can  come  unto 
me,  except  the  Father  which  hath  sent  me  draw  him."  And  of  the  latter 
sort  are  the  following  :  "Who  maketh  thee  to  differ  ?  What  hast  thou,  that 
thou  hast  not  received?"  It  is  God  that  makes  us  "  willing  in  the  day  of 
his  power,"  that  "gives  repentance,"  that  "deals  to  every  man  the  measure 
of  faith, "  that  ' '  creates  us  in  Christ  unto  good  works. "  We  have  not  chosen 
him  but  he  has  chosen  us.  It  is  he  who  gives  the  new  heart  and  the  new 


104  THE    WILL    IN    THEOLOGY,    OR, 

spirit.  It  is  "of  him "  that  we  "are  in  Christ  Jesus."  We  are  "  saved,  not 
according  to  our  works,  but  according  to  his  purpose  and  grace."  This  sal- 
vation is  "the  gift  of  God  —  not  of  ourselves,  lest  any  man  should  boast." 
It  is  only  "by  the  grace  of  God"  that  we  are  what  we  are.  No  man  has 
freedom  but  "he  whom  the  Son  makes  free."  Nicodemus  asks  what  he 
shall  do,  and  Jesus  replies  that  "  except  a  man  be  born  from  above,  he  can- 
not enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven. "  Those  who  believe  on  Christ's  name  are 
"  born,  not  of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God. "  "So 
then,"  says  Paul,  "it  is  not  of  him  that  willeth,  nor  of  him  that  runneth, 
but  of  God  that  showeth  mercy." 

Thus,  in  endless  variety  of  phrase,  the  Bible  asserts  that  man's  appropria- 
tion of  salvation  is  solely  of  the  Lord.  And  so  we  pray  to  God  to  save  men, 
believing  that  their  hearts  are  in  his  hand,  and  that  he  can  turn  them  as 
easily  as  the  tiny  rivulets  that  irrigate  the  eastern  fields  are  turned  by  the 
slightest  motion  of  the  hand  or  foot  of  the  husbandman.  We  know  that  no 
heart  is  too  hard  for  God  to  break,  no  will  too  obstinate  for  God  to  subdne, 
for  nothing  is  impossible  with  God  ;  he  who  created  at  the  first  can  recreate 
at  his  will.  We  look  back  to  our  own  experience  and  see  that  instead  of 
helping  God's  work  in  us,  we  only  resisted  him  ;  as  the  untutored  Indian 
convert  said  :  "I  fought  against  him  all  I  could,  and  God  did  the  rest." 
We  may  have  seemed  to  ourselves  at  the  first  to  be  wholly  uninfluenced  by 
God  when  we  chose  to  enter  upon  his  service  ;  but  subsequent  experience  has 
taught  us  that  nothing  but  his  power  working  secretly  in  our  wills  could 
have  conquered  our  perversity  and  brought  us  to  Christ.  We  say  now  of 
every  stage  of  the  process  :  "  Not  unto  us,  not  unto  us,  but  unto  thy  name 
give  glory  ;  "  and  the  hymn  of  Isaac  Watts  expresses  only  the  truth  of  our 

experience  : — 

"  Why  was  I  made  to  hear  thy  voice 

And  enter  while  there's  room, 
While  thousands  make  a  wretched  choice, 
And  rather  starve  than  come? 

"  'Twas  the  same  love  that  spread  the  feast 

That  gently  forced  me  in ; 

Else  I  had 'still  refused  to  taste, 

And  perished  in  my  sin  !  " 

And  in  this  mighty  grace  that  not  only  offered  us  salvation  if  we  would 
accept  it,  but  which  made  us  will  to  accept  when  otherwise  we  should  have 
refused,  in  this  mighty  grace  we  place  our  only  hope  of  personal  salvation, 
our  only  encouragement  to  the  work  of  the  ministry,  and  our  only  assurance 
of  the  salvation  of  the  world. 

All  this  accords  perfectly  with  the  view  we  have  supported,  that  the 
human  will,  with  all  its  formal  freedom,  is  yet  in  real  slavery  to  evil,  and 
possessed  of  no  outlying  and  uncorrupted  power  by  which  it  may  separate 
itself  from  itself,  in  order  that  it  may  work  down  upon  itself  and  change  its 
character.  If  the  will  is  the  whole  man  with  all  his  powers  of  movement 
and  impulse,  and  this  will  is  in  one  perpetual  current  and  tendency  toward 
self -gratification  and  away  from  God,  then  it  is  vain  to  speak  of  man's  being 
saved  by  natural  process  of  growth  or  development  of  some  element  of  good 
within,  or  by  any  choice  or  cooperation  on  his  part  with  the  grace  which 
comes  to  him  from  without.  But  all  this  seems  foolishness  to  those  who 


AN    EARLIER   VIEW    OF   THE    WILL.  105 

maintain  the  theory7  of  will  we  have  been  opposing.  To  them  there  must 
be  always  in  the  will  the  power  of  a  contrary  choice,  the  power  of  deciding 
against  character.  The  Pelagian  holds  that  there  is  no  seated  disease  of  the 
will,  and  that  man  may  at  any  moment  reverse  the  current  of  his  wrong 
volitions  and  may  become  holy  without  help  of  any  sort  from  without ;  while 
the  Arminian,  granting  that  man  must  have  help,  still  claims  that  man  has 
power  to  accept  that  help  or  to  reject  it,  and  that  this  acceptance,  if  it  takes 
place  at  all,  takes  place  in  virtue  of  a  freedom  which  still  remains  to  him  to 
decide  as  he  will  in  spite  of  his  character.  Here  are  two  men.  Their  char- 
acters are  the  same.  Their  circumstances  are  the  same.  The  grace  offered 
them  is  the  same.  The  one  accepts  that  grace  ;  the  other  refuses  it.  The 
one  is  saved  ;  the  other  lost.  What  makes  tnem  to  differ  in  their  decision 
and  their  destiny  ?  Their  own  free  choice,  the  Arminian  replies.  And  so 
not  to  God,  but  to  man,  is  due  the  merit  and  the  glory  of  salvation.  Man 
elects  and  regenerates  himself.  Before  man's  lordly  will  God  himself  stands 
powerless.  If  we  would  save  men,  we  must  pray  to  men,  not  to  God. 
To  use  a  rude  metaphor,  salvation  is  a  two-horse  vehicle,  and  man  draws 
as  much  as  God.  In  truth,  God  will  never  draw  unless  man  begins.  And 
as  man  can  begin,  so  he  can  continue.  Entire  sanctification  is  just  as 
completely  within  his  power  as  is  his  first  turning  from  sin. 

Now  this  is  a  complete  reversal  of  the  true  relation  between  God  and  man 
in  the  work  of  salvation.  Man  indeed  ^is  not  passive  —  he  is  active ;  but 
then  he  acts  because  God  prompts  and  sustains  his  action.  No  synergistic 
scheme  which  regards  the  human  will  as  taking  the  initiative,  and  by  its  own 
power  laying  hold  of  and  appropriating  salvation,  can  find  anything  but 
refutation  and  condemnation  in  the  Scriptures.  And  yet  these  false  and 
anti-Biblical  conclusions  are  the  logical  and  necessary  result  of  a  theory 
which  holds  that  will  is  a  power  of  individual  choices  only,  and  that  this 
power  can  be  exercised  sovereignly  in  independence  of  the  man's  previous 
character  and  condition.  These  conclusions  are  as  irrational  as  they  are 
unscriptural.  The  view  that  regeneration  is  the  act  of  man,  cooperating  with 
divine  influences  applied  through  the  truth,  provides  no  way  for  the  begin- 
ning of  holiness.  For  so  long  as  man's  selfish  and  perverse  affections  are 
unchanged,  no  choosing  God  is  possible  but  such  as  proceeds  from  supreme 
desire  for  one's  own  interest  and  happiness.  But  the  man  thus  supremely 
bent  on  self -gratification  cannot  see  in  God  or  his  service  anything  productive 
of  happiness  ;  or,  if  he  could  see  in  them  anything  of  advantage,  his  choice 
of  God  and  his  service  from  such  a  motive  would  not  be  a  beginning  of  holi- 
ness. Man  cannot  change  himself.  The  depravity  of  his  will,  since  it  con- 
sists in  a  fixed  state  of  the  affections  which  determines  the  character  of  all 
the  volitions,  amounts  to  a  moral  inability.  Without  a  renewal  of  the  affec- 
tions from  which  all  moral  action  springs,  man  will  not  choose  holiness  nor 
accept  salvation.  Surely  we  must  reject  a  theory  of  the  will  which  equally 
denies  the  plainest  facts  of  experience  and  of  Scripture,  and  which  would 
rob  God  of  his  crowning  glory,  by  making  man  his  own  savior. 

Still  another  and  a  last  set  of  passages  in  the  Scriptures  is  that  which 
asserts  the  permanence  of  holy  character  in  God  and  in  the  redeemed. 
There  is  a  certainty  of  final  perseverance  and  salvation  in  the  case  of  every 
true  believer.  It  is  the  Father's  good  pleasure  to  give  such  the  kingdom. 


106  THE   WILL   IN   THEOLOGY,    OR, 

and  none  shall  be  able  to  separate  them  from  the  love  of  Christ,  or  pluck 
them  out  of  Christ's  hand.  So  too,  the  Bible  declares  that  God  cannot  lie, 
and  cannot  change.  We  rest  upon  these  declarations  as  our  great  comfort 
and  hope  for  the  future.  We  trust  in  an  everlasting  love,  and  a  mighty 
power,  which  will  keep  us  through  faith  unto  salvation,  and  will  present  us 
at  last  faultless,  in  the  presence  of  the  Father's  glory,  with  exceeding  joy. 
With  all  this  agrees  the  theory  of  will  which  we  have  advocated.  Volitions 
will  follow  character.  No  chance  rules  in  the  realm  of  will.  Integrity  will 
not  lie.  Holiness  will  not  sin.  Because  God  is  God,  and  cannot  change, 
he  will  fulfill  his  promises,  and  so  confirm  in  goodness  the  wills  of  his  saints, 
that  on  earth,  those  who  have  been  renewed  by  his  Spirit  shall  not  fall  away 
from  their  allegiance,  and  in  heaven  the  just  made  perfect  shall  go  no  more 
out  forever. 

Character  and  its  permanence,  certainty  of  good  conduct  consistent  with 
freedom,  possibility  of  a  moral  necessity  of  righteousness  —  these  are  prin- 
ciples upon  which  we  base  all  our  confidence  in  God  or  man.  But  chiefly 
our  confidence  in  God.  For,  weak  and  unstable  as  we  are  by  reason  of  the 
two  conflicting  powers  that  move  and  work  within  us,  we  see  no  hope  for 
permanence  or  rest  in  anything  but  God.  But  the  philosophy  we  have  been 
considering  would  shatter  all  our  confidence,  by  persuading  us  that  inde- 
terminateness  is  the  very  essence  of  freedom,  and  that  no  confirmed  good- 
ness is  possible.  Since  the  will  may  always  act  contrary  to  motives  and  to 
inclinations,  to  influences  and  to  character,  not  even  God  himself  can  make 
it  certain  that  we  shall  not  fall.  Satan,  it  is  said,  had  every  inducement  to 
maintain  his  allegiance  to  God,  yet  he  apostatized.  And  beyond  this  lib- 
erty of  indeterminateness,  which  is  evermore  upon  the  edge  of  the  precipice, 
and  is  never  certain  that  the  next  moment  may  not  witness  a  causeless 
plunge  into  the  abyss,  beyond  such  liberty  as  this,  the  theory  declares,  there 
is  no  other  conceivable  or  possible  to  God  or  man.  The  wild  liberty  of  a 
Greek  democracy  is  of  a  higher  sort  than  a  liberty  regulated  by  law.  May 
God  save  me  from  such  liberty  as  this ;  for,  if  Satan  fell  and  Adam  fell,  there 
are  ten  thousand  chances  to  one  that,  unkept  by  God  and  unconfirmed  in 
goodness,  I  too,  sometime  in  the  infinite  range  of  existence  before  me,  shall 
fall  away  from  God  and  perish  forever. 

Indeed  I  know  no  reason  for  confidence,  upon  this  view,  that  God  him- 
self will  continue  holy.  Holiness  is  not  a  matter  of  nature,  but  of  arbitrary 
will.  There  would  be  no  merit  or  freedom  in  it,  we  are  told,  if  God  had 
not  the  power  to  be  unholy.  Dr.  D wight  *  considers  that  if  sin  produced 
as  much  good  as  virtue,  it  would  be  as  commendable  as  virtue  is,  in  either 
God  or  man.  There  is  no  certainty  that  God  will  abide  in  righteousness  ; 
for  he  has  free-will,  and  the  essence  of  free-will  is  uncertainty.  And  so  we 
have  from  Dr.  Wliedon  such  sorry  utterances  as  these  that  follow  :  "Whether 
God  could  not  make  himself  equally  happy  in  wrong  is  more  than  we  can 
say."  Nor  can  we  say  "whether  the  motives  may  not  at  some  time  prove 
strongest  for  divine  apostasy  to  evil."  Ah,  how  much  these  philosophers 
-are  willing  to  sacrifice  for  a  theory  !  Would  that  they  could  perceive  the 
deeper  philosophy  that  lies  under  those  grand  and  simple  formulas  of 


*  Works,  3:  159. 


AN    EARLIER    VIEW   OF   THE    AVILL.  107 

Augustine.  Man  was  created,  he  would  say,  with  a  posse  non  peccare. 
But  this  was  accompanied  by  a  posse  peccare  also,  and  so  it  was  only  child- 
like innocence,  but  not  confirmed  virtue.  Through  trial  and  temptation, 
his  true  calling  was  to  transform  this  freedom  to  sin  or  not  to  sin,  into  per- 
fected holiness  —  the  non  posse  peccare  which  belongs  to  God  and  to  the 
elect  angels.  Then  good  would  have  become  the  law  of  his  being.  Holi- 
ness would  have  been  so  inwrought  into  his  character,  that  freedom  of  will, 
for  him,  would  have  been  identical  with  the  necessity  of  good.  But  he  fell ; 
and  instead  of  the  blessed  non  posse  peccare,  there  resulted  the  dreadful 
necessity  of  evil,  the  non  posse  non  peccare,  which  is  identical  with  moral 
slavery  and  ruin.  The  scheme  of  Augustine  is  profounder  and  truer  and 
more  Scriptural  than  that  of  Arminius.  The  doctrine  that  man  may  fall 
from  grace,  and  God  may  fall  from  holiness,  however  ably  it  has  been  sup- 
ported, and  however  piously  its  advocates  have  lived,  does  yet  tend  to  the 
making  of  weak  and  unstable  Christians,  in  whom  weakness  and  instability 
are  combined  with  self-sufficiency  and  small  sense  of  their  dependence  upon 
God.  But  the  true  idea  of  freedom  as  ability  to  conform  to  the  divine 
standard,  and  the  certainty  that  the  believer  will  attain  to  it  and  exemplify 
it  in  the  perfect  state  which  we  are  soon  to  enter,  this  gives  nerve  and  cheer, 
and  tends  to  the  making  of  reverent  and  trustful  and  humble  and  persever- 
ing disciples.  But  this  is  not  the  chief  merit  of  the  view  that  volition  is 
inseparable  from  character.  Its  chief  merit  is  that  it  stands  the  test  of 
Scripture  and  proves  itself  to  be  the  philosophy  of  the  word  of  God. 

We  have  thus  expounded  our  view  of  will,  and  have  tried  it  by  the  standard 
of  revelation.  It  only  remains  to  mention  the  most  striking  objections  that 
have  been  urged  against  it,  and  to  show,  if  possible,  that  they  are  insufficient 
to  invalidate  the  considerations  urged  in  its  support.  For  lack  of  space,  our 
treatment  of  them  must  be  very  summary-,  but  we  shall  endeavor  to  make  it 
candid  and  sufficient.  First,  then,  it  is  urged  that  the  mind  must  have  the 
power  of  acting  without  motives,  because  men  do  actually  choose  between 
things  precisely  equal  and  similar,  and  because  God  actuaDy  adopts  one  plan 
out  of  many  of  equal  value,  and  elects  one  man  while  he  passes  by  another 
of  no  less  worth  than  he.  Now  I  think  it  will  be  granted  by  all,  that  these 
cases,  if  they  exist,  are  rare  and  exceptional  ones,  and  do  not  reveal  the  ordi- 
nary law  of  the  will's  working.  They  do  not  therefore  overturn  our  previous 
reasoning,  the  aim  of  which  has  been  to  discover  the  general  principles  of  a 
theory  of  the  will.  Furthermore,  we  all  know  that  in  the  case  of  human 
action,  the  instances  where  motives  are  apparently  evenly  balanced  are 
always  in  matters  of  utter  insignificance ;  at  any  rate,  we  never  act  in  the 
weightier  affairs  of  life,  without  seeing  at  least  some  reason  for  deciding  in 
one  way  rather  than  another.  But  passing  these  considerations  as  merely 
preliminary,  we  make  the  general  and  broad  denial  that  motives  are  ever,  in 
human  affairs,  evenly  balanced.  There  is  always  some  preference  which  the 
man  follows  even  in  touching  with  his  finger  one  of  two  squares  on  the 
checker-board,  or  else  he  chooses  to  put  down  his  finger  without  knowing 
where  it  will  rest.  In  either  case  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  he  puts  his  finger 
where  he  does  not  wish  to,  and  if  he  does  put  it  where  he  wants  to  put  it, 
then  he  follows  some  motive,  even  though  it  be  nothing  more  than  this,  that 
a  certain  square  first  strikes  his  eye  or  is  nearest  to  his  hand.  The  motive 


108  THE   WILL   IN   THEOLOGY,    OR, 

is  there,  though  it  may  be  in  the  man  himself,  not  in  the  squares,  when 
these  do  not  differ  from  each  other.  And  so  our  judgment  is  that  the  ass 
that  starved  between  the  two  bundles  of  hay,  because  the  attractions  of  each 
were  so  exactly  balanced  as  to  keep  him  in  a  state  of  stable  equilibrium 
between  them,  was  indeed  an  ass.  Thus  far  we  have  spoken  of  man.  But 
the  case  is  not  essentially  different  when  we  apply  the  principle  to  God. 
We  cannot  believe  that  he  chose  a  less  worthy  plan  of  the  universe  in  place 
of  a  more  worthy,  for  this  would  deny  his  benevolence  as  well  as  his  wisdom. 
We  therefore  say  that  of  many  plans  he  chose  the  present  —  not  without 
reason,  but  for  reasons  inscrutable  to  us.  So  God  chooses  one  man  to  eternal 
life,  not  because  of  anything  in  him,  but  for  reasons  which  exist  only  in  God 
and  which  are  unrevealed  to  us.  The  reasons  why  I  choose  one  of  two  pre- 
cisely similar  gold  pieces,  are  external  to  the  gold  pieces  themselves.  The 
reasons  are  in  me,  in  my  physical  condition  or  my  feelings  at  the  time.  But 
there  are  reasons,  and  the  choice  is  never  an  act  independent  of  motives. 
So  God  may  choose  between  plans  and  between  men,  for  reasons  internal  to 
his  own  nature.  To  assert  that  God  chooses  without  reasons  is  to  deny  his 
wisdom.  To  assert  that  his  reasons  must  be  found  in  things  external  to 
himself,  or  that  these  reasons  must  be  comprehensible  to  us,  is  to  ignore,  on 
the  one  hand,  his  likeness  to  men,  and  on  the  other  hand,  his  infinite  eleva- 
tion above  them.  To  deny  that  God  may  have  reasons  within  himself  even 
in  choosing  between  things  which,  considered  as  merely  external  to  himself, 
are  equals,  is  to  deny  the  possibility  either  of  external  creation  or  of  move- 
ment of  any  kind  within  God's  nature.  For  God  is  infinite  and  self-  sufficient. 
He  does  not  create  to  satisfy  any  want  in  himself,  for  he  has  no  want  to  be 
satisfied.  He  does  not  create  to  increase  his  glory,  but  to  reveal  his  glory. 
But  if  creation  and  non-creation  are  equally  consistent  with  his  blessedness, 
then  he  must  create  for  reasons  in  himself  alone.  Any  other  principle  would 
deny  the  existence  and  possibility  of  any  thought  or  movement  whatever  in 
God,  and  render  him  as  "idle  as  a  painted  ship  upon  a  painted  ocean,"  a 
veritable  Buddha,  devoid  of  all  consciousness  and  personality.  We  should 
not  be  willing  to  go  to  these  lengths  even  to  save  a  good  theory  of  the  will ; 
we  certainly  are  not  willing  to  go  to  these  lengths  for  the  sake  of  saving  a 
bad  one. 

A  second  and  more  serious  objection  to  our  doctrine  is,  that  upon  this 
view,  the  first  man,  since  he  had  a  holy  disposition,  could  never  have  sinned. 
We  must  either  maintain,  it  is  said,  that  Adam  was  created  with  an  already 
corrupted  will,  which  would  throw  the  blame  of  his  sin  upon  his  Creator,  or 
that  he  never  fell  at  all,  which  would  contradict  our  general  scheme  quite  as 
much  as  it  contradicts  Scripture.  We  acknowledge  that  here,  as  well  as  in 
the  divine  permission  of  moral  evil,  there  is  a  difficulty  which  we  cannot 
fully  solve.  But  we  claim  that  the  difficulty  does  not  lie  where  the  opponents 
of  our  view  imagine,  and  that  what  difficulty  does  exist  is  by  no  means  so 
vital  and  perilous  as  that  which  attends  the  scheme  which  they  themselves 
maintain.  We  would  begin  our  reply  by  freely  acknowledging  that  there  is 
a  sense  in  which  we  must  allow  that  our  first  father  had  the  power  of  con- 
trary choice.  He  was  created  pure,  and  might  have  maintained  his  integrity. 
He  actually  fell,  and  so  possessed  the  power  of  choosing  evil.  Here  were 
power  of  good  and  power  of  evil  in  one  and  the  same  being.  In  this  sense,. 


AN    EARLIER   VIEW    OF   THE    WILL.  109 

Adam  had  the  power  of  contrary  choice  —  had  it  in  a  sense  in  which  none  of 
his  descendants  naturally  have  it ;  if  they  have  it  at  all,  it  is  as  the  result  of 
divine  grace,  which  puts  side  by  side  with  the  natural  tendencies  to  sin, 
other  and,  on  the  whole,  dominant  tendencies  to  holiness.  But  this  power 
of  contrary  choice  which  Adam  possessed  was  not  the  nondescript  and 
absurd  faculty  which  our  Arminian  friends  understand  by  the  name.  It  was 
not  an  ability  to  decide  without  motives  or  contrary  to  all  motives.  It  was 
not  a  self -contradictory  ability  to  choose  what  he  did  not  wish  to  choose,  or 
to  choose  what  on  the  whole  he  did  not  want.  Adam's  choice  of  evil,  then, 
does  not  prove  that  he  chose  without  motive  or  contrary  to  motive,  and  so 
his  choice  does  not  in  the  least  help  the  philosophy  of  our  opponents.  The 
difficulty  in  the  case  is  not  in  imagining  how  Adam  could  choose  without  or 
against  motive,  but  in  understanding  how  sinful  motive  could  have  found 
lodgment  in  a  heart  already  prepossesed  with  a  concreated  disposition  to  holi- 
ness. Adam  chose  evil  because  he  wanted  to.  How  could  he  want  to  choose 
it  ?  —  that  is  the  real  question. 

Partial  and  insufficient  explanations  of  this  great  fact  have  been  attempted. 
The  fact  of  Satanic  temptation  has  been  urged  as  accounting  for  the  fall. 
The  adversary,  it  is  said,  deceived  our  first  parents,  and  this  deception  fur- 
nished the  force  needed  to  counterbalance  their  natural  tendencies  to  good. 
But  this  is  rather  a  hiding  of  the  difficulty  than  an  escape  from  it.  For  their 
yielding  to  such  deception  presupposes  distrust  of  God  and  alienation  from 
him.  And  then,  even  if  this  were  a  sufficient  answer  as  respects  Adam,  it 
would  only  remove  the  problem  one  step  further  back.  For  Satan's  fall,  or 
at  least,  the  fall  of  the  first  created  spirit  that  apostatized,  cannot  be  explained 
by  temptation  from  without.  To  say  that  God  creates  any  finite  being  with 
original  disposition  to  evil,  is  the  greatest  of  blasphemies,  for  it  denies  his 
holiness  and  makes  him  the  virtual  author  of  sin.  Sin  is  the  wilful  revolt  of 
the  free  creature  from  God.  At  his  own  door,  and  not  at  the  door  of  God 
or  of  any  fellow-creature,  the  blame  of  it  must  be  laid. 

A  more  plausible  explanation  is  that  which  regards  the  fall  as  due  to  the 
withholding  of  supernatural  grace,  and  so  to  be  a  demonstration  that  even 
free  and  pure  intelligences  must  have  their  life  in  God,  and  cannot  maintain 
their  integrity  without  him.  The  grace  given  to  Adam,  it  is  said,  was  assist- 
ing grace,  which  he  could  use  or  not,  as  he  willed.  The  grace  given  to  us 
is  grace  that  makes  us  will,  and  will  aright.  That  only  assisting  grace,  and 
not  overcoming  grace,  was  given  to  Adam,  was  not  a  penalty,  but  a  tribute 
to  his  strength  and  perfection,  which  was  naturally  equal  to  the  task  before 
it.  Now,  grace  is  omnipotent,  because  nature  is  wholly  without  power. 
Then,  grace  was  weak,  because  nature  was  strong.  We  recognize  a  measure 
of  truth  in  this  view.  Irresistible  grace  certainly  cannot  be  claimed  as  a 
matter  of  right  by  free  creatures,  perfectly  endowed  and  naturally  able  to 
keep  God's  law.  It  makes  the  fall  somewhat  more  intelligible,  by  its  sug- 
gestion that  the  first  sin  was  the  inward  withdrawing  of  the  affections  from 
God  and  consequent  self-isolation  of  the  spirit  from  the  ever-ready  influx  of 
divine  love  and  power.  But  the  "  why  ?  "  still  remains  unanswered,  and  the 
"how?"  is  still  unexplained.  What  motive  to  withdraw  from  God?  And 
if  the  motive  be  assigned,  whence  could  the  motive  come  ?  The  mere  power 
of  choice  does  not  explain  the  fact  of  an  unholy  choice.  The  fact  of  natural 


110  THE    WILL    IN    THEOLOGY,    OR 

desire  for  sensuous  and  intellectual  gratification  does  not  explain  how  this 
desire  came  to  be  inordinate.  We  must  acknowledge  that  we  cannot  under- 
stand how  the  first  unholy  emotion  could  have  found  shelter  in  a  mind  that 
was  supremely  set  on  God,  nor  how  temptation  could  have  overcome  a  soul 
in  which  there  were  originally  no  unholy  propensities  to  which  it  could 
appeal. 

But  it  is  somethiug  to  show  that  there  may  be  reasons  why  this  matter  is 
beyond  our  comprehension,  and  that  the  difficulty  is  a  greater  stumbling- 
block  in  the  way  of  the  opposite  theory  of  the  will  than  it  can  possibly  be 
upon  our  own.  Let  us  remember  that  the  matter  in  question  is  the  origina- 
tion not  of  a  single  volition,  nor  of  one  disposition  among  many,  but  of  the 
fundamental  bent  and  determination  of  the  whole  moral  being.  Such  revo- 
lution of  the  nature,  such  change  in  the  whole  direction  of  the  conscious  and 
unconscious  powers,  we  have  no  experience  of,  except  in  regeneration,  when 
this  fundamental  bent  of  the  affections  and  will  is  reversed.  But  even  of 
this  we  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  experience,  because  it  is  wrought  not  by 
us  but  by  God,  and  that  so  secretly  and  inscrutably,  that  we  know  nothing 
of  it  except  in  its  results  of  conversion,  or  the  voluntary  turning  of  the  soul, 
on  our  part,  to  God.  Even  this  conversion  is  a  unique  thing,  never  wholly 
explicable,  even  to  him  who  turns  ;  but  God's  work  is  all  a  mystery.  And 
yet,  this  act  of  turning  back  to  God,  that  occurs  only  once  in  a  lifetime,  is 
the  only  incident  of  our  experience  that  affords  even  the  most  distant  analogue 
to  that  first  supreme  and  unique  act,  by  which  in  our  great  ancestor,  all  that 
there  was  of  human  nature  turned  away  from  God.  It  was  an  apostasy 
which  could  occur  but  once.  It  occurred  in  Adam  before  the  eating  of  the 
forbidden  fruit,  and  revealed  itself  in  that  eating.  The  subsequent  sins  of 
Adam  and  of  ourselves  are  different  in  kind.  They  do  not,  as  that  did, 
determine  or  change  the  nature  —  they  only  show  what  that  nature  is,  and 
and  bring  out  more  or  less  distinctly  its  inner  capacities  of  evil.  It  was  the 
one  leap  over  the  precipice.  Once  taken,  it  could  never  be  undone.  And 
because  man  cannot  leap  back  again  to  the  height  from  which  he  has  fallen, 
but  must  lead  his  life  far  below,  he  finds  it  impossible  to  comprehend  the 
nature  or  the  possibility  of  that  act,  by  which  the  race  once  for  all  left  its 
first  estate  and  gave  itself  to  evil.  Therefore  we  accept  the  doctrine  of  the 
fall  without  comprehending  the  method  of  it.  But  for  the  very  reason  that 
we  do  not  comprehend  it,  we  refuse  to  draw  from  it  inferences  prejudicial 
to  facts  indubitably  ascertained  from  consciousness  and  from  the  word  of 
God.  We  still  claim,  that  however  man's  evil  disposition  first  arose,  there 
was  an  evil  disposition,  not  derived  from  God  but  originated  by  man,  in 
spite  of  holy  tendencies  with  which  God  endowed  him,  and  that  therefore 
man  sinned  from  a  motive  which  God  was  able  to  foresee,  and  against  whose 
results  he  was  able  to  provide. 

Do  our  opponents,  the  advocates  of  a  capricious  will,  know  more  about 
the  matter  than  this  ?  Are  they  able  to  show  that  their  theory  removes  the 
difficulties  of  the  case  ?  On  the  contrary  we  are  persuaded  that  upon  their 
view  there  is  left  no  real  responsibility  for  sin  at  all,  and  if  there  were 
responsibility,  no  possibility  of  foreseeing  it  or  providing  a  salvation  from 
it.  For,  consider,  on  the  one  hand,  that  this  first  most  dreadful  and  most 
damning  sin  of  all,  was  committed  not  only  without  motive  but  against 


AN   EARLIER   VIEW    OF   THE   WILL.  Ill 

motive.  It  was  not  only  an  unreasonable  but  an  unreasoning  act.  There 
was  no  aim  in  view,  no  object  songht,  no  desire  to  be  gratified,  which 
determined  the  kind  and  direction  of  the  sinful  volition.  We  say  then  that 
the  volition  was  not  sinful.  No  act  is  to  be  condemned,  except  as  it  is 
regarded  as  originating  in,  and  as  symptomatic  of,  an  evil  disposition.  It  is 
the  settled  principle  of  civil  law,  that  crime  does  not  consist  alone  in  the 
external  act.  There  is  no  crime,  unless  with  the  act,  goes  an  evil  motive  or 
intent.  We  apply  this  principle  to  Adam's  sin,  and  we  declare,  that  to  call 
that  sin  a  motiveless  and  uncaused  act,  originating  in  the  pure  sovereignty 
and  creatorship  of  Adam's  mere  faculty  of  volitions,  is  to  deny  that  he  sinned 
at  all,  and  to  turn  the  whole  momentous  transaction  upon  which  the  world's 
fate  hung,  into  mere  chance  or  madness,  that  could  bring  no  guilt  to  Adam 
and  no  just  consequences  of  sin  or  misery  to  the  race. 

Nor  could  such  an  act  of  bare  caprice  have  been  foreseen  or  provided  for. 
If  there  was  no  motive,  there  was  no  certainty.  If  there  was  no  certainty, 
there  was  nothing  to  be  foreknown.  If  there  was  nothing  to  be  foreknown, 
foreknowledge  was  impossible.  What  then  means  the  fitting  up  of  the 
world  with  all  its  dark  draperies  of  storm  and  suffering,  of  malformation  and 
of  blight,  of  thorns  and  thistles,  of  internecine  war  among  the  brute  creation, 
and  the  feeding  of  life  upon  life,  that  marked  the  ages  before  Adam  ?  This 
looks  as  if  man's  coming  and  man's  sin  had  been  positively  foreseen,  and  an 
arena  had  been  fitted  up,  congruous  with  the  great  drama  that  was  to  be 
enacted.  Above  all,  what  means  that  revelation  of  the  heart  of  God  before 
creation,  which  is  given  us  in  those  words:  "The  Lamb  slain  before  the 
foundation  of  the  world  ; "  and  what  mean  those  declarations  that  in  this 
Christ  we  were  "chosen  before  the  world  was ?"  These  things  indicate  that 
tin-  atonement  and  the  application  of  the  atonement  wrere  certainties  before 
the  curtain  of  night  and  chaos  rose  in  the  beginning.  But  if  these  things 
were  certainties,  says  the  theory,  Adam  could  not  have  been  free.  To  which 
we  can  only  reply  :  So  much  the  worse  for  a  theory  of  freedom,  which  regards 
it  as  a  synonym  for  caprice,  and  divorces  it  from  the  directing  power  of 
motive. 

We  come  now  to  the  last  objection  which  needs  an  answer,  this  namely, 
that  upon  the  view  which  we  have  set  forth,  man  can  do  nothing  to  change 
his  character.  The  power  to  alter  our  dispositions  and  to  improve  our  prin- 
ciples of  action,  it  is  said,  even  though  we  be  destitute  of  God's  saving  grace, 
is  recognized  in  all  processes  of  education,  whether  in  the  school  or  the 
family,  and  is  the  presupposition  of  all  systems  of  civil  and  criminal  admin- 
istration. Now,  in  reply  to  this,  it  would  be  enough  to  say  that  our  theory 
of  the  will  makes  room  for  the  possibility  of  all  these  changes,  so  long  as  the 
fundamental  motive  remains  the  same.  We  have  granted  the  fact  of  civil 
and  secular  freedom.  Every  man  has  the  power  of  doing  as  he  pleases,  and. 
of  acting  out  in  his  individual  choices  the  character  within  him.  That  char- 
acter is  a  self-centred  and  self-seeking  character.  But  there  are  a  thousand 
ways  of  manifesting  self-will,  and  of  reaching  self-gratification.  And  as 
widening  knowledge  presents  new  avenues  for  selfish  activity,  or  more  prom- 
ising means  of  self -exaltation,  the  fundamental  tendency  of  the  will  asserts 
itself  in  ever-varying  choices.  The  indolent  man,  with  new  prospects  of 
wealth  opening  to  his  view,  may  become  a  man  of  industry,  and  the  drunkard, 


112  THE   WILL   IN   THEOLOGY,    OR, 

aroused  to  see  the  misery  that  lies  before  him  and  his  family,  may  reform 
and  become  sober.  Nay,  we  go  further,  and  grant  that  there  may  be 
advances  to  forms  of  character  of  high  intellectuality  and  of  vast  service  to 
human  welfare  and  progress,  while  yet  the  heart  is  unchanged,  and  the  man 
is  in  spirit  far  from  God.  The  gentleness  of  the  worldly  man  may  even 
simulate  the  grace  of  Christian  love,  and  the  steadfastness  of  worldly  integ- 
rity may  be  mistaken  for  Christian  principle,  yet  no  power  be  at  work  but 
the  self-contained  and  self -regarding  principle  that  lies  at  the  basis  of  the 
natural  character. 

Now  all  this  possibility  of  growth  in  good  we  grant,  so  long  as  it  is  allowed 
that  the  human  will  cannot  go  further,  and  change  the  fundamental  affec- 
tion which  constitutes  its  inmost  character.  We  may  grow  in  moral  evil,  by 
natural  process,  but  not  into  true  moral  good.  For  moral  good  and  natural 
.good  are  two  very  different  things.  Moral  good,  in  the  sense  in  which  we 
use  the  term,  is  only  the  fruit  of  the  truest  motive,  love  to  God.  And  even 
the  first  beginnings  of  moral  good  are  impossible  without  the  inworking  of 
the  Holy  Spirit.  Man  can  choose  between  different  ways  of  manifesting  his 
natural  disposition  and  determination  ;  he  may  repress  certain  tendencies  to 
evil,  and  may  secure  a  growth  in  useful  habit.  But  all  the  while,  the  inner 
motive  of  his  striving  will  fail  to  be  the  highest  motive,  and  his  character 
will  fail  to  meet  the  divine  approval.  This  motive  and  this  character,  no 
power  but  God's  can  change.  But  can  he  not  bend  his  mind  to  truth,  and 
bring  before  him  the  force  of  outward  facts  that  tend  to  enlighten  and  soften 
and  subdue  ?  Abstractly,  yes.  Practically,  no.  He  has  the  natural  power 
of  attention,  but  alas,  he  will  not  attend.  What  is  needed  is,  not  new  light 
on  the  picture,  but  the  removal  of  the  cataract  which  prevents  him  from 
seeing  the  picture.  What  is  needed  is,  not  volitions,  prompted  by  the  old 
selfish  desire  for  his  own  interest  and  welfare,  but  a  new  affection  towards 
God,  which  will  make  him,  in  the  deepest  fountain  of  his  being,  conformed 
to  the  divine  holiness  and  empowered  to  the  doing  of  God's  will. 

And  this  need  of  a  new  principle  and  motive,  such  as  only  God  can  give, 
is  what  the  theory  of  will  we  are  opposing,  constantly  tends  to  ignore. 
Would  that  its  advocates  could  learn  the  humility  and  dependence  of  spirit 
which  would  enable  them  to  understand  this  truth  aright !  You  remember 
that  when  John  and  James,  two  brothers  dear  to  our  Lord,  but  not  yet  taught 
by  the  Spirit  as  they  were  a  little  after,  came  to  Christ  and  besought  the  high 
places  in  his  kingdom,  Jesus  put  to  them  the  searching  question  :  "  Can  ye 
drink  of  the  cup  that  I  drink  of,  and  be  baptized  with  the  baptism  that  I  am 
baptized  with  ?  "  Little  did  they  know  of  the  mighty  and  awful  import  of 
those  words  —  the  cup  of  suffering  in  Gethsemane  and  on  Calvary,  and  the 
baptism  of  death  and  the  grave  that  was  to  follow.  But  the  question  daunted 
them  not.  In  their  profound  ignorance  of  Christ  and  of  themselves,  they 
said  with  a  light  and  cheerful  sense  of  independence  and  of  power  :  "  We 
are  able  ! "  How  wonderful  it  is  that  Christ's  rebuke  was  so  gentle,  how 
wonderful  that  he  accepted  even  this  self -ignorant  and  self -trustful  deter- 
mination to  follow  him,  and  then,  taking  the  will  for  the  deed,  by  his  mighty 
Pentecostal  Spirit  made  the  deed  equal  to  the  will,  so  that  James  drank 
gladly  the  bitter  cup  of  martyrdom,  and  John's  long  century  life-time  was 
baptized  into  the  spirit  of  the  Savior's  death  !  But  has  man  nothing  to  do 


AN    EARLIER   VIEW   OF   THE   WILL.  113 

then  in  his  own  salvation  ?  Yes,  I  say  ;  but  it  is  with  the  ability  that  God 
giveth.  God  works,  not  before  our  working,  but  in  and  through  our  work- 
ing. And  he  has  shown  men  what  is  the  work  of  God,  namely,  that  they 
believe  on  Christ,  his  only  begotten  Son.  This  is  man's  duty,  this  is  man's 
privilege,  the  moment  the  gospel  message  comes  to  him.  The  change  of 
character  is  wrought  by  God's  power  alone,  in  and  through  man's  trust  and 
submission  to  the  Savior.  It  is  the  old  story  of  the  withered  hand.  Was 
there  ability  there  ?  Was  the  man  wholly  unresponsible  for  obedience  until 
his  hand  was  healed  ?  Should  he  delay  to  stretch  it  forth,  until  Christ  had 
wrought  his  cure  ?  Ah,  he  might  have  waited  forever  without  being  healed, 
if  he  had  held  a  certain  theory  of  the  will  that  we  know  of.  Nay,  there  was 
duty  there,  before  there  was  power ;  yet  the  healing  did  not  follow  upon 
obedience,  but  communicated  the  very  power  to  obey.  So  there  are  lost 
men,  whose  moral  nerves  are  shrivelled  and  powerless,  and  their  very  capa- 
city of  obedience  gone.  Without  a  renewal  of  their  wills,  they  will  not,  they 
cannot,  accept  salvation.  Yet  we  are  bicfden  to  go  and  preach  to  them  that 
they  turn  at  once  from  their  iniquities  and  believe  in  Christ.  Thank  God, 
though  they  have  not  the  power  to  change  their  characters,  there  is  a  divine 
Spirit  who  can  do  this  work,  and  who,  with  our  word  of  command  and  invi- 
tation and  promise,  will  energize  the  impotent  will,  and  will  cause  it  to  rouse 
itself  from  its  slumber  of  death,  and  to  put  forth  new  and  God-given  powers 
of  life  and  spiritual  freedom  ! 
8 


VIII. 

MODIFIED  CALVINISM, 

OR,  REMAINDERS  OF  FREEDOM  IN  MAN.* 


What  is  freedom,  and  how  much  of  freedom,  if  any,  is  left  to  us  in  our 
unregenerate  state  ?  Dr.  Shedd  has  well  said  that  the  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion, more  than  to  any  other,  determines  a  man's  position  in  theology.  I 
have  become  convinced  that  the  theory  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  with  which 
Calvinism  is  so  often  identified,  is  in  certain  respects,  too  narrow  a  one  to 
embrace  all  the  facts,  and  that  Calvin  himself,  as  well  as  Augustine  before 
him,  held  a  somewhat  broader  and  a  more  Scriptural  view  of  Imman  liberty. 
As  I  propose,  however,  to  test  the  subject  in  my  own  way,  and  as  Edwards, 
Calvin,  Augustine,  and  their  particular  opinions,  are  of  little  account  except 
as  they  may  guide  us  to  the  truth  or  warn  us  of  error,  I  will  for  the  present 
leave  them  to  themselves  and  will  come  at  the  real  subject  of  investigation 
from  another  quarter. 

We  cannot  properly  estimate  man's  freedom  in  his  estate  of  sin  without 
comparing  it  with  some  ideal  standard.  What  is  man's  normal  freedom  ? 
In  a  perfect  moral  state  how  will  this  freedom  manifest  itself  ?  Two  or 
three  answers  at  once  suggest  themselves.  The  highest  freedom  is  not 
simply  an  absence  of  external  or  internal  constraint  —  of  the  necessity  of 
willing  evil.  Nor  is  it  a  mere  self-determining  indecision,  evenly  balanced 
between  good  and  evil,  and  equally  ready  to  walk  upon  the  heights  of  virtue 
or  to  plunge  into  the  abyss  of  sin.  It  is  rather  such  an  inworking  of  law 
into  the  heart  and  soul  of  a  man,  that  there  is  a  spontaneous  and  infallible 
choosing  of  the  right.  The  German  poet  did  well  when  he  rejected  every 
vestige  of  moral  indecision  from  his  notion  of  freedom  :  — 

"  In  vain  shall  spirits  that  are  all  unbound 
To  the  pure  heights  of  perfectness  aspire ; 
In  limitation  first  the  Master  shines, 
And  law  alone  can  give  us  liberty." 

No  instructed  Christian  can  fail  to  see,  moreover,  that  the  law  which  is 
thus  inwrought  into  man's  heart  and  soul  must  be  "  the  law  of  the  Spirit  of 
life,"  and  not  something  merely  abstract  and  impersonal.  True  freedom, 
in  other  words,  involves  an  indwelling  and  inworking  of  God  in  man. 
Where  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there,  and  there  only,  is  liberty.  There  is 
no  true  freedom  of  the  human  spirit  but  in  being  the  conscious,  voluntary 
executor  of  the  will  of  the  Infinite  One ;  aye,  more  than  this,  in  being  inter- 
penetrated, informed  and  energized  by  the  living  God.  "Here, "in  the 
language  of  a  noted  writer,  "is  the  Christian  paradox.  I  am  to  feel  myself 


*  Printed  in  the  Baptist  Review,  April,  1883. 

114 


MODIFIED    CALVINISM.  115 

passive  in  the  hands  of  God,  yet  on  that  very  account  the  more  intensely 
active.  I  am  to  be  moved  unresistingly  by  God,  like  the  most  inert  instru- 
ment or  machine,  yet  to  be  for  that  very  reason  all  the  more  instinct  with 
life  and  motion.  My  whole  moral  frame  and  mechanism  is  to  be  possessed 
and  occupied  by  God,  and  worked  by  God,  and  yet  through  that  very  work- 
ing of  God  in  and  upon  my  inner  man,  I  am  to  be  made  to  apprehend  more 
than  ever  my  own  inward  liberty  and  power.  This  is  the  true  freedom  of 
the  will  of  man,  and  then  only  is  my  will  truly  free,  when  it  becomes  the 
engine  for  working  out  the  will  of  God." 

If  this  be  the  true  notion  of  freedom  in  man's  state  of  perfection  —  if,  even 
at  man's  best,  there  can  be  no  freedom  without  God  —  can  man  in  his  fallen 
state  be  less  dependent  ?  We  grant  that  man  can  work  evil  without  God, 
but  can  he  work  anything  which  is  truly  good  ?  Surely  not.  In  a  fallen 
state  man  is  solely  responsible  for  evil,  but  not  he  alone  is  to  be  credited 
with  good.  That  is  due  to  God.  Good  King  Alfred,  with  laboring  quaint- 
ness  of  phrase,  tried  to  express  this  truth  more  than  a  thousand  years  ago  : 
4 '  When  the  good  things  of  this  life  are  good,  then  they  are  good  through 
the  goodness  of  the  good  man  who  worketh  good  with  them,  and  he  is  good 
through  God. "  But  the  fountain-head  of  all  this  doctrine  is  in  the  utter- 
ance of  the  Apostle  Paul  :  "Work  out  your  own  salvation  with  fear  and 
trembling,  for  it  is  God  that  worketh  in  you  both  to  will  and  to  do  of  his 
good  pleasure." 

And  yet,  if  Paul  were  not  an  inspired  apostle,  such  an  utterance  might 
seem  a  piece  of  sublime  audacity.  Here  are  two  truths,  so  far  as  human 
reason  can  see,  irreconcilable  with  each  other,  yet  both  asserted  in  the  same 
breath  and  without  the  slightest  intimation  that  the  apostle  is  aware  of  any 
contradiction  between  them.  Divine  sovereignty  and  efficiency  on  the  one 
hand,  and  human  freedom  and  responsibility  on  the  other.  God  the  worker 
of  all  good,  yet  man  called  upon  to  work  out  his  own  salvation.  We  are 
usually  content  to  hold  each  of  these  truths  at  different  times,  and  we  are 
greatly  perplexed  when  we  are  required  to  grasp  both  of  them  together. 
We  are  like  the  child  who  tries  at  the  same  moment  to  hold  in  its  little  hand 
two  oranges.  It  can  hold  one,  but  so  surely  as  it  attempts  to  take  up  the 
other,  it  is  compelled  to  drop  the  first.  So  God's  working  and  man's  work- 
ing are  both  of  them  truths,  but  our  intellects  are  too  infantile  as  yet  to  be 
able  at  once  to  grasp  them  both. 

Cecil  once  said  in  substance  that  the  preacher  who  preached  the  whole 
truth  of  God  would  sometimes  be  accused  of  being  a  hyper-Calvinist ;  and 
that  the.  preacher  who  preached  the  whole  truth  of  God  would  at  other  times 
be  accused  of  being  an  out  and  out  Arminian.  And  F.  W.  Robertson  is  but 
the  type  of  a  multitude  of  candid  thinkers,  when  he  tells  us  that  he  was  in 
great  trouble  so  long  as  he  sought  to  discover  the  bond  of  connection  between 
God's  sovereignty  and  man's  free-agency,  and  that  he  found  rest  only  when 
he  finally  determined  that  both  were  true,  and  that  he  would  preach  them 
both,  but  that  he  would  forever  give  over  any  attempt  to  understand  or  to 
explain  the  relation  between  them. 

But  Paul  stands  on  a  loftier  height  than  either  Cecil  or  Robertson.  What 
to  us  seems  contradiction,  is  to  him  as  if  it  were  not.  He  seems  to  discern 
the  inner  harmony  between  the  divine  and  the  human  activities.  He  walks 


116  MODIFIED   CALVINISM,    OR, 

with  firm  and  elastic  step  along  the  edge  of  these  fathomless  abysses  of 
thought,  and,  as  for  the  depths  of  mystery,  he  does  not  even  notice  them. 
For  my  part  I  count  it  a  proof  of  his  inspiration.  No  merely  human  tongue 
could  thus  speak  of  the  problem  of  the  ages  without  effort  to  speculate  or 
explain.  I  cannot  understand  Paul's  calm  declaration  of  the  twofold  truth 
without  supposing  that  God  lifted  Paul  up  to  something  like  his  own  divine 
point  of  view,  and  then  enabled  Paul  to  speak  as  the  oracles  of  God. 

"While  the  ordinary  reader  of  Scripture  has  contented  himself  with  hold- 
ing each  of  these  truths  alternately,  the  makers  of  theological  systems  have 
very  often  tried  to  do  better,  and  to  embrace  both  in  a  rightly  proportioned 
and  organic  whole.  But  we  have  to  confess  that,  owing  to  the  limitations 
of  the  human  intellect  which  I  have  already  alluded  to,  whether  these  be 
original  and  permanent,  or  superinduced  by  sin  and  destined  to  gradual 
removal,  the  success  of  the  systematizers  has  been  far  from  complete.  They 
have  been  constantly  tempted  to  purchase  a  seeming  unity  by  a  partial 
ignoring  of  the  one  or  the  other  element  of  the  problem.  Many  a  scheme 
of  doctrine  has  been  built  up  upon  the  single  datum  of  human  freedom. 
Freedom  itself  has  been  denned  as  the  liberty  of  indifference,  the  soul's 
power  to  act  without  motive  or  contrary  to  the  strongest  motive,  and  such 
freedom  Las  been  declared  to  be  the  measure  of  obligation.  The  result  has 
been  the  denial  of  all  responsibility  for  our  native  depi  avity,  all  certainty  of 
man's  universal  sinfulne:s  and  dependence  upon  Christ,  all  permanence  of 
holy  character  in  the  redeemed  or  of  unholy  character  in  the  lost,  all  prede- 
termination or  even  foreknowledge  by  God  of  human  free  acts  or  tinal  des- 
tinies —  a  self-dependent,  self-righteous  religion,  in  which  the  glory  is  given 
to  man,  not  to  God. 

And  then,  on  the  other  hand,  many  a  system  has  been  built  upon  the 
single  datum  of  God's  sovereignty,  and  man's  freedom  has  been  recognized 
only  in  name.  Because  God  works  all  and  in  all,  man's  working  has  been 
ignored,  and  the  human  will  has  been  made  only  the  passive  instrument  of 
the  divine  efficiency  and  purpose.  The  result  has  been  that  human  individ- 
ually ha?  been  lost  sight  of ;  the  personality  of  man  has  been  merged  in 
the  totality  of  the  race  ;  the  race  itself  is  but  the  automatic  executor  of  an 
eternal  decree  ;  conscience  is  lulled  to  sleep ;  responsibility  becomes  a 
dream  ;  sin  is  no  longer  guilt,  but  misfortune ;  men  are  saved  or  lost,  no 
longer  because  of  what  they  are  or  what  they  do,  but  only  because  it  was  so 
detsrmined  from  eternity.  A  faith  like  this  may  have  in  it  some  grain  of 
truth,  and  may  be  far  better  than  no  religion  at  all,  but  it  is  dangerously 
defective.  It  plays  into  the  hands  of  modern  materialism  with  its  profess- 
edly scientific  refutation  of  the  freedom  of  the  will ;  and  if  it  cannot  be  justly 
called  pantheistic,  it  is  only  because  the  necessitarian  element  in  it  is  not 
carried  to  its  logical  consequences.  Let  it  have  its  way  unchecked  and 
unchallenged,  and  Christianity  becomes  a  dead  orthodoxy,  whose  deadness 
is  evinced  by  indolence  and  immorality  of  life. 

Now  it  is  this  last  error  which  in  certain  quarters  is  most  prevalent,  and 
which  it  is  my  present  purpose  to  test  by  an  appeal  to  Scripture  and  to  con- 
sciousness. But  before  I  do  this,  it  is  important  to  notice  that,  in  the  passage 
which  I  just  now  quoted,  the  apostle  Paul  does  not  urge  human  duty  by 
denying  or  undervaluing  the  divine  activity.  He  does  not  inculcate  man's 


REMAINDERS  OF  FREEDOM  IN  MAN.  117 

work  by  disparaging  God's.  Nay,  he  not  only  recognizes  both,  but  he  bases 
the  duty  of  the  former  upon  the  fact  of  the  latter — "Work  out  your  own 
salvation,"  he  tells  us,  "for  it  is  God  that  worketh  in  you."  As  between 
the  Calvinistic  and  the  Arminian  scheme  then,  the  Calvinistic  is  much  the 
better,  for  it  presents  the  more  fundamental  truth,  the  truth  which  human 
nature  tends  most  to  deny,  the  truth  which  we  need  most  to  recognize. 
An  awe-inspiring  view  of  God's  working  will  nerve  the  soul,  so  that  inaction 
will  be  impossible.  It  is  not  true,  conversely,  that  a  strong  conviction  of 
human  power  will  lead  to  dependence  upon  God.  The  Scotch  Covenanters 
knew  what  practical  religion  was.  The  English  Church  of  the  eighteenth 
century  hardly  did. 

And  the  difference  was  determined  largely  by  their  creeds.  To  know  tha 
God  is  at  work  in  us  gives  hope  and  courage.  All  things  are  possible  to  himt 
who  believes  in  this.  But  to  be  thrown  back  upon  self  and  the  strength  of 
my  unstable  will  for  my  security  of  salvation,  this  is  weakening  and  depress- 
ing. Therefore  Paul  tells  us  that  in  our  very  working  we  are  to  recognize 
already  the  working  of  God  and  the  pledge  of  victory.  No  synergism  here  ; 
no  recognition  of  an  equal  partnership  between  man  and  God,  much  less  of 
a  cooperation  to  be  symbolized  by  a  '  tandem '  team  in  which  man  leads  and 
God  follows  ;  nor  a  "  working  out,"  on  man's  part,  of  what  God,  on  his  part, 
"  works  in."  All  this  misses  the  point  entirely.  Paul's  idea  is  that  God  is 
in  all,  and  man  in  all,  so  that  man  is  to  go  forward  joyfully,  in  the  faith  that 
every  movement  is  the  revelation  of  a  divine  energy  within  him,  and  that 
his  success  is  not  by  might  or  power  of  his  own,  but  by  the  Spirit  of  the 
Lord.  Whatever  stage  of  progress  he  shall  reach,  he  shall  know  that  in 
some  true  sense  it  is  God  who  has  wrought  all  his  works  in  him,  that  unto 
these  very  works  he  has  been  created  in  Christ  Jesus,  according  to  the  eter- 
nal ordination  of  God,  and  therefore  he  shall  ever  cry  :  "Not  unto  us,  not 
unto  us,  but  unto  thy  name  give  glory  !  " 

Having  thus  vindicated  my  position  as  a  genuine  Calvinist,  I  wish  to 
point  out  certain  limitations  of  this  doctrine  of  divine  agency.  And  the  first 
is  that  while  God  is  said  to  be  the  worker  of  all  good,  he  is  not  said  to  be 
the  worker  of  all  evil.  There  has  been  a  hyper  Calvinism  that  has  practi- 
cally taught  this.  It  has  made  God  the  only  actor  in  the  universe.  Because 
all  things  are  included  in  his  plan,  it  has  been  supposed  that  he  must  work 
all  by  his  actual  efficiency.  And  when  it  has  been  objected  that  this  must 
make  God  the  direct  author  of  sin  in  human  hearts,  and  that  the  responsi- 
bility of  sin  is  thus  transferred  from  man  to  God,  such  men  as  Hop- 
kins and  Emmons  have  responded  that  the  moral  quality  of  action  does  not 
depend  upon  its  cause,  but  only  upon  its  nature. 

It  is  difficult  to  find  words  strong  enough  to  express  the  instinctive  indig- 
nation of  the  unsophisticated  mind  at  this  slanderous  imputation  upon  God, 
and  at  the  perverse  reasoning  with  which  it  is  supported.  Is  it  possible  to 
suppose  that  a  human  being,  created  with  a  will  set  against  holiness  and 
efficiently  caused  to  exercise  his  evil  propensities,  would  still  be  responsible 
for  the  possession  of  this  will  and  for  the  exercise  of  these  propensities  ? 
Yet  this  must  be  true,  if  the  moral  quality  of  activity  does  not  at  all  depend 
upon  its  cause.  God  might  make  a  man  evil ;  and  yet  for  this  evil,  not  God, 
but  man,  might  be  responsible.  This  cannot  be.  We  can  hold  man  respon- 


118  MODIFIED   CALVINISM,    OR, 

sible  for  his  evil  nature,  only  upon  the  assumption  that  man  is  himself  in 
some. proper  sense  the  originator  of  it.  I  do  not  now  inquire  whether  there 
may  not  be  a  race-unity  and  a  race-responsibility  in  virtue  of  which  human- 
ity is  an  organic  whole,  and  constitutes  one  moral  person  before  God.  I 
only  claim  that  no  man's  evil  dispositions  can  be  accounted  guilty  unless 
their  origin  can  be  traced  back  to  some  self-determined  trangression,  com- 
mitted either  in  his  individual  capacity  or  in  his  connection  with  the  race. 
We  are  guilty  only  of  that  sin  which  we  have  originated,  or  have  had  a  part 
in  originating.  *  Indeed  there  is  no  other  sin  than  this.  Sin  is  never  God's 
work,  but  always  man's.  Within  the  bounds  of  the  human  race  —  and  of 
this  only  we  are  speaking  —  sin  is  not  caused  by  beings  or  by  things  outside 
of  us.  It  is  due,  neither  directly  to  God's  efficiency,  nor  indirectly  to  the 
circumstances  in  which  God  has  placed  us.  Man's  sin  comes  from  himself, 
and  each  man  is  tempted  when  he  is  drawn  away  by  his  own  lust  and  enticed. 

The  view  just  combated,  although  it  strenuously  asserts  the  personality 
of  God,  is  virtually  a  system  of  fatalism.  Man's  acts  are  all  determined  for 
him  from  without.  Not  only  the  natural  power  which  is  used  in  performing 
them,  but  their  moral  quality  itself,  is  the  result  of  God's  efficient  agency. 
Fortunately  no  extensive  body  of  Christians  has  ever  held  this  view.  But 
there  has  been  another  view  almost  equally  pernicious,  and  which  still  has 
great  currency.  It  is  the  view  that  man's  acts  are  all  determined  from  within, 
so  determined  by  his  inborn  tendencies  and  dispositions  that  his  life  is  noth- 
ing but  a  necessary  manifestation  of  inherited  character.  All  action  is  sim- 
ply an  unfolding  of  the  nature,  and  cannot  be  different  from  that  nature  in 
kind.  Man's  freedom  is  simply  freedom  to  act  conformably  to  his  existing 
evil  inclination.  That  inclination  he  has  no  power  to  modify  or  check.  This 
view  may  be  called  determinism,  as  the  former  view  was  called  fatalism.  It 
grants  a  freedom  to  action,  but  denies  a  freedom  from  action.  Man  does  as 
he  pleases,  but  he  cannot  please  differently.  And  yet,  although  the  inborn 
tendencies  determine  the  life  by  an  absolute  necessity,  man  is  held  respon- 
sible for  his  activities  because  they  are  determined  not  from  without  but 
from  within. 

Now  before  indicating  the  precise  point  of  error  in  this  view,  let  us  test  it 
by  certain  well  known  facts  of  our  experience.  The  theory  denies  the  exist- 
ence of  any  power  in  man  to  check  or  to  modify  his  prevailing  inclination. 
The  man's  volitions  must  correspond  with  his  evil  nature.  He  has  power  to 
manifest  his  character  in  action,  but  he  has  no  power  to  change  his  charac- 
ter. Is  this  true  ?  The  carnal  mind  is  enmity  to  God.  Must  every  man 
therefore  commit  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost  ?  I  do  not  ask  whether  the 
commission  of  this  sin  may  not  be  expected  in  the  case  of  every  sinner  who 


*  Some  would  prefer  to  add :  "  or  with  the  origination  of  which  we  have  had  sympa- 
thy." But  aside  from  the  obvious  objection  that  to  be  guilty  of  sympathizing  with 
another's  sin  is  not  precisely  to  be  guilty  of  committing  that  sin  (the  two  are  distin- 
guished in  Rom.  1 :  33),  I  cannot  think  that  this  explanation  of  the  common  guilt  of  the 
race  gives  their  full  and  natural  meaning  to  phrases  in  Rom.  5  :  12-19,  such  as  "  for  that 
all  sinned  "  ( aorist,  v.  12 ) ;  "  through  one  trespass  "  ( v.  18 ).  Compare  1  Cor.  15 :  22 ;  2  Cor. 
6 :  14.  The  vast  majority  of  men  have  never  individually  heard  of  Adam's  sin  ;  how 
then  can  they  be  said  to  sympathize  with  it  ?  Is  not  this  a  sinning  like  Adam,  instead  of 
sinning  with  him  ;  a  fall  through  individual  trespasses,  rather  than  through  the  "  one 
trespass  "  of  the  "  one  man  ?  " 


REMAINDERS  OF  FREEDOM  IN  MAN.  119 

•continues  in  wilful  rebellion.  I  simply  ask  whether  this  sin  against  the 
Holy  Ghost  is  to  be  expected,  in  the  case  of  every  sinner,  at  once,  or  at  the 
beginning  of  his  conscious  transgression.  You  answer  in  the  negative.  You 
grant  then  that  the  sinner  has  power  to  avoid  that  sin  —  that  in  this  case  at 
least  he  has  a  freedom  from,  as  well  as  a  freedom  to.  Is  this  freedom  wholly 
the  result  of  special  grace  ?  Then  if,  apart  from  extraordinary  influences  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  this  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost  would  uniformly  be  com- 
mitted at  the  first  moment  of  moral  consciousness,  are  not  all  moral  condi- 
tions short  of  that  sin  solely  due  to  God,  and  is  not  every  man  practically  as 
guilty  as  if  he  had  already  committed  it  ?  But  this  seems  clearly  inconsist- 
ent with  the  special  guilt  attaching  to  its  commission.  Why  is  it  that,  unlike 
fallen  angels,  man  has  yet  to  commit  a  sin  which  will  put  him  beyond  the 
reach  of  mercy  ?  We  seem  compelled  to  recognize  here  a  remnant  of  free- 
dom. Man  is  not  borne  on  irresistibly  by  his  evil  nature,  so  that  apart  from 
the  special  power  of  God  he  must  at  once  and  inevitably  commit  the  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost. 

Apply  the  principle  still  further.  We  must  grant  that  even  the  unregen- 
erate  man  has  power  to  choose  a  less  degree  of  sin  instead  of  a  greater  ;  he 
oau  refuse  altogether  to  yield  to  certain  temptations  ;  he  can  do  outwardly 
good  acts  with  imperfect  motives ;  he  can  even  seek  God  from  considerations 
of  self-interest.  We  do  not  claim  that  the  unregenerate  man  can  do  any  act, 
however  insignificant,  which  can  fully  meet  God's  approval  or  answer  the 
demands  of  his  law.  Much  less  do  we  claim  that  the  unregeuerate  man  can 
of  himself  change  his  fundamental  preference  for  self  and  sin  into  a  supreme 
love  for  God.  But  then,  while  we  recognize  inborn  tendencies  to  evil  and 
a  bent  of  will  contracted  by  persistent  transgression,  it  is  of  great  import- 
ance to  remember  that  this  is  not  the  whole  of  the  man.  There  is  a  residuum 
of  power  by  which  he  may  render  himself  more  or  less  depraved.  No  man 
will  be  condemned  in  the  final  judgment  solely  because  of  what  he  was  born 
with  —  judgment  shall  be  rendered  according  to  the  deeds  done  in  the  body. 

It  is  not  true  that  the  only  probation  is  the  probation  of  the  race  in  Adam. 
There  is  an  individual  probation  also,  in  which  each  man  decides  his  destiny. 
Those  who  are  shut  out  from  God's  mercy,  at  the  last,  will  be  shut  out  because 
they  would  not  come  to  him  that  they  might  have  life.  Human  existence 
in  this  world  is  not  a  mere  spontaneous  development  of  evil.  As  all  men 
have  freedom  in  thinking  —  as  all  men  can  suspend  the  action  of  mere  asso- 
ciation and  can  select  the  objects  of  their  thought  in  matters  that  are  merely 
secular  —  so,  in  matters  of  the  soul,  when  God's  claims  are  presented  to  the 
intellect,  there  is  a  power  in  every  sinner  to  suspend  present  evil  action  and 
judgment  and  to  fasten  attention  upon  the  considerations  which  urge  obedi- 
ence to  God.  If  we  say  that  in  the  absence  of  love  for  holiness  there  is  no 
motive  for  even  this  slight  and  preliminary  attention  to  the  truth,  I  answer 
that  there  is  still  a  natural  propension  toward  abstract  truth,  besides  the 
admonitions  of  conscience  and  the  impulses  of  self-interest,  which  may  be 
appealed  to  in  the  case  of  every  sinner  who  has  not  yet  sinned  the  sin  unto 
death  and  said  with  Satan  :  "  Evil,  be  thou  my  good  !  "  And,  that  this  nat- 
ural self-interest  is  not  in  itself  sinful,  God  himself  shows  when  he  addresses 
the  warnings  and  invitations  of  his  word  both  to  men's  hopes  and  to  men's 
fears. 


120  MODIFIED   CALVINISM,    OR, 

In  the  old  Greek  tragedy  the  Furies  pursued  men  to  wretched  deaths, 
because  these  men  had  unwittingly  committed  some  offense  against  divine 
or  human  law.  Oedipus  can  say  that  his  evil  deeds  have  been  suffered  rather 
than  done.  But  Christian  ethics  is  obliged  to  found  responsibility  upon 
freedom.  Somewhere  we  must  find  an  originating  act,  which  we  either  our- 
selves committed  or  in  which  we  had  a  part.  Somewhere  we  must  find  a 
point  where  we  can  say  :  It  might  have  been  otherwise.  In  everything 
which  the  conscience  recognizes  as  sin,  the  plea  of  absolute  necessity  bars 
all  guilt,  remorse,  or  punishment.  And  here  is  the  error  of  that  form  of 
Calvinism  which  it  is  my  present  object  to  criticize.  It  is  the  error  of  put- 
ting in  the  link  of  necessity  between  man's  fundamental  disposition  and  his 
individual  choices.  Volitions  are  conceived  of  as  mere  hands  upon  the  dial, 
that  indicate  the  internal  structure  of  the  clock.  Will  has  no  power  to  react 
upon  the  interior  mechanism,  and  so  change  the  direction  or  kind  of  its 
movement.  Upon  this  view  there  should  be  no  power  of  suspending  evil 
action  in  any  given  case,  no  power  of  directing  the  attention  to  opposing 
considerations,  no  power  of  summoning  up  motives  to  good,  no  power  of 
seeking  help  from  God. 

In  this  respect  it  seems  to  me  that  we  are  called  upon  to  retreat  from  Jon- 
athan Edward's  philosophy  to  the  positions  of  Scripture.  Edwards  held 
that  volition  must  always  follow  inclination,  and  that  an  act  of  will  contrary 
in  its  nature  to  the  soul's  fundamental  preference  was  inconceivable  and 
impossible.  *  But  Adam  was  created  in  righteousness  and  true  holiness  — 
how  was  it  possible  that  Adam  could  ever  fall  ?  The  Christian's  deepest  love 
is  love  for  God  —  how  is  it  possible  that  the  Christian  can  ever  sin  ?  Here 
are  cases  where  the  volitions  are  not  mere  manifestations  of  the  soul's  fun- 
damental preference.  How  will  Jonathan  Edwards  explain  them  ?  He  does 
not  pretend  to  explain  them.  You  may  look  his  works  through,  and  find  no 
solution  of  the  problem.  These  are  outlying  facts  which  could  not  be  recon- 
ciled with  his  theory  of  the  will,  and  their  existence  proves  his  theory 
insufficient,  however  correct  in  its  main  features  it  may  be. 

Both  Calvin  and  Augustine  were  broader  than  Edwards.  They  held  that 
Adam  at  least  had  a  power  of  contrary  choice  —  not  that  he  could  choose 
good  and  choose  evil  at  the  same  time,  but  that  he  had  power  to  change  his 
choice  of  good  into  a  choice  of  evil  —  a  power  which  he  actually  exercised 
in  the  fall.  The  race  which  fell  in  him  has  indeed  lost  the  power  to  change 
its  moral  condition  by  an  act  of  will,  but  its  present  state  is  referable  to  a 
free  act  in  which,  in  the  person  of  its  first  father,  it  consciously  and  wick- 


*  Edwards,  it  is  true,  calls  this  necessity  a  "philosophical  necessity,"  and  insists  that 
he  means  by  the  phrase  nothing  more  nor  less  than  certainty  ( Freedom  of  the  Will,  p.  10 ). 
But  there  are  passages  in  his  treatise  which  imply  much  more  than  this.  For  example, 
he  ascribes  to  future  free  acts  the  same  necessity  that  belongs  to  an  act  done  in  the  past 
(p.  77.)  Motive  is  cause,  and  renders  other  volition  than  the  one  put  forth  causeless  and 
impossible.  Motive  acts  as  inevitably  as  a  mechanical  cause,  and  volition  is  its  effect, 
passively  produced  or  modified  (p.  53).  "  The  will,  at  the  time  of  that  diverse  or  oppo- 
site leading  act  or  inclination  and  when  actually  under  the  influence  of  it,  is  not  able  to 
exert  itself  to  the  contrary,  to  make  an  alteration  in  order^to  a  compliance  "  —  a  sentence 
which  is  either  meaningless,  or  means  that  a  man  cannot  change  any  inclination  or  pur- 
pose which  he  has  once  formed. 


REMAINDERS  OF  FREEDOM  IN  MAN.  121 

edly  apostatized  from  God.  Calvin  *  and  Augustine  t  both  recognized,  as 
Edwards  never  did,  that,  in  spite  of  this  transgression  of  the  race  in  Adani 
and  the  inherited  depravity  that  has  resulted  therefrom,  each  individual  has 
a  power  of  his  own  to  check  and  to  modify  his  evil  nature  and  to  make  him- 
self more  or  less  guilty  in  the  sight  of  God.  Man  is  not  wholly  a  develop- 
ment of  inborn  tendencies,  a  manifestation  of  original  sin.  The  corrupt  tree, 
says  Augustine,  may  produce  the  wild  fruit  of  morality,  though  it  cannot 
produce  the  divine  fruit  of  grace.  There  is  still  left  a  power  to  resist 
depravity  and  to  attend  to  truth,  just  as  the  Christian  man  has  still  left  a 
power  to  put  forth  evil  volitions  which  contradict  the  governing  disposition 
of  his  soul. 

It  is  a  great  gain  to  doctrine  and  to  conduct  when  we  learn  that  character 
does  not  absolutely  bind  us.  Christian  character  does  not  bind  the  Chris- 
tian to  be  holy.  Adam's  and  Satan's  originally  holy  character  did  not  abso- 
lutely bind  them.  They  had  power  not  only  to  choose  ways  of  acting  out 
their  fundamental  choice,  but  they  had  power  of  changing  that  choice.  Not 
only  had  they  power  to  choose  between  different  expressions  of  motive,  but 
they  had  power  to  choose  between  motives  themselves.  Both  in  the  fall  and 
at  conversion  there  is  such  a  new  choice  of  motive.  Motives  are  not  properly 
causes,  but  only  occasions,  of  our  action.  The  man  himself  is  the  cause. 
Motives  do  not  compel,  they  rather  persuade,  the  will.  The  will  acts  in 
view  of  motives.  And  so  we  may  give  a  new  definition  of  free  agency,  con- 
sidered as  a  condition  of  responsibility,  and  as  distinguished  from  that  spir- 
itual freedom  first-mentioned  which  is  identical  with  perfect  conformity  to 
the  divine  law.  Free  agency  —  to  give  a  formula  which  will  apply  to  all 
responsible  beings,  perfect  and  imperfect,  fallen  and  uufallen  —  is  the  soul's 
power  to  choose  between  motives,  and  to  direct  its  subsequent  activities 
according  to  the  motive  thus  chosen. 

In  secular  concerns,  this  choice  between  motives  is  no  uncommon  thing. 
We  know  what  it  is  to  choose  a  profession,  and  we  know  that  this  choice  is 
a  very  different  thing  from  the  following  of  the  profession  thus  chosen.  In 
religious  concerns  this  choice  between  motives  is  the  event  of  a  lifetime, 
whether  it  be  the  one  decision  for  good  in  the  life-time  of  the  individual,  or 
the  one  decision  for  evil  in  the  life-time  of  the  race.  That  decision  once 
made,  and  the  motive  whether  good  or  evil  once  chosen,  affection  and  habit 
will  make  it  harder  and  harder  to  change  the  decision  and  to  reverse  the 


*  Calvin,  Inst.  Rel.  Ch.,  1 :  15 :  8  — "  Man  was  endowed  with  free  will  by  which,  if  he  had 
chosen,  he  might  have  obtained  eternal  life.  Adam  could  have  stood  if  he  would,  since 
he  fell  merely  by  his  own  will ;  but,  because  his  will  was  flexible  to  either  side  and  he  was 
not  endowed  with  constancy  to  persevere,  therefore  he  so  easily  fell.  Yet  his  choice  of 
good  and  evil  was  free  ;  and  not  only  so,  but  his  mind  and  will  were  possessed  of  con- 
summate rectitude,  and  all  his  organic  parts  were  rightly  disposed  to  obedience,  till 
destroying  himself,  he  corrupted  all  his  excellencies."  *  *  *  "  It  would  have  been  unrea- 
sonable that  God  should  be  confined  to  this  condition,  to  make  man  so  as  to  be  altogether 
incapable  either  of  choosing  or  of  committing  any  sin." 

t  Augustine,  De  Correptione  et  Gratia,  c.  13— "While  all  men  are  evil,  they  have 
through  free  will  added  [to  original  sin]  some  more,  some  less."  De  Gratia  et  Libero 
Arbitrio.  2: 1  — "  Added  to  the  sin  of  their  birth  sins  of  their  own  commission."  2:4  — 
"  Neither  denies  our  liberty  of  will  whether  to  choose  an  evil  or  a  good  life,  nor  attri- 
butes to  it  so  much  power  that  it  can  avail  anything  without  God's  grace,  or  that  it  can. 
change  itself  from  evil  to  good." 


122  MODIFIED    CALVINISM,    OR, 

choice.  Evil  doing  will  give  rise  to  a  diseased  state  in  which  the  will  is  so 
weak  that  it  is  certain  never  to  break  its  bonds  without  divine  help.  He 
that  commits  sin  becomes  the  slave  of  sin,  and  will  never  emerge  into  free- 
dom until  Christ  stretches  out  his  hand  to  deliver.  But  even  this  certainty 
of  continuous  evil  activity  is  not  necessity ;  and  the  fact  that  this  evil  activ- 
ity is  self-originated  and  self-maintained  is  an  all-sufficient  ground  of 
responsibility  and  condemnation  both  in  conscience  and  before  God's  bar. 

In  Julius  Miiller's  "  Doctrine  of  Sin  "  there  is  frankly  recognized,  both  in 
the  individual  and  in  the  race  as  a  whole,  an  already  existing  determination 
to  evil.  There  is  a  bent  of  the  will,  prior  to  individual  volitions,  which  can- 
not be  explained  as  mere  habit,  and  which  amounts  to  an  active  preference 
of  selfishness  and  sin.  Thus  far  Julius  Miiller  grants  to  determinism  an 
element  of  truth.  But  then  he  declares  that  this  existing  determination  to 
evil  is  partly  limited  by  the  will's  remaining  power  of  choice,  and  is  partly 
traceable  to  a  former  self-determination.  In  my  judgment  the  great  German 
theologian  has  given  us  the  best  extant  discussion  of  the  subject,  and  with 
his  conclusions,  so  far  as  man's  present  state  is  concerned,  I  substantially 
agree.  I  recognize  such  a  thing  as  character  —  affections  set  in  the  direction 
of  wrong  or  right,  and  endowed  with  power  to  persuade  the  will  —  and  that 
with  infallible  certainty  —  because  the  will  itself  has  made  them  what  they 
are,  and  even  now  cherishes  them.  Even  in  the  case  of  congenital  bias 
toward  evil  we  are  responsible  for  the  evil  affections  we  inherit,  because  we 
are  not  simply  individuals,  but  also  members  of  a  common  humanity,  which 
in  its  first  father  determined  itself  against  God.  But  the  complementary 
truth  must  never  be  forgotten,  that  these  affections,  formed  as  they  are,  are 
still  subject  in  some  degree  to  will,  and  that  will  is  continually  under  the 
necessity  either  of  resisting  or  of  re-affirming  them.  The  man's  opportunity 
to  choose  between  motives  is  a  constant  one,  and  whether  he  actually  change 
his  motive  or  not,  he  knows  that  he  is  not  yet  wholly  deprived  of  his  power 
to  change  it. 

Of  course  the  objection  will  be  raised  that  this  choice  between  motives 
must  be  a  choice  without  motive,  and  that  such  an  act  of  pure  will  is  neither 
conceivable  nor  rational.  We  grant,  with  Calderwood,  that  an  act  of  pure 
will  is  unknown  in  consciousness.  There  is  no  volition  without  motive,  no 
putting  forth  of  power  without  a  reason  for  its  exercise.  We  even  dissent 
from  Calderwood,  when,  very  inconsistently  with  his  statement  already 
mentioned,  he  ascribes  to  will,  in  the  initial  act  of  attention,  a  freedom  from 
the  influence  of  motive.  We  maintain,  on  the  contrary,  that  everywhere 
and  always  the  will  acts  only  in  view  of  motives,  and  that  the  theory  of  lib- 
erty which  represents  will  as  existing  in  an  undetermined  state,  or  as  deter- 
mining itself  without  motive  or  against  the  strongest  motive,  is  repugnant 
both  to  consciousness  and  to  reason.  The  choice  to  attend  to  considerations 
prompting  a  different  course  from  that  which  we  are  now  pursuing,  is  never 
made  but  for  a  reason,  and  that  reason  may  be  found  both  in  instincts  from 
within  and  in  incitements  from  without.  Motives  are  commonly  compounded 
of  external  presentations  and  of  internal  dispositions.  In  freely  choosing 
between  motives,  the  man  is  influenced  by  motives  —  by  one  motive  more 
than  by  another  ;  otherwise  motives  are  a  mere  impertinence,  and  the  man 
may  make  up  his  decision  entirely  without  them.  There  can  always  be  found 


REMAINDERS   OF    FREEDOM    IN   MAN.  123 

a  reason  for  changing  from  one  motive  to  another,  aye,  even  in  the  case  of 
capricious  acts  so-called,  where  the  reason  is  simply  the  gratification  of  a 
lawless  independence. 

A  reason,  but  not  a  cause.  A  persuasive  influence,  but  not  a  constraining 
power.  The  cause,  the  power,  are  in  the  free  will  that  chooses.  That  will 
infallibly  chooses  according  to  motive,  but  it  is  not  determined  by  motive. 
Will  is  itself  the  determiner.  Here  is  an  act  of  absolute  origination  —  an  act 
inexplicable  to  the  logical  understanding.  With  Sir  William  Hamilton,  we 
accept  the  fact  that  the  will  is  an  undetermined  cause,  upon  the  simple  tes- 
timony of  consciousness.  But  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the  whole 
difficulty  in  the  case  does  not  arise  from  taking  the  word  motive  in  a  mechan- 
ical sense,  and  from  forgetting  that  the  motive  is  nothing  but  the  man.  All 
motive  is  in  the  last  analysis  internal.  Motive  is  simply  the  man  in  a  cer- 
tain state  of  feeling  or  desire.  And  will  is  nothing  but  this  same  man 
choosing. 

The  man  may  have  many  desires,  and  therefore  many  motives,  some  lower, 
some  higher,  but  prior  to  his  decision  no  one  of  these  motives  may  be  stronger 
than  another.  It  is  the  soul's  choosing  to  yield  to  the  one  rather  than  to  the 
other  that  gives  that  one  its  strength.  It  becomes  the  prevailing  motive 
only  by  the  soul's  determining  to  follow  it  and  identify  itself  with  it.  As 
before  choice  it  may  be  said  that  the  motive  was  only  the  man,  so  after 
choice  it  may  be  said  that  the  man  is  nothing  but  his  motive  —  at  least  until 
at  some  new  epoch  of  his  experience,  he  gives  himself  up  to  some  new 
impulse  that  clamors  for  control.  So  man  is  not  a  creative  first  cause,  for 
the  reason  that  he  only  chooses  between  impulses  previously  existing  —  a 
drop  of  water,  as  a  French  writer  has  said,  which  chooses  whether  it  will 
flow  into  the  Bhine  or  into  the  Bhone.  The  forces  that  bear  it  onward  are 
not  of  its  own  making,  any  more  than  the  drop  of  water  makes  the  force  of 
gravitation.  Man  can  choose  his  direction  only,  whether  toward  holiness 
or  unholiness,  Satan  or  God,  heaven  or  hell.  Yet,  determining  what  his 
motive  shall  be,  he  determines  his  character,  that  is,  he  determines  himself: 
he  is  in  the  highest  sense  self-determined,  and  therefore  solely  responsible, 
not  only  for  his  present  character,  but  for  all  the  executive  acts  which  flow 
therefrom.  * 

Man  is  one,  and  desire  and  will  always  go  together.  They  act  and  react 
upon  each  other.  The  will  may  strengthen  or  weaken  the  desires  by  direct- 
ing the  attention  to  or  from  the  objects  adapted  to  excite  them.  Man  may 
thus  to  a  certain  extent  change  his  course  and  modify  his  character.  The 


*  Since  writing  the  above  I  find  in  the  Princeton  Review  for  1856,  pp.  514,  515,  an 
extended  notice  of  Wiliiain  Lyall's  Intellect,  Emotions  and  Moral  Nature  (Edinburgh, 
Constable  &  Co.,  1855).  From  that  work  the  following  lines  are  quoted  with  approval : 
"  The  will  follows  reasons,  inducements,  but  it  is  not  caused.  It  obeys,  or  it  acts  under 
inducement,  but  it  does  so  sovereignly."  ....  "  It  exhibits  the  phenomena  of  activity 
in  relation  to  the  very  motive  it  obeys.  It  obeys  it  rather  than  another.  It  determines 
in  reference  to  it  that  this  is  the  very  motive  which  it  will  obey.  There  is  undoubtedly 
this  phenomenon  exhibited,  the  will  obeying,  but  elective,  active  in  its  obedience.  If  it 
be  asked  how  this  is  possible,  how  the  will  can  be  under  the  influence  of  motive  and  yet 
possess  an  intellectual  activity,  we  reply  that  this  is  one  of  those  ultimate  phenomena 
which  must  he  admitted,  while  they  cannot  be  explained."  So  we  may  add  that  in  all 
fundamental  choices  the  object  chosen  and  the  motive  for  choosing  are  one  and  the 
same  thing. 


124  MODIFIED   CALVINISM,    OR, 

desires  in  turn  act  upon  the  will  and  influence  its  decisions,  without  however 
destroying  its  power  to  accept  or  reject  their  suggestions.  Which  comes 
first,  desire  or  will?  It  is  like  asking:  "Which  comes  first,  strength  or 
exercise  ?  In  this  last  case,  we  should  answer  :  Either  may  come  first. 
Strength  usually  comes  first,  and  is  the  condition  of  exercise.  But  there  are 
cases  when  strength  is  greatly  reduced,  and  only  exercise  will  restore  it. 
Then  exercise  comes  before  strength.  So,  in  the  case  of  our  ordinary  action, 
desire  seems  to  precede  will ;  in  the  crises  of  our  history,  will  seems  to  pre- 
cede desire. 

In  the  cognition  of  beauty,  who  can  tell  which  goes  before,  the  intellect- 
ual apprehension  or  the  state  of  the  sensibility  ?  Do  you  say  the  man  must 
first  know,  in  order  to  feel  ?  Chronologically,  yes  —  for  his  feeling  must 
have  an  object,  and  this  the  intellect  must  furnish.  Logically,  no  —  for  no 
man  can  see  a  beauty  which  he  does  not  love  ;  and  the  taste  conditions  the 
intellectual  apprehension.  So  both  desire  and  will  are  involved  in  every 
moral  act ;  each  affects  the  other.  Yet  in  certain  acts  the  one  element  may 
be  more  prominent  than  the  other,  the  one  may  precede  the  other.  Logi- 
cally, desire  may  come  first ;  but  chronologically,  will. 

The  views  presented  in  this  paper  are  partly  intended  to  constitute  a  sup- 
plement and  modification  of  those  advocated  by  the  author  in  the  article 
which  precedes  this.  That  there  may  be  no  mistake  with  regard  to  their 
nature,  let  me  here  sum  up  what  has  been  said  thus  far,  and  distinguish  my 
position  as  precisely  as  possible  from  other  schemes  with  which  it  might  be 
confounded.  As  to  original  sin.  The  race  is  organically  one.  When 
Adam  sinned  and  fell,  all  there  was  of  human  nature  sinned  and  fell  in  him. 
By  an  act  of  free  will  he  corrupted  his  nature,  and  all  his  posterity  possess 
by  inheritance  that  nature  which  corrupted  itself  in  him.  Adam's  act  of 
will  was  an  act  of  permanent  choice,  and  we  partake  of  it.  The  result  of 
that  act  was  a  depraving  of  his  affections,  and  we  partake  of  them.  I  reject 
however  that  division  of  the  human  powers  which  classes  affections  under 
the  head  of  will.  I  would  speak  of  voluntary  affections  only  in  the  sense 
that  the  will  has  originated,  and  that  the  will  continues  to  cherish,  these  affec- 
tions. Both  in  the  case  of  Adam  and  in  the  case  of  his  posterity,  the  settled 
choice  of  self  as  the  end  of  living,  and  the  evil  affections  which  result  there- 
from, involve  a  moral  inability  to  do  right  or  to  obey  God,  while  yet  the 
natural  ability  remains.  Man  can  change  his  evil  desire,  but  he  has  no  desire 
to  change.  The  can-not  is  simply  a  will-not ;  though,  until  the  Spirit  of 
God  deliver  him,  that  will-not  is  a  bondage  as  terrible  and  remorseless  as 
any  imprisonment  behind  iron  bars.  But  it  is  a  bondage  for  which  the  sin- 
ner is  responsible  and  guilty,  because  it  consists  in  nothing  but  his  own 
active  choice  of  evil. 

Not  all  sin  then  is  personal.  There  was  a  first  race-sin,  in  which  man's 
will  and  affections  freely  and  wickedly  contracted  a  perverse  bent  and  incli- 
nation. Only  by  identifying  ourselves  with  Adam,  can  we  account  for  our 
birth  with  evil  dispositions  for  which  both  conscience  and  Scripture  hold  us 
guilty.  But  now,  as  to  man's  remaining  freedom.  Neither  Adam  nor  his 
posterity  in  that  first  act  of  sin  lost  their  natural  power  of  will,  though  they 
did  lose  their  inclination  to  will  conformably  to  God's  law.  There  was  still 
in  the  case  of  Adam  —  there  is  still  in  the  case  of  his  posterity  —  a  power  to 


REMAINDERS  OF  FREEDOM  IN  MAN.  125 

check  the  manifestations  of  evil  inclination,  and  at  least  indirectly  and  with 
imperfect  motives  to  seek  its  reversal.  It  is  \vithin  man's  power  to  be  more 
or  less  corrupt  in  his  outward  life,  and  to  use  with  more  or  less  faithfulness 
the  outward  means  of  grace.  Inborn  character  does  not  so  bind  a  man  that 
he  has  no  individual  probation.  He  has  still  the  freedom  which  consists  in 
choosing  between  motives  ;  and  inasmuch  as  this  choice  is  not  without  motive 
but  is  made  for  a  reason,  there  is  previous  certainty  of  an  evil  choice,  while 
yet  the  soul  has  perfect  power  to  make  a  right  one.  Thus  I  would  exclude 
both  the  hyper-Calvinistic  determinism  which  would  make  the  life  of  each 
individual  simply  the  evolution  of  his  inherited  depravity,  and  also  the 
Arminian  theory  of  the  uncertainty  of  human  action  which  would  make  it 
impossible  for  God  either  to  foreordain  or  to  foreknow  the  future. 

Although  the  Scriptures  teach  that  God  only  can  give  the  new  heart,  sin- 
ners are  exhorted  in  Scripture  to  make  to  themselves  a  new  heart.  Regen- 
eration is  plainly  not  a  mechanical  work  of  God,  but  a  work  of  personal 
influence  upon  the  sinner's  affections.  Nor  is  it  an  influence  exerted  only 
through  the  truth,  as  if  man  were  the  only  agent,  and  moral  suasion  were 
the  only  method  God  could  employ  to  change  man's  will.  We  repel  the 
notion  that  the  only  communication  between  spirit  and  spirit  is  through 
truth  ;  for  this  is  a  virtual  denial  of  the  Christian's  union  with  Christ  and  of 
God's  personal  communion  with  the  human  soul.  We  know  of  an  influence 
exerted  by  the  orator,  which  is  above  and  beyond  that  of  the  words  he 
speaks.  We  know  of  a  power  of  personal  influence,  that  passes  that  of 
argument.  There  is  a  subtle  magnetism  in  the  presence  of  a  noble  friend, 
that  disarms  objection  and  opens  the  heart  to  his  persuasions  ere  we  are 
aware.  There  is  an  atmosphere  of  purity  and  truth  and  love  enwrapping 
some  devoted  souls,  that  draws  us  to  them  and  makes  us  trust  everything 
they  say.  Aye,  there  seem  to  be  subtle  laws,  only  obscurely  understood  as 
jet,  in  accordance  with  which  soul  comes  into  contact  with  soul,  and  acts 
directly  upon  soul,  though  sundered  far  by  space,  and  deprived  of  all  physi- 
cal intermediaries.  So  Christ's  entrance  into  the  soul  and  joining  himself 
to  it  has  power  to  change  the  heart.  The  renewing  Spirit  is  the  Spirit  of 
Christ,  and  in  that  new  contact  of  the  human  spirit  with  the  divine,  the  soul 
is  transformed  into  the  image  of  him  who  first  created  it. 

But  this  personal  presence  of  Christ  does  not  constrain  or  compel. 
Rather  is  there  a  new  consciousness  of  strength  and  a  new  sense  of  freedom. 
Lifted  up  into  this  new  divine  companionship,  and  penetrated  with  this  new 
divine  life,  there  is  a  soul-absorbing  penitence  for  sin  and  submission  to  the 
Savior.  God's  working  in  the  soul  to  will  and  to  do,  has  for  its  result  and 
Accompaniment  the  soul's  working-out  of  its  own  salvation.  The  great 
change  which,  looked  at  from  the  divine  side,  we  call  regeneration,  when 
looked  at  from  the  human  side,  may  be  called  conversion.  Regeneration 
has  logical,  but  not  chronological,  precedence  of  conversion.  Man  turns 
only  as  God  turns  him,  indeed  ;  but  it  is  equally  true  that  man  is  never  to 
wait  for  God's  working.  If  he  is  ever  regenerated,  it  must  be  in  and  through 
a  movement  of  his  own  will,  in  which  he  turns  to  God  as  unconstrainedly, 
and  with  as  little  consciousness  of  God's  operation  upon  him,  as  if  no  such 
operation  of  God  were  involved  in  the  change.  And,  in  preaching,  we  are 
to  press  upon  men  the  claims  of  God  and  their  duty  of  immediate  submission 


126  MODIFIED   CALVINISM,    OR, 

to  Christ,  with  the  certainty  that  they  who  do  so  submit  will  subsequently 
recognize  this  new  and  holy  activity  of  their  own  wills  as  due  to  the  working 
within  them  of  divine  power. 

So  we  come  back  at  last  to  the  point  from  which  we  set  out.  The  freedom 
which  consists  in  the  power  to  choose  between  motives  is  to  be  so  used  under 
grace  that  we  may  through  it  enter  into  that  higher  freedom  which  consists 
in  the  glad  surrender  of  all  our  powers  to  God.  In  the  fall  man  lost  the 
latter,  while  he  retained  the  former.  Only  the  grace  of  God  can  restore  that 
harmony  of  the  human  will  with  the  law  of  holiness,  for  which  man  was 
originally  made.  Formal  freedom,  as  the  Germans  call  the  mere  power  to 
put  forth  single  volitions  externally  conformed  to  law,  is  not  enough.  Man 
needs  real  freedom,  by  which  phrase  those  same  Germans  designate  the 
power  to  love  God  with  all  the  heart,  and  so,  to  live  according  to  the  idea 
of  man's  being.  This  real  freedom,  this  freedom  in  the  highest  sense,  is 
partially  restored  in  regeneration ;  it  will  be  perfectly  restored  when  we 
awake  in  Christ's  likeness.  In  the  case  of  the  saints  in  heaven,  the  formal 
freedom  will  be  merged  in  the  real  and  will  be  made  the  organ  for  its  mani- 
festation, as  it  is  in  the  case  of  God  himself,  and  they  shall  be  perfect  even 
as  their  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect.  The  highest  freedom  involves  a  cer- 
tainty of  holy  character  and  of  holy  action,  for  it  is  a  state  in  which  mind 
and  heart  and  will,  all  the  outgoing  powers  and  all  the  inner  being,  are  set, 
without  the  shadow  of  a  fear  or  the  chance  of  wavering,  in  one  pure  and 
everlasting  fixedness  of  devotion  to  duty  and  of  likeness  to  God. 

And  so,  faith  leads  to  freedom.  The  soul  at  one  with  God  and  inspired 
by  God  becomes  a  centre  of  force  in  the  universe,  an  originator  and  com- 
municator of  holy  influence  in  the  highest  sense  in  which  this  is  possible  to 
the  creature.  In  becoming  the  servants  of  Christ  we  become  the  Lord's 
freemen,  for  only  he  whom  the  Son  makes  free  is  free  indeed.  But  another 
use  of  our  formal  freedom  is  possible.  We  may  use  it  to  rivet  yet  more 
tightly  the  manacles  of  sense  and  sin,  so  that  escape,  from  being  difficult, 
becomes  hopeless.  We  may  make  ourselves  the  slaves  of  selfishness,  the 
sport  of  passion,  mere  waifs  upon  the  roaring  sea  of  circumstance,  mere 
passive  and  brute  tools  of  the  evil  one.  Now  for  a  time  there  is  possible  a 
turning  of  the  thoughts  to  God  and  to  the  motives  for  repentance.  But  the 
day  will  come  when  character  will  become  indurated,  when  self-interest  will 
be  of  less  account  than  hatred  to  God,  when  there  will  be  no  motives  longer 
to  which  even  God  can  appeal  in  order  to  save.  So  the  soul,  which  was 
meant  to  have  a  potency  second  only  to  God's,  becomes  impotent.  In  losing 
God  it  has  lost  itself.  It  has  used  its  remainder  of  freedom  only  to  reiterate 
and  confirm  the  first  evil  choice  of  humanity  and  to  put  real  freedom  per- 
manently beyond  its  reach.  While  the  righteous  reign  with  God,  true  lords 
and  free,  the  ungodly  are  not  so,  but  are  like  the  chaff  which  the  wind 
driveth  away,  helpless,  worthless,  outcast  forever. 

The  current  tendency  to  believe  in  a  probation  after  death  must  be  con- 
sidered as  a  historical  judgment  upon  the  erroneous  postulates  of  the  so-called 
New  England  Theology.  That  theology  is  in  its  innermost  principle  ato- 
mistic. The  race  is  nothing  —  the  individual  is  all.  Since  there  is  no  race- 
responsibility  and  no  common  guilt,  a  fair  probation  in  the  next  world  is 
demanded  in  the  case  of  those  who  have  had  no  individual  or  proper  proba- 


REMAINDERS   OF    FREEDOM    IN   MAN.  127 

tion  in  this.  *  This  method  of  reasoning  cannot  be  met  except  by  reaffirming 
the  old  truth  which  the  New  England  theology  has  denied,  namely  that  of 
a  fair  probation  of  the  whole  race  in  Adam,  and  the  universal  guilt  and 
condemnation  of  mankind  on  account  of  its  common  fall  in  him.  Whatever 
comes  to  us  in  the  way  of  opportunity  and  privilege  since  that  first  sin,  is  of 
grace,  not  of  debt.  Our  individual  probation  gives  us  more  than  a  fair 
chance.  And  since  no  man  has  a  right  to  demand  this  new  chance  at  the 
hands  of  God,  it  is  optional  with  God  to  how  many  it  shall  be  extended,  and 
how  long  it  shall  continue.  As  he  has  provided  the  redemption,  it  is  for 
him  to  settle  its  terms.  Scripture  alone  can  determine  when  the  day  of 
grace  shall  end.  And  while  Scripture  seems  to  intimate  that  in  the  judg- 
ment none  shall  be  condemned  solely  on  account  of  the  common  sin  of  the 
race  in  Adam  and  that  the  grace  of  Christ  shall  avail  to  the  salvation  of  all 
who  have  not  consciously  and  personally  transgressed,  it  seems  to  declare 
with  equal  plainness  that  the  present  is  the  last  scene  of  probation,  that 
there  is  a  law  written  on  the  heart  by  which  all  men  shall  be  tried,  that  even 
the  heathen  are  without  excuse,  and  that  after  the  opportunities  of  this 
mortal  state  are  over,  there  is  a  departure  of  each  soul  to  its  own  place, 
whether  that  be  one  of  sin  or  holiness,  of  happiness  or  misery.  Here  there 
are  motives  presented  on  either  side,  and  every  man  has  power  either  to 
resist  the  evil  and  guilty  tendencies  of  the  nature,  with  the  certainty  that 
such  struggle  will  be  aided  and  blessed  of  God,  or  to  confirm  the  sinful 
affections,  so  that  no  influences  which  God  can  consistently  use  will  avail  to 
save.  And  the  decisions  of  this  life  are  final.  Will  is  not  independent  of 
motive,  and  all  motives  to  good  must  be  furnished  by  God.  The  wicked 
are  indeed  in  the  next  world  subjected  to  suffering.  But  suffering  has  in 
itself  no  reforming  power.  Unless  accompanied  by  special  renewing  influ- 
ences of  the  Spirit  of  God  it  only  hardens  and  embitters  the  soul.  We  have 
no  Scripture  evidence  that  such  influences  of  the  Spirit  are  exerted  after 
death  upon  the  still  impenitent,  but  abundant  evidence,  on  the  contrary, 
that  the  moral  condition  in  which  death  finds  men,  is  their  condition  for- 
ever. After  death,  comes,  not  probation,  but  judgment,  and  there  is  a  great 
gulf  fixed  between  the  righteous  and  the  wicked,  which  finite  spirits  cannot 
pass,  and  which  the  grace  of  God  will  not. 

This  then  is  the  new  Calvinism  which  I  would  advocate.  It  holds  just  as 
strongly  as  the  old  to  God's  initiative  and  to  God's  sovereignty  in  regenera- 
tion. God  does  not  give  the  same  influences  to  all,  nor  to  any,  all  the 
influences  which  in  his  abstract  omnipotence  he  can.  There  are  influences 

*Dr.  G.  H.  Emerson,  a  leading  Universalist,  in  his  "Doctrine  of  Probation  Exam- 
ined" points  out  very  forcibly  this  tendency  of  the  New  England  theology.  "The 
truth,"  he  says,  "  at  once  of  ethics  and  of  Scripture,  that  sin  is  in  its  permanent  essence 
a  free  choice,  however  for  a  time  it  may  be  held  in  mechanical  combination  with  the 
notion  of  moral  opportunity  arbitrarily  closed,  can  never  mingle  with  it,  and  must  in 
the  logical  outcome  permanently  cast  it  off."  Dr.  Newman  Smyth,  in  his  introduction 
to  Dorner's  Eschatology,  suggests  that  we  must  either,  with  Julius  Mtiller,  find  a  fair 
probation  in  a  pre-existent  state,  or  else,  with  Dorner,  grant  one  after  death.  Neither 
Dr.  Emerson  nor  Dr.  Smyth  could  reach  their  conclusions,  of  Universalism  and  of  future 
probation  respectively,  if  they  seriously  held  to  the  oneness  of  the  race  and  its  common 
fall  in  Adam.  The  doctrine  of  a  fair  probation  of  mankind  at  the  beginning  is  needed 
to  prevent  the  inference  that  there  must  be  a  further  probation,  if  not  universal  salva- 
tion, in  the  world  to  come. 


128  MODIFIED   CALVINISM. 

of  his  Spirit  which  may  be  resisted.  There  are  other  influences  which  are 
sufficient  to  secure  acceptance  of  Christ,  when  without  them  men  would 
persevere  in  iniquity  and  be  lost.  God  is  not  under  bonds  to  give  any  of 
these  to  sinners,  nor  will  he  give  them,  after  the  short  summer  of  this  life  is 
past.  When  he  does  give  them  in  any  degree,  resistance  on  the  part  of  the 
sinner  involves  a  new  guilt  and  condemnation.  They  will  become  effectual 
to  no  man's  salvation,  unless  that  man  freely  yield  to  the  divine  persuasion 
and  choose  for  his  supreme  motive  the  love  of  God.  We  have  emphasized 
hitherto  the  divine  element  in  this  great  fundamental  change.  Let  us  not 
leave  men  in  ignorance  of  the  human  element  which  the  Scriptures  connect 
inseparably  with  it.  We  have  taught  that  God  works  in  us  to  will  and  to  do 
of  his  good  pleasure.  Let  us  teach  also  that  men  must  work  out  their  own 
salvation  with  fear  and  trembling.  Only  thus  will  the  Christian  learn  that 
h*e  must  by  perseverance  prove  his  faith  to  be  true.  Only  thus  will  th6  sin- 
ner learn  that  the  whole  guilt  of  his  soul's  destruction  will  rest  upon  himself. 
For  both  the  Christian  and  the  sinner  are  exhorted  to  work,  to  strive,  to 
seek.  We  are  responsible  not  only  for  all  we  can  do  ourselves,  but  for  all 
we  can  secure  from  God.  God's  work  and  man's  work  form  one  whole.  To 
ignore  God's  work  is  to  destroy  our  hope.  To  ignore  man's  work  is  to 
destroy  our  responsibility.  What  God  hath  joined  together,  let  not  man 
put  asunder. 


IX. 

THE  CHRISTIAN  MIRACLES, 

OR,  MIRACLES  AS  ATTESTING  A  DIVINE  REVELATION.* 


The  Christian  religion  claims  the  acceptance  and  obedience  of  all  men 
upon  the  ground  that  it  is  a  system  of  truth  and  duty  revealed  by  God.  It 
professes  to  give  evidence  that  it  is  from  God.  It  points  to  its  internal  char- 
actsristics  as  proof  that  it  has  come  from  God's  wisdom ;  it  points  to  its 
external  accompaniments  as  proof  that  it  has  come  from  God's  power.  By 
its  internal  characteristics  we  mean  a  supernatural  adaptation  to  human 
wants,  as  attested  by  those  who  have  really  received  it.  By  its  external 
accompaniments,  we  mean  a  series  of  supernatural  events  attending  its  orig- 
inal publication,  such  as  only  God  could  work,  and  such  as  leave  no  reason- 
able doubt  that  the  Author  of  nature  is  also  the  Author  of  the  scheme  of 
doctrine  promulgated  in  his  name. 

Among  Christian  apologists  of  the  last  quarter-century,  there  has  been  a 
tendency  to  lay  the  stress  of  argument  upon  the  internal  evidences.  Much 
has  been  done  to  show  the  supernatural  character  of  the  Scripture  teaching. 
The  unity  of  revelation,  the  superiority  of  the  New  Testament  system  of 
morality,  the  conception  of  Christ's  person  and  character  presented  there, 
the  witness  of  Jesus  to  his  own  divinity  and  lordship,  have  all  been  adduced 
as  proving  its  divine  origin.  Bnt  while  we  gratefully  accept  the  results  of 
these  recent  studies  of  the  book  itself,  we  must  still  record  our  belief  that 
the  internal  evidence  of  Christianity  is  necessarily  secondary  and  supple- 
mentary. Of  itsslf  and  by  itself,  it  is  insufficient  to  substantiate  the  divine 
authority  of  the  Christian  system. 

For  in  the  Christian  system  we  include  more  than  the  New  Testament 
morality  ;  we  include  all  that  teaching  with  regard  to  the  divine  nature  and 
methods  of  dealing,  in  view  of  which  we  speak  of  Trinity,  Incarnation, 
Atonement,  Regeneration,  Judgment,  Immortality.  Internal  evidence  might 
possibly  suffice  to  secure  acceptance  of  the  Christian  morality,  for  reason 
can  recognize  its  sublime  elevation  ;  but  the  doctrines  which  chiefly  make 
the  Bible  what  it  is  —  a  revelation  of  supernatural  and  saving  truth  —  are  all 
beyond  the  power  of  reason  to  discover,  or  even  to  demonstrate,  after  they 
have  been  made  known.  "  Of  what  use,"  says  Lessing,  "  would  be  a  revela- 
tion that  revealed  nothing  ?  "  But  if  the  Scriptures  be  in  any  proper  sense 
a  revelation,  an  unveiling  of  truth,  which  isab<>ve  and  beyond  our  natural 
powers,  it  is  necessary  that  they  be  accompanied  by  some  external  proof 


*  An  Essny  read  before  the  Baptist  Pastors' Conference  of  the  State  of  New  York, 
IMughamton,  Oct.  23,  1878,  and  printed  iu  the  Baptist  Review,  April,  1879. 

9  129 


130  THE    CHRISTIAN    MIRACLES,    OR, 

that  they  are  from  God  ;  else  the  very  greatness  of  the  truth  may  only  per- 
plex and  affront  us. 

It  has  been  suggested,  indeed,  that  God's  testimony  to  the  truth  of  a  reve- 
lation might  be  given  not  externally,  but  internally,  by  direct  action  of  hia 
spirit  upon  the  mind,  and  that  for  this  reason  any  external  certification  by 
miracles  must  be  regarded  as  unnecessary.  But  can  we  be  sure  that  the 
method  of  internal  certification  is  the  preferable  one  ?  It  labors  under  cer- 
tain manifest  disadvantages.  It  cannot  in  the  nature  of  the  case  furnish  so 
clear  an  evidence  of  its  divine  authorship.  Ifeing  internal,  how  can  it  be 
known  that  it  comes  from  a  God  external  to  the  soul  ?  What  is  needed  is 
absolute  certainty  on  the  part  of  the  recipient  that  the  communication  is 
from  such  a  God,  and  that  the  truth  communicated  is  not  subjective,  but 
independent  of  the  mind's  consciousness  of  it.  But  it  is  essential  to  inward 
communications  that  to  the  person  receiving  them  they  appear,  at  least  in 
the  beginning,  as  original  discoveries  of  his  own.  Only  by  reflection  can  it 
be  determined  that  they  come  from  without,  not  from  within,  and,  in  the  case 
of  doctrines  or  commands  that  stagger  the  reason,  some  other  assurance  than 
mere  logic  can  give  is  absolutely  needed  to  convince  the  recipient  that  these 
seeming  communications  from  God  are  not  the  vagaries  of  his  own  brain. 
Thus  we  very  naturally  find  Gideon  begging  for  an  outward  sign  that  he  is 
not  self-deceived.  Even  in  the  case  of  the  original  recipient  of  a  revelation, 
outward  certification  seems  to  confer  an  important  advantage.  But  what  is- 
an  advantage  to  the  person  to  whom  the  revelation  is  first  communicated,  is 
an  absolute  necessity  to  the  multitude  to  whom  he  proclaims  his  message. 
If  his  possession  of  new  ideas  of  doctrine  and  duty  is  not  proof  even  to  him- 
self that  these  ideas  are  true,  much  less  is  it  proof  to  others.  Without  some 
external  sign  that  God  has  sent  him,  his  mere  declaration  of  the  fact  is  utterly 
untrustworthy.  As  a  communicator  of  new  truth,  of  which  reason  is  incom- 
petent to  judge,  he  needs  and  he  must  have  divine  credentials  before  his 
word  can  bind  the  moral  action  of  men.  Is  it  said  that  God  can  make  the 
same  revelation  at  the  same  moment  inwardly  to  the  mind  of  each  separate 
individual  of  the  race  ?  Granting  this  to  be  true,  as  an  abstract  proposition, 
is  it  not  manifest  that  the  methods  of  God's  working  are  actually  different 
from  this  ?  Great  secular  truths  are  first  made  the  possession  of  some  favored 
nation,  and  of  some  favored  individual  in  that  nation,  in  order  that  through 
the  individual  they  may  *be  imparted  to  the  nation,  and  through  the  nation 
to  mankind.  So  we  may  expect  religious  truths  to  be  directly  communi- 
cated by  God,  not  to  all,  but  to  single  members  of  the  race,  and  then  indi- 
rectly through  their  voice  and  testimony  to  the  world.  There  is  economy 
in  the  use  of  natural  force  ;  shall  there  not  be  also  economy  of  the  super- 
natural ?  Shall  we  have  exertions  of  supernatural  power  by  the  thousand 
million,  in  the  internal  life  of  all  of  earth's  inhabitants,  in  order  to  communi- 
cate the  divine  ideas  ?  And  then,  shall  these  be  supplemented  by  miracles 
wrought  in  the  case  of  each,  to  convince  each  that  the  original  communica- 
tion is  from  God  ?  Surely  in  place  of  a  scheme  of  internal  certification  which 
requires  for  its  execution  such  a  multitude  of  supernatural  acts,  we  may  well 
prefer  the  plan  of  external  certification  which  requires  but  few.  If  one  act 
of  divine  certification  will  answer  the  purpose,  we  may  believe  that  God  will 
not  employ  a  million.  But  a  million  are  needed  if  internal  evidence  alone 


MIIIACLES    AS   ATTESTING    REVELATION.  131 

is  admissible,  while  upon  a  plan  which  admits  external  evidence,  we  need 
but  a  single  one.  In  condescension  to  human  weakness,  God  may  give  us 
more,  yet  it  still  remains  true  that  a  single  miracle  like  that  of  Christ's  resur- 
rection may  substantiate  the  divine  authority  of  all  his  claims  and  teachings, 
and  bear  upon  its  Atlantean  shoulders  the  weight  of  Christianity  itself. 

Nor  is  the  defense  of  the  Christian  miracles  an  optional  matter  with  those 
who  accept  the  internal  evidences.  For  the  internal  and  the  external  are  so 
inextricably  interwoven,  that  loss  of  faith  in  the  one  involves  loss  of  faith  in 
the  other.  However  impressive  the  doctrine  of  Scripture  may  be,  if  it  be 
accompanied  by  falsehood  in  matters  of  fact,  it  is  proved  thereby  to  have 
not  a  divine  but  a  human  origin.  But  facts  are  not  merely  accompaniments 
here  —  they  are  the  centre  and  core  of  its  teaching.  Its  main  doctrines 
claim  to  be  facts  as  well  as  doctrines,  and  to  be  doctrines  only  because  they 
are  facts.  The  incarnation  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ  are  valuable  for 
purposes  of  doctrine,  only  as  they  are  first  allowed  to  be  facts  of  history. 
But  such  facts  as  these  are  miracles.  And  therefore  Christianity  stands  or 
falls  with  its  miracles.  As  a  scheme  of  faith  and  a  method  of  salvation  it 
has  no  claim  upon  us,  unless  the  supernatural  facts  which  constitute  its 
essence,  and  by  which  it  declares  itself  attested,  were  historical  realities.  If 
Jesus  did  not  take  human  flesh  in  other  than  the  common  method  of  natural 
generation,  if  he  did  not  do  works  beyond  all  human  or  natural  powers  to 
accomplish ,  above  all,  if  he  did  not  rise  from  the  dead,  he  is  a  proved  impos- 
tor, his  claim  to  be  a  teacher  commissioned  by  God  is  falsified,  and  Christi- 
anity, as  a  system  divinely  authoritative  and  obligatory,  exists  no  longer. 

While  we  urge,  however,  the  primary  importance  of  these  external  evi- 
dences of  our  religion,  we  would  never  sunder  them  from  the  internal. 
There  is  something  of  truth  in  the  maxim  of  Pascal,  that  the  miracles  prove 
the  doctrine  and  the  doctrine  proves  the  miracles.  The  two  go  together. 
Miracles  do  not  stand  alone  as  evidences.  Power  alone  cannot  prove  a 
divine  commission.  Purity  of  life  and  doctrine  must  go  with  the  miracles 
to  assure  us  that  a  religious  teacher  has  come  from  God.  The  miracles  and 
the  doctrine  mutually  supplement  each  other  and  form  parts  of  one  whole. 
The  absence  of  either  would  throw  suspicion  upon  the  teacher  who  failed  to 
produce  it.  In  the  case  of  apparently  supernatural  works  wrought  by  a 
teacher  of  flagrant  immorality,  any  explanation  would  be  preferable  to  hold- 
ing that  they  were  wrought  by  God.  We  are  even  willing  to  grant  that  over 
certain  minds  and  certain  ages  the  internal  evidence  may  have  greater  power 
than  the  external.  It  is  probable  that  men  in  the  present  generation  are 
more  frequently  led  from  faith  in  the  transforming  efficacy  of  the  Christian 
religion  to  faith  in  its  outward  facts,  than  through  the  reverse  process.  Still 
we  must  not  be  blinded  to  the  fact  that  the  order  of  chronological  apprehen- 
sion is  not  necessarily  the  order  of  logical  connection  and  dependence.  The 
internal  evidences  have  power  to  convince,  only  because  the  external  facts 
are  assumed  to  be  worthy  of  confidence ;  they  lose  all  independent  value 
so  soon  as  the  external  facts  are  found  to  be  without  historical  foundation. 
While  therefore  we  claim  other  evidence  than  that  of  miracles,  we  hold  that 
this  is  logically  the  prior  and  the  more  important.  It  has  been  well  said  that  a 
supernatural  fact  is  the  proper  proof  of  a  supernatural  doctrine,  but  a  super- 
natural doctrine  is  not  the  proper  proof  of  a  supernatural  fact. 


132  THE   CHRISTIAN   MIRACLES,    OR, 

Nor  do  we,  with  these  explanations,  regard  the  Christian  miracles  as  a 
burden  rather  than  a  support.  To  the  beginner  in  geometry  the  first  prop- 
osition is  a  burden  until  he  has  mastered  it ;  then  it  becomes  the  firm  basis 
and  foundation  of  the  second.  So  we  hold  that  the  possibility  and  proba- 
bility of  miracles  may  be  proved  to  the  candid  mind,  and  that  the  Christian 
miracles  may  be  shown  to  be  not  incredible,  but  on  the  other  hand  to  rest 
upon  evidence  sufficient  to  warrant  rational  conviction  of  their  historical 
reality.  So  much  having  been  done,  the  miracles  will  take  their  place  as 
solid  substructions  of  the  edifice  of  doctrine  ;  we  shall  walk  the  upper  floors 
with  confidence  because  we  know  the  foundation  is  secure.  We  are  per- 
suaded that  the  very  prevalent  suspicion  of  the  miraculous  which  so  fre- 
quently prevents  the  acceptance  of  Christianity  and  prejudices  even  the 
examination  of  its  records,  ought  to  vanish  before  a  reconsideration  and 
restatement  of  the  doctrine  of  miracles.  That  miracles  have  been  in  the 
least  discredited  is  doubtless  due  in  some  degree  to  the  partial  view  of  the 
universe  which  modern  physical  science  has  given  us.  But  other  science 
has  made  progress  likewise.  The  sciences  of  mind  and  of  morals  have  right 
to  be  heard  also.  We  are  persuaded  that  one  who  embraces  these  as  well 
as  the  science  of  matter  in  his  scheme  of  knowledge,  and  who  regards  nature 
and  the  supernatural  together  as  constituting  the  one  system  of  God,  ought 
to  find  no  serious  difficulty,  either  intellectual  or  practical,  in  the  acceptance 
of  the  Christian  miracles. 

But;  not  to  anticipate,  let  us  define  at  once  what  we  mean  by  a  miracle. 
We  mean  an  event  in  nature,  so  extraordinary  in  itself,  and  so  coinciding 
with  the  prophecy  or  command  of  a  religious  teacher  or  leader,  as  fully  to 
warrant  the  conviction  on  the  part  of  those  who  witness  it  that  God  has 
wrought  it  with  the  design  of  certifying  that  this  teacher  or  leader  is  com- 
missioned by  him.  Here  are  several  elements,  which,  for  the  sake  of  dis- 
tinctness, it  may  be  well  to  state  separately.  A  miracle,  then,  is  am  event  in 
nature.  By  nature  we  mean  what  is  not  God  and  what  is  not  made  in  the 
image  of  God  —  in  other  words,  the  physical  world.  The  realm  of  mind  and 
will,  inasmuch  as  this  is  free  and  not  embraced  in  the  chain  of  physical 
causation,  is  not  a  part  of  nature,  but  belongs  to  the  supernatural.  Regen- 
eration, therefore,  as  a  spiritual  work  of  God,  does  not  occur  in  the  realm 
of  nature,  and  is  not  a  miracle.  A  miracle  is  an  event  that  can  be  witnessed. 
There  is  something  in  it  that  is  palpable  to  the  senses.  In  the  restoration 
of  sight  to  the  blind,  though  the  method  of  the  wonder  is  not  manifest,  the 
change  from  blindness  to  sight  is  visible.  In  resurrection  of  the  dead, 
although  the  reentrauce  of  the  spirit  into  its  mortal  tenement  is  not  matter 
of  observation,  the  fact  that  the  man  was  dead,  and  that  now  he  lives  again, 
is  patent  to  all.  But  creation  is  not  a  miracle,  because,  among  other  rea- 
sons, there  was  no  eye  to  witness  it. 

Again,  the  miracle  is  an  extraordinary  event  in  nature.  It  cannot  be 
explained  as  part  of  a  series  of  regularly  recurring  sequences.  It  falls  under 
no  law  of  nature  in  the  sense  of  being  referable  to  any  order  of  known  facts. 
It  is  exceptional,  unique.  If  there  be  any  law  that  regulates  its  occurrence, 
it  is  not  a  law  which  otherwise  manifests  itself  in  the  present  system  of  the 
physical  universe.  And  yet  the  apparent  want  of  connection  with  the  pres- 
ent physical  order  is  not  so  remarkable  as  the  actual  connection  with  another 


MIRACLES    AS    ATTESTING    REVELATION.  133 

and  higher  domain  —  that  of  intelligence  and  will.  For  the  mere  description 
of  the  unique  physical  event  does  not  complete  the  account  of  the  miracle, 
else  the  falling  of  a  meteoric  stone  might  be  a  miracle.  The  miracle  is  a 
combination  of  two  things  —  an  extraordinary  occurrence  in  nature,  and  the 
coinciding  prophecy  or  command  of  a  religious  teacher. 

Still  further,  in  the  case  of  the  miracle,  the  extraordinariness  of  the  event 
and  the  prediction  or  command  of  the  messenger  are  so  connected,  that  our 
intuition  of  design  leaves  us  no  alternative  but  to  infer  that  God  is  the  author 
of  the  coincidence,  and  that,  with  the  purpose  of  giving  evidence  that  the 
messenger  has  been  sent  by  him.  Here  we  see  the  difference  between  mir- 
acle and  special  providence.  In  the  latter  the  connection  of  the  event  with 
the  religious  purpose  to  be  served  thereby  is  not  so  close  as  to  render  an 
opposite  explanation  impossible.  Some  warrant  is  furnished  for  believing 
it  designed  for  a  particular  religious  end,  but  not  what  may  be  called  full 
warrant.  With  the  miracle  it  is  otherwise.  When  Christ  appeals  to  his 
works  as  evidences  that  the  Father  has  sent  him,  and  declares  that,  in  still 
further  testimony  to  this  fact,  he  will  rise  from  the  dead  on  the  third  day, 
the  believer  in  his  resurrection  must  also  be  a  believer  in  his  commission 
from  God,  or  else  hold  that  God  could  and  did  work  a  miracle  in  support  of 
falsehood.  So  inevitable  is  such  a  conclusion,  that  we  find  even  Spinoza 
declaring  that  he  would  break  his  system  in  pieces  and  embrace  without 
reluctance  the  ordinary  faith  of  Christians,  if  he  could  once  be  persuaded 
of  the  resurrection  of  Lazarus  from  the  dead. 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  our  definition  we  take  no  ground  with  regard 
to  that  much  disputed  question  whether  the  miracle  be  a  suspension  or  vio- 
lation of  natural  law,  nor  with  regard  to  that  other  question  as  vigorously 
pressed  of  late,  whether  the  miracle  absolutely  dispenses  with  all  physical 
means  and  antecedents,  and  is  the  result  simply  of  an  immediate  volition  of 
God.  It  is  our  belief  that  the  Christian  miracles  might  be  successfully 
defended,  even  if  both  these  questions  were  answered  in  the  affirmative. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  our  belief  also,  that  Christian  apologists  have 
here  allowed  themselves  too  frequently  to  fight  their  battle  upon  ground 
chosen  by  their  enemies.  It  was  Hume  who  first  stigmatized  the  miracle  as 
a  violation  or  suspension  of  natural  law,  and  the  transgression  of  the  order 
which  God  had  himself  appointed  was  declared  to  be  the  greatest  of  absurd- 
ities and  enormities.  But  Scripture  gives  no  sign  that  the  miracle  is  thus 
conceived  of  by  those  who  wrote  it,  nor  is  there  the  slightest  necessity  that 
we  should  accept  Hume's  assumption  as  to  the  method  in  which  God  must 
work,  if  he  work  at  all.  Again,  it  is  too  often  taken  for  granted  that  mir- 
acle is  equivalent  to  divine  fiat,  reaching  its  goal  with  absolute  exclusion  of 
natural  means.  But  Scripture  compels  us  to  no  such  view.  On  the  other 
hand  it  points  to  the  East  wind  as  the  means  by  which  the  Red  Sea  was 
parted  at  the  Exodus  and  leaves  it  not  improbable  that  the  sinking  of  a  con- 
siderable area  in  Western  Asia  was  the  physical  cause  of  the  deluge,  and  a 
simoom  of  the  desert  the  physical  cause  of  the  destruction  of  the  host  of 
Sennacherib.  What  was  God's  method  here  —  what  was  his  method  in  the 
working  of  any  particular  miracle,  we  do  not  know.  We  would  have  it  dis- 
tinctly understood  that  we  do  not  have  and  that  we  do  not  think  it  necessary 
to  have,  any  particular  theory  as  to  the  method  of  them.  But  when  the 


134  THE    CHRISTIAN"    MIRACLES,    OR, 

opponents  of  the  Christian  miracles  first  identify  our  doctrine  with  their 
preconceived  notions  of  it,  and  then  triumph  because  they  have,  in  their 
own  estimation,  proved  those  notions  to  be  absurd,  it  is  time  for  us  to  show 
that  other  conceptions  are  at  least  possible. 

Miracles,  we  claim,  may  be  wrought  by  God,  while  yet  no  physical  law  is 
suspended  or  violated.  To  sustain  this  proposition  it  is  only '  necessary  to 
refer  to  facts  within  the  range  of  our  common  experience.  We  know  that 
lower  forces  and  laws  in  nature  are  counteracted  and  transcended  by  the 
higher,  while  yet  these  lower  forces  and  laws  are  not  suspended  or  annihi- 
lated, but  are  merged  in  the  higher  and  made  to  assist  in  accomplishing 
results  to  which  they  are  altogether  unequal  when  left  to  themselves.  Imag- 
ine, for  example,  that  no  forces  or  laws  were  in  operation  except  the  purely 
mechanical  ones,  such  as  gravitation  and  cohesion.  In  such  a  merely  mechan- 
ical creation,  let  the  reaction  of  carbonate  of  lime  and  sulphuric  acid  for  the 
first  time  occur.  Here  is  disintegration  and  effervescence,  such  as  no  merely 
mechanical  law  can  explain.  And  why  ?  Because  a  new  force  of  a  higher  sort 
has  begun  to  act,  namely,  a  chemical  force.  This  accomplishes  what  gravita- 
tion and  cohesion  never  could.  It  counteracts  these  tendencies  to  knit 
together,  while  it  transcends  them.  But  no  one  will  maintain  that  the  laws 
of  gravitation  and  cohesion  are  annihilated  or  suspended  or  violated  in  the 
least  degree.  They  are  still  active  and  operative,  and  influence  to  a  consid- 
erable extent  the  disposition  of  the  material  particles  under  the  action  of 
the  higher  force.  And  yet,  to  the  merely  mechanical  creation,  this  same 
reaction  of  carbonate  of  lime  and  sulphuric  acid  is  a  chemical  miracle. 

Again,  imagine  a  world  where  as  yet  no  forces  or  laws  exist  except  the 
mechanical  and  chemical.  In  such  a  world  let  a  seed-corn  be  planted  and 
begin  to  grow.  Here  is  a  new  force  that  abstracts  from  the  soil  and  bears 
aloft  to  every  portion  of  the  organism  the  moisture  and  nutriment  suited  to 
its  needs.  Mechanical  laws,  such  as  gravitation  and  cohesion,  may  say  nay  ; 
but  they  are  obliged  to  yield,  and  even  to  help  the  growing  structure  and 
make  it  strong.  Here  is  a  new  force  that  conquers  chemistry  also,  and 
presses  it  into  service  ;  for  every  leaf  performs  the  wonderful  feat  which  man 
accomplishes  only  with  long  art  and  imposing  mechanism — the  feat  of  decom- 
posing carbonic  acid,  taking  the  carbon  for  food  and  throwing  the  oxygen 
away  —  yet  performs  it  so  quietly  that  the  leaf  is  not  even  stirred  by  the 
process.  To  the  merely  mechanical  and  chemical  creation  this  vegetable 
transformation  is  a  vital  miracle.  The  new  force  does  what  gravitation  and 
chemistry  never  could,  to  the  end  of  time.  But  is  any  mechanical  or  chem- 
ical law  annihilated,  suspended,  or  violated  ?  By  no  means.  Both  sorts  of 
law  are  operative  all  the  time.  Partly  because  they  are  operative,  does  the 
plant  preserve  its  balance,  maintain  its  strength,  secure  its  proper  sustenance. 

These  are  instances  drawn  from  nature  only.  But  we  know  equally  well 
that  an  event  in  nature  may  be  caused  by  an  agent  outside  of  and  above 
nature.  The  human  will  can  act  upon  nature  and  can  produce  results  which 
nature  left  to  herself  never  could  accomplish,  while  yet  no  law  of  nature  is 
suspended  or  violated.  To  put  this  in  a  clear  light,  let  me  remind  you  of 
the  German  philosopher  Fichte's  illustration  of  the  unchangeableness  of 
natural  sequences.  He  bids  us  imagine  a  pebble  swept  on  to  a  high  place 
upon  the  beach,  by  the  strongest  wave  of  a  stormy  day,  and  then  speculates 


MIRACLES   AS    ATTESTING    REVELATION".  135 

upon  the  changes  in  nature  which  would  have  been  requisite  to  land  the 
pebble  one  foot  further  upon  the  sand.  The  wave  must  have  been  of  greater 
volume,  the  wind  that  drove  it  of  greater  force.  The  preceding  state  of  the 
atmosphere  by  which  the  wind  was  occasioned,  and  its  degree  of  strength 
determined,  must  have  been  different  from  what  it  actually  was,  and  the 
previous  changes  which  gave  rise  to  this  particular  weather  must  have  been 
different  also.  We  must  suppose  a  different  temperature  from  that  which 
actually  existed,  and  a  different  constitution  of  the  bodies  which  influenced 
that  temperature,  not  only  in  distant  Africa  where  the  wind  took  its  rise,  but 
in  every  other  country  of  the  globe.  In  short,  the  philosopher  must  sup- 
pose a  different  make-up  of  the  whole  system  of  things  from  the  beginning, 
in  order  that  a  single  pebble  might  lie  in  a  different  place.  So  he  argues 
the  impossibility  of  any  modification  in  the  existing  condition  of  material 
agents,  unless  through  the  invariable  operation  of  a  series  of  eternally 
impressed  consequences  following  in  some  necessary  chain  of  orderly  con- 
nection. 

But  Mansel  suggests  the  answer  to  Fichte.  The  answer  is  as  follows: 
Let  us  make  one  alteration  in  the  circumstances  supposed.  Let  us  imagine 
that,  after  the  winds  and  waves  have  done  their  utmost,  I  go  down  to  the 
beach,  and,  lifting  the  pebble  from  its  place,  I  deposit  it  a  foot  further  up 
upon  the  sand.  Is  the  student  of  physical  science  prepared  to  enumerate  a 
similar  chain  of  material  antecedents  which  must  have  been  other  than  they 
were,  before  I  could  have  chosen  to  deposit  the  pebble  on  any  other  spot 
than  that  on  which  it  is  now  lying?  In  other  words,  is  human  thought  and 
will  determined  in  its  sequences  and  conclusions  by  natural  laws  ?  No  one 
except  the  fatalist  will  say  this.  We  know,  on  the  contrary,  that  while 
nature's  laws  are  rigid,  there  is  a  power  superior  to  these  laws,  and  exempt 
from  their  control,  namely,  the  power  of  the  personal  will,  and  that  in  the 
will  of  man  we  have  an  instance  of  an  efficient  cause  in  the  highest  sense  of 
that  term,  acting  among  and  along  with  the  physical  causes  of  the  material 
world,  and  producing  results  which  would  not  have  been  brought  about  by 
any  invariable  sequence  of  physical  causes  left  to  their  own  action.  We 
have  evidence,  in  fine,  of  an  elasticity  in  the  constitution  of  nature,  which  per- 
mits the  influence  of  human  power  on  the  phenomena  of  the  world  to  be 
exercised  or  suspended  at  will,  without  affecting  in  the  least  the  stability  of 
the  great  system  of  things.  If  I  throw  a  stone  into  the  air,  its  fall  is  deter- 
mined by  natural  laws,  but  can  any  man  say  that  my  throwing  it  was  the 
mere  result  of  natural  laws  ?  Nay,  my  free  will  —  something  above  nature  — 
has  done  it,  nor  has  any  law  of  nature  been  violated  thereby. 

An  additional  illustration  will  enable  us  to  apply  this  principle  to  the  sub- 
ject in  hand.  Suppose  I  stand  by  the  side  of  a  swiftly  running  stream  and 
hold  a  heavy  piece  of  iron  upon  my  flat,  extended  palm,  in  such  a  wlay  that 
my  hand  is  submerged  and  the  top  of  the  iron  is  just  visible  above  the  sur- 
face of  the  water.  Why  does  not  the  iron  sink  ?  Because  my  hand  is  under- 
neath it.  Is  the  law  of  gravitation  suspended  ?  No,  nothing  but  the  axe  is 
suspended.  How  do  I  know  that  gravitation  still  operates  ?  Because  the 
axe  has  weight.  I  hold  it  steadily  in  its  place  only  by  effort.  If  gravitation 
were  not  acting,  the  axe  would  be  swept  away  like  a  straw  by  the  rapid  cur- 
rent. I  have  counteracted  the  working  of  gravitation  ;  I  have  pressed  it 


136  THE    CHRISTIAN    MIRACLES,    OR, 

into  my  service,  and  compelled  it  to  do  what  left  to  itself  it  never  would,, 
namely,  keep  a  piece  of  iron  immovable  at  the  surface  of  the  water  ;  I  have 
transcended  the  powers  of  natural  law  by  bringing  in  a  new  force,  namely, 
the  force  of  my  own  personal  will.  From  the  point  of  view  of  mere  physical 
nature,  here  is  a  miracle  of  will.  Yet  no  law  of  nature  is  annihilated,  sus- 
pended, or  violated.  And  now,  if  man  can  do  as  much  as  this,  cannot  God 
do  the  same,  and,  by  putting  his  hand  beneath  the  iron,  make  the  axe  to 
swim  at  the  prophet's  word? 

But  it  is  urged  that  the  analogy  is  far  from  complete,  for  the  reason  that 
man's  body  at  least  is  a  part  of  nature,  and  that  here  is  a  use  of  means.  The 
hand  is  put  underneath  the  axe.  But  God  has  no  hands.  We  reply  that 
before  man  puts  his  hand  under  the  axe,  he  must  move  his  hand.  And  in 
moving  his  hand,  his  will  comes  directly  in  contact  with  his  own  physical 
organism.  We  do  not  know  how  spirit  operates  upon  matter,  but  we  do 
know  that  in  the  human  body  this  operation  is  a,  fact.  Every  time  I  lift  my 
arm,  I  know  that  I  rule  matter  and  compel  it  to  serve  me.  I  do  this  freely,  and 
no  law  is  violated  or  suspended  therein.  With  this  constant  proof  before  me, 
that  spirit  can  act  directly  upon  matter,  I  must  surely  believe  that  the  Spirit 
that  is  everywhere  present  can  act  directly  upon  matter.  And  this  we  can 
maintain  without  holding  that  God  is  confined  to  the  universe,  and  finds  in  it 
his  sensorium  ;  that  he  is  in  nature  does  not  prove  that  he  is  not  also  above 
nature.  What  the  human  will,  considered  as  a  supernatural  force,  and  what  the 
chemical  and  vital  forces  of  nature  itself,  are  demonstrably  able  to  accomplish, 
cannot  be  regarded  as  beyond  the  power  of  God,  so  long  as  God  dwells  in 
and  controls  the  universe.  In  other  words,  if  a  God  be  possible,  then  mir- 
acles are  possible.  The  same  God  who  created  the  second  causes  that  exist 
in  nature,  can  supplement  their  action  when  it  pleases  him.  It  is  no  more 
impossible  for  him  to  multiply  the  five  loaves  so  that  they  feed  five  thousand, 
than  to  multiply  the  handful  of  wheat  in  the  earth  so  that  it  produces  the 
harvest.  He  who  provides  remedial  agents  for  the  diseases  of  the  body,  can 
dispense  with  these  agents,  and  can  heal  diseases  by  his  word.  He  who 
gives  life  at  the  beginning,  can  say  :  "  Lazarus,  come  forth  !  "  Being  more 
directly  in  contact  with  nature  than  is  the  human  will  with  its  physical  organ- 
ism, he  can  produce  new  results  in  nature.  The  impossibility  of  the  miracle 
can  be  maintained  only  upon  principles  either  of  Atheism  or  of  Pantheism — 
either  upon  the  ground  that  there  is  no  God,  or  that  there  is  no  God  except 
the  God  that  is  immanent  in  nature,  a  God  without  consciousness,  freedom, 
or  holiness,  a  God  identical  with  the  universe  itself. 

A  second  question  was  proposed,  this  namely  :  Does  the  miracle,  so  far  as 
it  is  a  merely  physical  fact,  necessarily  involve  an  immediate  volition  of  God 
at  the  time  of  its  occurrence  ?  It  has  been  intimated  that  there  are  certain 
of  the  extraordinary  events  of  Scripture  which  seem  capable  of  explanation 
without  this  hypothesis.  The  wonders  of  the  Bed  Sea,  of  the  deluge,  of 
Sennacherib's  destruction,  were  such.  If  these  were  miracles,  the  immediate 
act  of  God  may  have  been  simply  the  communication  to  the  prophet  of  such 
knowledge  of  the  event,  that  he  was  enabled  to  foretell  or  command  in  virtue 
of  that  communication.  Archbishop  Trench  has  proposed  to  set  such 
instances  as  these  by  themselves  and  call  them  "providential  miracles,"  thus^ 
intimating  that  the  wonder  of  them  consisted,  not  in  immediate  intervention 


MIRACLES   AS   ATTESTING    REVELATION.  137 

or  change  in  the  order  of  nature,  but  in  the  providential  arrangement  of  the 
event  and  of  the  prophecy,  so  that  they  coincided  with  one  another,  and 
together  gave  evidence  of  the  divine  commission  of  the  prophet  who  fore- 
told or  commanded  them.  The  outward  event  may  be  part  of  a  chain  of 
physical  antecedents  and  consequents,  the  remarkable  and  exceptional  result 
of  merely  natural  causes,  yet  in  its  connection  with  the  prophetic  word  it 
may  be  a  visible  token  from  God.  Let  us  again  remind  ourselves  of  the 
definition  of  a  miracle.  A  miracle  is  not  simply  an  extraordinary  physical 
event,  but  an  extraordinary  physical  event  in  peculiar  connection  with  the 
word  of  a  religious  teacher  or  leader.  Even  if  we  should  grant,  therefore, 
that  no  divine  volition  goes  to  the  production  of  the  physical  event  except 
what  goes  to  the  production  of  any  other  event  in  nature,  still  we  need 
not  deny  the  direct  agency  of  God  in  the  prophetic  announcement  with 
which  this  event  was  accompanied.  The  immediate  volition  would  simply 
be  relegated  to  the  mental  and  spiritual  world  and  find  its  sphere  of  working 
there.  Even  if  all  miracles  should  be  explained  in  this  way,  we  should  not 
lose  the  evidence  of  the  divine  presence  and  working  in  the  miracle  as  a 
whole.  The  prophet's  knowledge  would  prove  God  to  be  with  him,  and 
would  completely  substantiate  his  claims. 

This  theory  of  the  miracle  was  broached  by  Babbage,  in  his  celebrated 
Bridgewater  Treatise.  Babbage,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  the  inventor 
of  the  great  calculating  machine  to  whose  construction  Parliament  made  so 
large  appropriations.  In  his  treatise,  he  illustrates  his  view  of  the  miracle 
by  the  working  of  his  arithmetical  engine.  It  was  so  constructed  that  upon 
setting  it  in  motion,  the  regular  series  of  whole  numbers  presented  them- 
selves at  an  aperture  in  the  front  of  the  machine, —  one,  two,  three,  four, 
and  so  on  to  ten,  eleven,  twelve,  each  successive  number  consisting  of  the 
last  preceding  with  the  addition  of  a  single  unit,  till  the  hundreds,  thous- 
ands, tens  of  thousands,  hundreds  of  thousands,  millions  were  reached. — 
After  observing  this  uniform  sequence  for  days  and  weeks  together,  the 
spectator  might  not  unnaturally  conclude  that  succession  by  regular  addi- 
tions of  one  was  the  law  of  the  machine.  But  lo  !  after  the  number  ten 
million  is  reached,  there  is  a  sudden  leap.  We  have  not  ten  million  and 
one,  but  100,000,000,  and  thereafter  the  machine  reverts  to  its  former  law 
of  succession.  Suppose  now  that  the  maker  declares  the  provision  for  this 
sudden  leap  to  have  been  made  in  the  original  construction  of  the  machine 
—  suppose  him  to  foretell  the  change  just  before  its  occurrence.  Do  you 
esteem  his  skill  greater,  or  less,  than  you  would  esteem  it,  if  he  should 
directly  cause  the  change  by  touching  a  secret  spring  before  your  eyes  ? 
Evidently  the  proof  of  skill  would  be  the  greater,  the  more  clearly  it  could 
be  shown  that  the  final  result  was  all  provided  for  in  the  original  making. 
So,  says  Mr.  Babbage,  the  universe  may  be  a  vast  machine.  It  may  be 
constructed  in  such  a  way  that  the  general  law  of  it  shall  be  uniform  phe- 
nomena, but  with  special  provision  for  isolated  events  which  this  general 
law  is  insufficient  to  explain.  The  regular  sequences  of  nature  are  the  suc- 
cessive appearances  of  the  integral  numbers.  Miracles  are  the  sudden  leaps 
from  ten  millions  to  a  hundred  millions.  But  both  the  regular  sequences 
and  the  sudden  leaps  were  all  ordained  at  the  beginning,  the  only  differ- 
ence between  them  being  that  the  former  occur  according  to  known  law, 


138  THE    CHRISTIAN    MIRACLES,    OR, 

while  the  latter  reveal  a  law  unknown  except  to  the  Contriver  of  the 
system. 

Now,  to  such  a  view  of  miracles  as  this,  we  would  not  oppose  a  direct  and 
universal  negative.  Certain  of  the  Scripture  miracles  may  be  harmonized 
with  this  view.  That  miracles  are  called  "wonders,"  "signs,"  "works," 
"powers,"  "new  things,"  "  wrought  by  the  finger  of  God,"  does  not  dis- 
prove the  theory,  for  God  is  said  to  work  all  things.  "My  Father  worketh 
hitherto  and  I  work,"  said  Christ,  though  here  he  spoke  of  his  perpetual 
upholding  of  nature  and  government  of  history.  The  miracles  might  be 
"  works  of  God  "  par  excellence,  simply  because  they  waken  in  men's  minds 
more  distinctly  the  thought  of  the  divine  Being  who  is  always  present  and 
always  active  whether  men  recognize  him  or  not.  Miracles  on  this  view 
would  be  "unusual, while  natural  law  is  habitual,  divine  action.  The  natural 
is  itself  only  a  prolonged,  and  so  unnoticed,  supernatural. "  We  could  readily 
grant  that  that  man  was  a  believer  in  miracles  who  held  this  theory,  provided 
he  also  held  to  a  supernatural  communication  from  God  as  coincident  with 
it.  Perhaps  we  cannot  even  demonstrate  that  this  conception  of  the  miracle 
is  incorrect.  At  the  same  time  we  prefer  the  view  which  holds  to  immediate 
divine  operation  in  the  realm  of  nature  as  well  as  in  the  realm  of  mind,  and 
that  because  of  its  greater  fitness  to  accomplish  the  object  aimed  at  in  the 
miracle.  That  object  is  the  giving  of  a  sign.  What  is  needed  is  the  most 
indubitable  proof  of  the  divine  intent  to  attest  the  commission  of  the  person 
in  connection  with  whose  prediction  or  command  the  work  is  wrought.  It 
is  probable  that  the  miracle,  if  wrought  at  all,  will  be  so  wrought  as  to 
secure  its  own  signality.  But  upon  the  view  here  considered,  this  signality 
does  not  seem  to  be  perfectly  secured.  For  it  would  always  be  possible  for 
the  objector  to  assert  that  the  so-called  prophet  had  by  merely  human  skill 
penetrated  into  the  secrets  of  nature  and  discovered  the  law  of  the  machine. 
There  have  been  navigators  who  have  used  their  knowledge  of  an  approach- 
ing eclipse  to  convince  a  savage  chief  that  they  possessed  superhuman  powers 
and  were  entitled  to  divine  homage,  and  threats  backed  up  by  an  immediate 
darkening  of  the  sun  have  proved  very  effectual.  In  the  middle  ages  the 
telephone  could  have  been  used  with  great  success  to  simulate  a  voice  from 
heaven.  Now,  apart  from  the  accompanying  purity  of  life  and  doctrine 
which  must  distinguish  the  genuine  miracle,  we  should  naturally  expect  that 
there  would  also  be  such  a  method  of  bringing  about  the  outward  phenom- 
enon, that  there  would  be  least  chance  of  ascribing  the  knowledge  of  it  to 
mere  natural  or  scientific  foresight.  As  Dr.  Newman  has  said  :  "  It  is 
antecedently  improbable  that  the  Almighty  should  rest  the  credit  of  his 
revelation  upon  events  which  but  obscurely  implied  his  immediate  presence. " 

Still  another  illustration  of  this  view  is  given  by  Ephraim  Peabody,  and 
the  mention  of  it  may  enable  us  to  fix  attention  more  clearly  upon  still 
another  defect  inherent  in  this  method  of  explaining  the  miracle.  "A  story 
is  told  of  a  clock  on  one  of  the  high  cathedral  towers  of  the  older  world,  so 
constructed  that  at  the  close  of  a  century  it  strikes  the  years  as  it  ordinarily 
strikes  the  hours.  As  a  hundred  years  come  to  a  close,  suddenly,  in  the 
immense  mass  of  complicated  mechanism,  a  little  wheel  turns,  a  pin  slides 
into  the  appointed  place,  and  in  the  shadows  of  the  night  the  bell  tolls  a 
requiem  over  the  generations  which  during  a  century  have  lived  and  labored 


MIRACLES   AS    ATTESTING    REVELATION.  139 

and  been  buried  around  it.  One  of  these  generations  might  live  and  die 
and  witness  nothing  peculiar.  The  clock  would  have  what  we  call  an  estab- 
lished order  of  its  own ;  but  what  should  we  say,  when,  at  the  midnight 
which  brought  the  century  to  a  close,  it  sounded  over  the  sleeping  city, 
rousing  all  to  listen  to  the  world's  age?  Would  it  be  a  violation  of  law? 
No,  only  a  variation  of  the  accustomed  order,  produced  by  the  intervention 
of  a  force  always  existing  but  never  appearing  in  this  way  until  the  appointed 
moment  had  arrived.  The  tolling  of  the  century  would  be  a  variation  from 
the  observed  order  of  the  clock  ;  but,  to  the  artist  in  constructing  it,  it  would 
have  formed  a  part  of  that  order.  So  a  miracle  is  a  variation  of  the  order 
of  nature  as  it  has  appeared  to  us  ;  but,  to  the  Author  of  nature,  it  was  a  part 
of  that  predestined  order  —  a  part  of  that  order  of  which  he  is  at  all  times 
the  immediate  author  and  sustainer ;  miraculous  to  us,  seen  from  our  human 
point  of  view,  but  no  miracle  to  God  ;  to  our  circumscribed  vision  a  violation 
of  law,  but  to  God  only  a  part  in  the  great  plan  and  progress  of  the  law  of 
the  universe." 

Now  it  is  evident  that  here,  as  in  the  illustration  from  the  calculating 
engine,  there  is  a  law  of  recurrence.  What  happens  with  the  clock  at  the 
end  of  one  century  will  happen  at  the  end  of  another.  What  happens  at  the 
ten  million  and  first  turn  of  the  machine  will  happen  again  with  the  next 
series  of  similar  turns.  In  the  matter  of  miracles,  however,  such  recurrence 
is  wholly  unproved.  No  one  miracle  is  like  another  ;  they  do  not  occur  at 
regular  intervals ;  both  in  quality  and  in  quantity  they  bear  all  the  marks 
of  proceeding  from  spontaneity  and  freedom.  If,  therefore,  we  are  to  look 
to  some  unknown  law  of  natiire  as  the  immediate  physical  cause  and  expla- 
nation of  them,  it  must  be  a  law  which  has  in  each  case  only  one  application. 
The  theory  would  then  assert  only  this,  that  God  has  provided  in  the  construc- 
tion of  the  universe  for  isolated  and  exceptional  events  along  the  course  of 
history, — isolated  and  exceptional  events  which  have  for  their  office  the 
confirmation  of  the  claims  of  teachers  sent  by  him, —  isolated  and  exceptional 
fvt'iits  which  cannot  be  brought  under  the  law  of  the  general  order,  nor 
under  any  law  of  special  order  among  themselves.  It  is  evidently  a  misuse 
of  the  term  law,  to  speak  of  it  as  embracing  such  events  as  these,  for  law 
respects  classes  of  phenomena,  not  isolated  facts.  Or  if  we  strain  the  term 
law  to  embrace  them,  what  does  it  mean  more  than  simple  command,  the 
ordaining  of  an  individual  result  ?  And  how  can  this  be  distinguished  from 
the  direct  volition  of  God  except  in  the  one  respect,  that  his  volition  in  the 
former  case  is  executed  by  the  use  of  means,  whereas  in  the  latter  he  simply 
speaks  and  it  is  done  ?  But  those  with  whom  we  argue  are  the  last  to  claim 
that  even  the  ordinary  operations  of  nature  are  carried  on  without  God. 
The  world,  while  it  has  a  separate  existence  and  a  measure  of  independence, 
is  yet  upheld  by  God's  mighty  will,  so  that  nothing  comes  to  pass  in  which 
he  is  not  active  as  preserver  and  maintainer.  He  who  imposed  upon  the 
universe  the  law  of  miracles  must  himself  supervise  its  execution.  Does 
such  a  law  as  this  —  a  law  which  cannot  execute  itself  —  differ  so  essentially 
from  divine  volition,  to  make  it  worth  while  to  quarrel  about  the  name  ? 
And  since  we  have  evidence  of  the  divine  will  in  miracles,  but  no  evidence, 
in  the  vast  majority  of  cases,  that  natural  means  are  employed  in  the  work- 
ing of  them,  is  it  not  best  to  define  them  from  the  known  rather  than  from 


140  THE   CHRISTIAN   MIRACLES,    OR, 

the  unknown  ?  We  know  that  they  are  the  result  of  divine  volitions ;  in- 
most cases  we  have  no  knowledge  of  intermediate  agencies  used  in  producing 
them.  It  seems  most  accordant  with  our  knowledge,  therefore,  to  regard 
the  miracle,  even  apart  from  its  coincidence  with  the  word  of  a  religious, 
teacher,  as  an  event  in  nature  which,  though  not  contravening  any  natural 
law,  the  laws  of  nature,  even  if  they  were  fully  known  to  us,  would  not  he 
competent  to  explain. 

That  miracles  are  possible,  however,  does  not  prove  them  to  be  probable. 
To  this  question  of  the  probability  of  miracles,  let  us  now  address  ourselves. 
And  here  we  find  too  frequently,  among  apologetical  writers,  a  prior  assump- 
tion that  miracles  are  as  probable  as  other  and  ordinary  events.  The  attitude 
of  these  same  apologists  towards  so-called  modern  miracles  sufficiently  shows 
that  this  assumption  very  imperfectly  represents  the  facts.  We  are  com- 
pelled to  grant  and  we  as  frankly  acknowledge  that,  so  long  as  we  confine 
our  attention  to  nature,  there  is  a  presumption  against  miracles.  The 
experience  of  each  of  us  testifies  that,  so  far  as  our  observation  has  gone,  the 
operation  of  natural  law  has  been  uniform.  We  perceive  the  advantages  of 
this  uniformity.  A  general  uniformity  is  necessary  in  order  to  make  possible 
a  rational  calculation  of  the  future  and  a  proper  ordering  of  human  life. 
But  while  we  acknowledge  this,  we  deny  that  this  uniformity  is  absolute 
and  universal.  It  is  certainly  not  a  truth  of  reason,  that  can  have  no  excep- 
tions, like  the  axiom  that  the  whole  is  greater  than  any  one  of  its  parts.  Per- 
haps the  most  striking  instance  of  belief  in  the  uniformity  of  nature  is  that 
which  leads  mankind  to  expect  the  rising  of  to-morrow  morning's  sun.  But 
no  one  can  examine  this  belief  without  being  convinced  that  there  is  no  neces- 
sity about  it  like  the  necessity  that  two  and  two  should  make  four.  Attempt 
to  conceive  of  two  and  two  making  five,  and  you  violate  a  first  principle  of 
reason.  But  there  is  no  self-contradiction  in  the  thought  that  to-morrow 
should  see  no  sunrise.  Experience  of  the  past  is  not  experience  of  the 
future.  Experience  of  the  past  gives  no  absolute  certainty  of  the  future. 
"  Like  the  stern  lights  of  a  ship,"  as  Coleridge  says,  "it  illuminates  only  the 
track  over  which  it  has  passed."  Hence  experience  cannot  warrant  belief 
in  absolute  and  universal  uniformity,  except  upon  the  absurd  hypothesis  that 
experience  is  identical  with  absolute  and  universal  knowledge.  Nor  is  it  of 
any  avail  to  point  to  the  principal  of  induction  —  as  if  this  bridged  the  gulf 
and  converted  the  probable  into  the  necessary ;  for  induction  of  observed 
instances  warrants  only  an  expectation  of  the  future  —  it  never  can  prove 
that  future  to  exist  or  to  be  of  any  definite  character.  Says  Mr.  Huxley  :  — 
"  It  is  very  convenient  to  indicate  that  all  the  conditions  of  belief  have  been 
fulfilled  in  this  case  of  gravitation,  by  calling  the  statement  that  unsupported 
stones  will  fall  to  the  ground  a  law  of  nature.  But  when,  as  commonly 
happens,  we  change  'will'  into  'must,'  we  introduce  an  idea  of  necessity 
which  has  no  warrant  in  the  observed  facts,  and  has  no  warranty  that  I  can 
discover  elsewhere.  For  my  part,  I  utterly  repudiate  and  anathematize  the 
intruder.  Fact  I  know,  and  law  I  know  ;  but  what  is  this  necessity,  but  an 
empty  shadow  of  the  mind's  own  throwing  ?  " 

Any  proper  account  of  the  inductive  process  must  regard  it  as  presup- 
posing the  uniformity  of  nature.  But  this  uniformity  of  nature  is  not  itself 
an  ultimate  truth  —  there  is  a  greater  truth  back  of  that,  namely,  universal 


MIRACLES    AS   ATTESTING    REVELATION.  141 

design.  From  one  or  more  observed  instances  I  can  argue  to  those  which 
have  not  been  observed,  only  upon  the  assumption  that  the  universe  has 
been  rationally  constructed,  so  that  its  various  parts  correspond  to  one 
another  and  to  the  investigating  faculties  of  man.  But  this  is  virtually  to 
nay  that  the  principle  of  final  cause  underlies  the  principle  of  efficient  cause, 
and  that  this  latter  must  find  its  limit  in  the  former.  In  the  words  of  Dr. 
Porter  :  "  If  efficient  causes  and  physical  laws  must  acknowledge  themselves 
indebted  to  final  causes  in  order  to  command  our  confidence,  then  they  must 
also  confess  their  subjection  to  the  same  and  be  ready  to  stand  aside  and  be 
suspended  whenever  the  principle  of  final  cause  shall  require.  In  other 
words,  the  order  of  nature  may  be  broken  whenever  the  principle  of  final 
cause  shall  require  ;  that  is,  whenever  the  claims  of  the  so-called  reason  of 
things,  or  of  alleged  moral  and  religious  interests,  may  demand  an  inroad 
upon  its  regularity  either  in  special  act?  of  creation  or  in  exertions  of  mirac- 
ulous agency."  "The  principle  of  final  cause  will  not  only  render  the 
service  of  sustaining  our  confidence  in  the  stability  of  the  laws  of  nature 
under  all  ordinary  circumstances,  but  will  also  account  for  such  extraordinary 
deviations  from  this  order  as  may  be  required  iu  the  history  of  man."  The 
qualifications  to  be  made  in  the  phraseology  of  Dr.  Porter,  as  to  suspension 
of  law,  will  readily  occur  to  us,  after  what  has  previously  been  said.  The 
substantial  truth  remains  intact  that,  since  we  cannot  conduct  the  process  of 
scientific  induction  at  all  without  assuming  that  a  principle  of  design  per- 
vades the  universe  and  constitutes  it  a  rational  whole,  the  uniformity  which 
we  see  about  us  is  a  uniformity  which  has  its  limitations  in  this  very  principle 
of  design,  and  may  be  expected  to  give  way  when  there  exists  a  sufficient 
reason  therefor  in  the  mind  of  him  who  made  it.  If  induction  itself  is 
founded  upon  design,  then  design  is  greater  than  induction,  and  may  embrace 
facts  for  which  mere  induction  can  never  account. 

Not  only  is  it  not  true  that  the  uniformity  of  nature  is  a  truth  of  reason, 
whidi  admits  of  no  exceptions,  but  it  is  true  that  science  herself  reveals  the 
existence  of  breaks  in  this  uniformity.  The  limited  explorat'ons  of  European 
geologists  have  given  rise  to  the  unif  ormitarian  theory  of  the  earth's  progress. 
But  the  later  investigations  of  Clarence  King,  Superintendent  of  the  United 
States  Survey  of  the  Forty-ninth  Parallel,  conducted  over  an  extent  of  terri- 
tory such  as  British  scientists  have  never  traversed,  have  apparently  demon- 
strated that  cataclysms  occurred  in  the  past  history  of  the  planet  so  vast  and 
so  tremendous  in  their  influence  upon  the  various  forms  of  life  that  only 
the  most  plastic  of  these  forms  survived.  The  edict  went  forth  to  every 
living  creature  :  '  Change  or  die  ! '  So  the  geological  leaps  were  accom- 
panied with  biological  leaps  so  great  as  to  be  equivalent  to  new  creations. 
But  not  only  in  the  changes  from  one  organic  f«»rm  to  another  do  we  see 
evidence  adverse  to  the  theory  of  perpetually  uniform  S3quenc98  in  nature. 
The  introductions  successively  of  vegetable  life,  of  animal  life,  of  human 
life,  and  finally  of  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ,  are  utterly  inexplicable  from 
their  respective  antecedents.  Science  knows  absolutely  m. thing  of  spon- 
taneous generation,  absolutely  nothing  of  the  evolution  of  the  organic  from 
the  inorganic,  or  of  man's  intellectual  and  moral  powers  from  those  of  the 
brute.  The  new  beginnings  I  have  mentioned  cannot  be  rationally  ac- 
counted for  except  by  the  coming  down  upon  nature  of  a  power  above 


142  THE    CHRISTIAN    MIRACLES,    OR, 

nature,  in  other  words,  by  new  creations  in  the  absolute  sense.  When 
science  can  produce  bacteria  from  ammonia  and  water,  change  any  lower 
creature  into  a  responsible  being,  construct  a  Christ  out  of  a  man  consciously 
guilty,  then  and  only  then  can  she  afford  to  speak  slightingly  of  miracles. 

The  testimony  of  nature,  then,  is  simply  this :  Although  there  is  a  presump- 
tion against  miracles,  there  is  nothing  in  experience  or  in  the  primitive 
ideas  of  the  mind  which  renders  investigation  of  their  claims  unnecessary. 
But  there  is  another  world  than  that  of  nature.  The  physical  is  supple- 
mented by  the  moral,  and  rinds  in  the  moral  its  explanation  and  end.  It  is 
unscientific  to  conclude  that  miracles  are  improbable,  simply  upon  the  testi- 
mony of  the  physical  universe  ;  for  the  reason  that  the  physical  universe  is 
but  the  half,  and  the  lower  half,  of  the  great  system .  What  is  improbable 
when  judged  from  the  point  of  view  of  mere  physics,  may  be  eminently 
probable  when  judged  from  the  point  of  view  of  morals.  If  then  we  can 
show  that  even  the  physical  universe  has  relations  to  the  moral,  and  is  made 
to  serve  it,  we  do  much  to  compel  a  transfer  of  the  controversy  from  the 
physical,  to  the  moral,  realm.  And  this  we  maintain.  There  is  a  moral  law 
inlaid  in  nature.  We  could  conceive  a  system  in  which  the  violation  of 
moral  obligation  might  be  accompanied  with  the  highest  physical  well-being. 
Pride  and  even  licentiousness  might  be  the  path  to  health.  But  the  present 
order  of  the  world  is  different.  As  the  universe  is  at  present  constructed, 
honesty  is  the  best  policy.  Sin  is  its  own  detecter  and  judge  and  tormentor. 
In  the  very  framework  of  matter  and  of  mind  is  inwrought  the  tendency  to 
punish  vice  and  reward  virtue.  The  universe  does  not  exist  for  itself  alone 
—  a  great  dumb  show  from  age  to  age.  The  mere  circling  of  world  about 
world,  growth  and  decay,  life  and  death  —  these  are  not  all.  The  universe 
has  an  end  beyond  and  above  itself.  It  is  for  moral  ends  and  moral  beings. 
So  much  is  made  plain  to  us  by  the  in  working  of  the  moral  law  into  the  con- 
stitution and  course  of  nature.  And  if  the  universe  is  made  to  subserve 
moral  ends,  if  it  exists  for  the  contemplation  and  use  of  moral  beings,  if  it 
is  constructed  for  the  purpose  of  revealing  to  them  God's  law,  and  the  God 
who  is  the  source  of  law,  then  it  is  probable  that  the  God  of  nature  will  pro- 
duce effects  aside  from  those  of  natural  law,  whenever  there  are  sufficiently 
important  ends  to  be  served  thereby.  In  short,  if  the  moral  ends  for  which 
the  universe  exists  are  not  attained  by  the  operation  of  natural  law  alone, 
it  is  probable  that  these  ends  will  be  attained  by  methods  beyond  and  above 
those  of  natural  law.  All  that  is  needed  to  render  miracles  probable  is  a 
'  dignus  vindice  nodus,' — an  exigency  worthy  of  the  interposition. 

Is  there  such  an  exigency?  We  claim  that  the  moral  disorder  of  the 
world  is  such  an  exigency.  This  moral  disorder  is  not  a  part  of  the  original 
creation,  nor  is  it  the  work  of  God.  If  it  were,  we  should  not  hope  for  rec- 
tification. But  it  is  man's  work,  and  results  from  the  free  acts  of  man's  will. 
To  deny  that  man  may  mar  the  Creator's  handiwork,  is  to  deny  conscious- 
ness and  conscience.  These  testify  to  man's  freedom  and  sole  responsibility 
for  moral  evil ;  these  testify  that  God«is  the  hater  and  punisher  of  it.  If 
now,  through  no  fault  of  the  maker,  the  watch  has  been  suffered  to  get  out 
of  order  so  that  it  no  longer  fulfils  its  end  of  keeping  time,  shall  any  fancied 
sacredness  about  its  mechanism  prevent  the  rectification  of  that  disorder, 
and  the  touch  of  the  regulator  by  the  maker's  hand  ?  In  the  original  design 


MIRACLES    AS   ATTESTING    REVELATION.  143 

of  the  watch,  the  winding  up  and  setting  of  the  regulator  were  provided  for. 
Subsequent  repair  and  readjustment  are  but  the  carrying  out  of  the  ultimate 
purpose  of  the  mechanism,  that  it  should  correctly  mark  the  hours.  And 
when  the  moral  world,  through  no  fault  of  its  Author,  has  ceased  to  fulfil  its 
end  of  representing  and  reflecting  the  divine  holiness,  shall  it  be  thought 
improbable  that  God  should  make  bare  the  arm  which  the  garment  of  nature 
had  hid,  and  make  known  his  power  by  setting  at  work  new  principles  of  holi- 
ness and  life  ?  When  the  lower  world  has  become  so  sundered  from  the 
higher  as  to  forget  its  true  meaning  and  end,  is  it  strange  that  the  higher 
should  touch  the  lower,  and  that  changes  in  this  lower  should  result  ?  We 
claim,  therefore,  that  the  existence  of  moral  disorder  consequent  upon  the 
free  acts  of  man's  will  changes  the  presumption  against  miracles  into  a  pre- 
sumption in  their  favor,  so  that,  in  a  tme  sense,  the  non-appearance  of  mir- 
acles would  be  the  greatest  of  miracles. 

Our  judgment  with  regard  to  the  probability  of  miracles  will  depend  in 
great  part  upon  the  extent  to  which  we  perceive  this  moral  disorder  in  the 
world  ami  in  our  own  breasts.  The  degree  to  which  we  perceive  this  will 
depend,  iii  turn,  upon  the  conception  we  cherish  with  regard  to  God.  As  Dr. 
Mozley  has  intimated,  there  are  two  ruling  ideas  of  God.  The  one  gathers 
round  e-nscieuce,  the  other  round  a  physical  centre.  The  one  looks  upon 
God  as  the  supreme  mundane  Intelligence,  penetrating  and  pervading  the 
physical  universe,  and  manifested  in  all  the  tides  of  the  world's  life  and  civ- 
ili/.ation.  The  other  regards  him  as  the  high  and  holy  One  —  the  God  of 
infinite  moral  purity,  whose  voice  conscience  echoes,  and  who  is  the  Gover- 
nor ami  Jtul^e  of  all  human  souls.  If  we  take  the  former  view  exclusively 
or  even  predominantly,  the  regular  order  of  nature's  successions  will  seem  a 
full  and  sufficient  revelation  of  the  Almighty,  and  then  there  is  no  place  for 
miracles  —  they  are  an  impertinence  and  a  contradiction.  But  if  we  take  the 
latter  view,  then  the  contrast  between  the  spotless  purity  of  God  and  the  uni- 
versal sin  of  the  world  will  unspeakably  affect  us ;  the  whole  course  of  nature 
will  seem  out  of  joint,  the  end  of  creation  unattained,  and  all  things  in  heaven 
and  earth,  man's  nature  and  God's  nature  as  well,  will  seem  to  cry  out  for  the 
world's  deliverance  and  redemption.  On  this  view,  miracles  have  a  place, 
and  a  fit  place,  in  the  whole  scheme  of  things  ;  they  are  antecedently  prob- 
able. And  therefore  the  denial  of  miracles  on  the  part  of  those  who  hold 
the  former  view  of  God  ought  not  to  perplex  us,  or  to  shake  our  faith.  They 
deny  miracles,  because  they  have  not  the  whole  evidence  before  them.  The 
moral  argument  in  favor  of  miracles  has  no  force  to  them,  because  they  have 
no  eye  for  the  facts  on  which  it  is  based.  But  their  not  seeing  them  does 
annihilate  them.  The  moral  wants  of  the  world,  once  apprehended,  render 
miracles  probable,  as  the  accompaniments  and  attestations  of  a  divine  revela- 
tion. 

Miracles  are  probable  ;  but  whether  they  have  actually  taken  place  is  a 
question  of  evidence.  What  amount  of  testimony  is  necessary  to  prove  a 
miracle  ?  We  reply  :  No  more  than  is  requisite  to  prove  the  occurrence  of 
any  other  unusual,  but  confessedly  possible,  event.  Hume  indeed  argued 
that  a  miracle  is  so  contradictory  of  all  human  experience  that  it  is  more 
reasonable  to  believe  any  amount  of  testimony  false  than  to  believe  a 
miracle  to  be  true.  But  the  argument  is  fallacious.  It  is  chargeable  with 


144  THE   CHRISTIAN   MIRACLES,    OR, 

a  petitio  principii.  It  assumes  that  a  miracle  is  contrary  to  all  human 
experience.  But,  by  all  human  experience,  Hume  can  mean  only  our 
personal  experience.  We  have  not  seen  a  miracle.  But  others  say  that 
they  have.  To  make  our  own  experience  the  measure  of  all  human  expe- 
rience, would  make  the  proof  of  any  absolutely  new  fact  impossible.  Even 
the  evidence  of  our  own  senses  would  be  insufficient  to  prove  a  miracle  ; 
for  what  is  contrary  to  our  past  experience  would  be  incredible.  Even 
if  God  should  work  a  miracle,  he  could,  on  this  view,  never  prove  it.  What 
is  this  general  experience  of  mankind,  that  is  held  to  render  the  mir- 
acle incredible  ?  It  is  merely  negative  experience.  When  one  man  testifies 
that  he  witnessed  the  commission  of  a  certain  crime,  shall  it  be  sufficient  in 
rebuttal  to  bring  a  hundred  men  who  were  not  present  and  who  declare  that 
they  never  saw  any  such  thing  ?  Negative  testimony  can  never  neutralize 
that  which  is  positive,  except  upon  principles  which  would  invalidate  all  tes- 
timony whatsoever.  And  how  do  we  know  what  general  experience  is? 
Why,  only  from  testimony.  Yet  Hume  commits  the  self-contradiction  of 
seeking  to  overthrow  our  faith  in  human  testimony,  by  adducing  to  the  con- 
trary the  general  experience  of  men  of  which  we  know  only  through  testi- 
mony. Moreover,  Hume's  view  requires  belief  in  a  greater  wonder  than 
those  which  it  would  escape.  That  multitudes  of  intelligent  and  honest  men 
should,  against  all  their  interests,  unite  in  deliberate  and  persistent  falsehood, 
under  the  circumstances  narrated  in  the  New  Testament  record,  involves  a 
change  in  the  sequences  of  the  mental  and  spiritual  world  far  more  incred- 
ible than  are  the  miracles  of  Christ  and  his  apostles. 

What  have  we  now  proved,  and  where  does  the  argument  thus  far  leave 
us  ?  In  our  judgment,  we  have  proved  that,  granting  the  fact  of  a  revela- 
tion, miracles  are  necessary  to  attest  it ;  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  relation 
of  miracles  to  natural  law  to  render  them  impossible  ;  that  there  is  nothing 
in  the  relation  of  miracles  to  the  laws  of  evidence  to  render  them  improbable. 
They  can  be  subjects  of  testimony,  like  other  facts.  Provided  the  facts  are 
certified  by  witnesses  who  in  other  matters  are  recognized  as  competent  and 
credible,  there  is  no  more  rational  warrant  for  rejecting  miracles  than  for 
rejecting  accounts  of  eclipses  and  of  darkenings  of  the  sun. 

But  because  miracles  are  possible  and  probable,  it  does  not  follow  that  we 
must  accept  as  miracle  all  that  comes  to  us  under  that  name.  We  are  simply 
bound  to  consider  without  prepossession  each  case  of  the  apparently  mirac- 
ulous that  presents  itself,  and  to  decide  it  upon  its  own  merits.  Now  we  do 
not  propose  to  take  up  the  New  Testament  miracles  singly  and  in  detail. 
It  will  be  sufficient  to  point  out  the  proper  course  to  be  pursued  in  further 
investigation  of  the  subject.  That  course,  we  are  persuaded,  is  to  take  first 
of  all  that  great  central  miracle  upon  which  Christianity  rests  her  claims  and 
to  which  the  church  looks  back  as  to  the  source  of  her  life  —  I  mean  the 
miracle  of  Christ's  resurrection.  To  that  miracle  we  have  as  witnesses  two 
of  the  evangelists  and  the  Apostle  Paul,  each  of  whom  personally  saw  Jesus 
after  he  had  risen  from  the  dead,  and  these  witnesses  represent  the  faith  of 
a  great  body  of  early  believers  for  whom  they  speak.  "Like  banners  of  a 
hidden  army,  or  peaks  of  a  distant  mountain  range,  they  represent  and  are 
sustained  by  compact  and  continuous  bodies  below."  The  accounts  of 
these  witnesses  would  have  been  contradicted  if  contradiction  had  been 


MIRACLES   AS    ATTESTING    REVELATION.  145 

possible.  That  multitudes  believed  their  story,  and  against  all  their  worldly 
interests  became  disciples  of  Christ,  is  proof  that  they  believed  it  to  be  true. 
The  existence  of  the  church,  the  existence  of  Christianity  itself,  with  its 
doctrines  and  its  ordinances,  is  inexplicable  except  upon  the  hypothesis  that 
what  these  witnesses  believed,  was  true.  The  supposition  of  dream  or 
delusion,  of  myth  or  romance,  of  apparition  or  imagination,  is  utterly  incom- 
petent to  solve  the  problem  how  keen-witted  and  brave-hearted  and  truth- 
loving  men  became  converts  to  a  faith  they  had  bitterly  opposed,  and  went 
to  imprisonment  and  martyrdom  in  its  defense.  It  is  irrational  to  suppose 
that  this  mighty  fabric  of  Christian  faith  and  life  which  has  so  blessed  the 
world  has  its  foundation  either  in  fraud  or  in  self-deception.  But  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  Christ,  once  granted,  carries  with  it  directly  or  indirectly 
all  the  other  miracles  of  the  New  Testament.  That  one  miracle  proves  Jesus 
Christ  to  be  a  teacher  sent  from  God  ;  proves  his  words  to  be  a  revelation 
from  God  to  men  ;  proves  his  asserted  oneness  Avith  God  and  equality  with 
God  to  be  a  fact.  The  coming  of  such  a  Being  into  history  is  the  most 
wonderful  of  all  events.  From  this  point  of  view,  the  miracles  of  his  life 
assume  a  new  aspect.  They  are  fit  manifestations  of  the  incarnate  Deity, 
fit  accompaniments  of  the  miracles  of  his  coming  and  his  resurrection.  But 
more  than  this,  the  miracles  of  the  New  Testament  carry  with  them  the 
miracles  of  the  Old.  These  are  the  fitting  preludes  and  preparations  for  the 
coming  of  God  into  the  world  which  he  created, — fitting  signs  and  prophe- 
cies to  make  the  world  ready  for  the  great  event.  And  so,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  great  epochs  of  iniiacles  are  coincident  with  the  great  epochs  of 
revelation.  About  Moses,  the  giver  of  the  law,  about  the  prophets  as  inter- 
preters of  the  law,  there  are  congeries  of  miracles.  We  find  them  just 
where  we  should  expect  them,  the  natural  accompaniments  and  attestations 
of  those  new  communications  from  God  which  at  successive  periods  prepared 
the  way  for  the  coming  of  his  Son.  And  this  shows  us  why  they  have 
<vasrtl.  They  were  caudles  before  the  dawn — put  out  after  the  sun  has 
risen ;  serving  to  draw  attention  to  new  truth,  they  naturally  pass  away 
when  the  truth  has  gained  currency  and  foothold.  Clustering  around  the 
person  of  the  divine  Redeemer  and  ceasing  when  his  kingdom  has  been 
founded,  they  are  to  occur  again  only  when  he  comes  the  second  time  in  the 
clouds  of  heaven  to  usher  in  the  final  consummation. 

Thus  we  regard  the  resurrection  of  Christ  as  the  central  proof  of  Chris- 
tianity. For  this  reason  it  was  a  main  subject  of  apostolic  preaching  and  a 
main  teaching  of  the  ordinances.  It  remains  to-day  just  what  it  then  was. 
We  challenge  the  world  to  dispute  the  fact  of  Christ's  resurrection,  and  the 
fact  being  conceded,  we  challenge  the  world  to  show  cause  why  it  should  not 
accept  Christ  and  Christianity.  Th  s  one  fact  of  Christ's  resurrection 
admitted,  and  the  battle  is  substantially  won.  With  regard  to  particular 
instances  of  miracle  in  the  Old  Testament  or  the  New,  there  may  be  ques- 
tions \\liL-h  we  cannot  answer  and  difficulties  which  we  cannot  solve. 
Christianity  does  not  stand  or  fall  with  any  single  one  of  these,  so  long  as 
the  resurrection  of  Christ  is  held  to  be  matter  of  history.  We  may  not  be 
able  to  mark  the  precise  time  when  miracles  ceased.  There  is  reason  to 
believe  that  they  ceased  with  the  first  century,  or  at  any  rate  with  the  passing 
away  of  those  upon  whom  the  apostles  had  laid  their  hands.  So  long  as 
10 

^ 


146  THE    CHRISTIAN"    MIRACLES.    OK, 

the  Scripture  canon  was  incomplete,  there  was  need  of  miracles.  When 
documentary  evidence  was  at  hand,  miracles  were  seen  no  longer.  The 
fathers  of  the  second  century  speak  of  miracles,  hut  they  confess  that  tlu  \ 
are  of  a  class  widely  different  from  the  wonders  wrought  in  the  days  of  the 
apostles.  And  so  of  mediaeval  and  modern  miracles.  The  Scripture  rec<  >g- 
nizes  the  existence  of  counterfeit  miracles  and  denominates  them  'lying 
wonders.'  These  counterfeit  miracles,  in  various  ages,  argue  that  the  belief 
in  miracles  is  natural  to  the  race  and  that  somewhere  there  must  exist  tin- 
true.  They  serve  to  show  that  not  all  supernatural  occurrences  are  of  divine 
origin,  and  to  impress  upon  us  the  necessity  of  careful  examination  before 
we  give  them  credence.  False  miracles  may  commonly  be  distinguished 
from  the  true,  by  their  acompaniments  of  immoral  conduct  or  of  doctrine 
contradictory  to  truth  already  revealed,  as  in  modern  spiritualism  ;  by  their 
internal  characteristics  of  inanity  or  extravagance,  as  in  the  liquefaction 
of  the  blood  of  St.  Januarius,  or  in  the  miracles  of  the  Apocryphal  New 
Testament ;  in  the  insufficiency  of  the  object  which  they  are  designed  to 
further,  as  in  the  case  of  Apollonius  of  Tyaua,  or  of  the  miracles  said  to 
accompany  the  publication  of  the  doctrine  of  the  immaculate  conception ; 
or  finally,  in  their  lack  of  substantiating  evidence,  as  in  mediaeval  miracle*, 
which  are  seldom  if  ever  attested  by  contemporary  and  disinterested 
witnesses. 

A  simple  comparison  of  other  so-called  miracles  with  those  of  Scripture 
suffices  to  show  the  vast  superiority  of  the  latter  in  sobriety,  in  benevolence, 
in  purpose,  in  evidence.  Mahomet  disclaimed  all  power  to  work  miracles, 
and  appealed  to  the  Koran  in  lieu  of  them,  so  that  its  paragraphs  are  called 
aidt,  or  '  sign. '  But  later  legends  relate  that  Mahomet  caused  darkues- 
noon,  whereupon  the  moon  flew  to  him,  and  after  going  seven  times  round 
the  Kaaba,  bowed  to  him,  then  entered  his  right  sleeve,  and,  slipping  out  at 
the  left,  split  into  two  halves,  which  after  severally  retiring  to  the  extreme 
east  and  west,  were  once  more  united  to  each  other.  These  were  truly  signs 
from  heaven,  but  they  make  no  impression  upon  us.  The  fable  of  St.  Alban, 
the  first  martyr  of  Britain,  illustrates  to  us  the  nature  of  mediaeval  miracles. 
The  saint  walks  about,  after  his  head  is  cut  off,  and,  that  he  may  not  be 
wholly  deprived  of  that  useful  portion  of  his  body,  he  carries  it  in  his  hand. 
Mediaeval  miracles  were  part  of  a  complicated  system  of  deceit  and  evil, 
constructed  to  further  the  secular  interests  of  a  domineering  church.  Ante- 
cedently improbable,  from  their  connection  with  the  organization  of  which 
they  are  the  representatives,  they  fail  to  pass  either  of  the  tests  which  dis- 
tinguish the  true  miracle  from  the  false.  But  in  the  New  Testament  all 
these  tests  are  met.  Here  is  purity  of  life  in  the  teachers  who  work  them, 
accompanied  by  the  proclamation  of  doctrine  not  only  consistent  with  God's 
jjast  teachings,  but  constituting  the  keystone  of  the  arch  of  revelation  ;  here 
are  sobriety  and  grandeur,  benevolence  and  wisdom,  united  in  every  act ; 
here  are  objects  worthy  of  divine  intervention,  the  attesting  of  the  divine 
commission  of  his  Son  and  the  certification  that  what  he  teaches  is  God's 
authoritative  word  of  life  and  salvation  ;  here  is  evidence  of  the  occurrence 
of  these  miracles  from  eye-witnesses  of  keen  discernment  and  irreproachable 
integrity,  who  had  no  conceivable  motive  for  dishonesty,  and  who  imperiled 
their  lives  by  the  testimony  they  gave  —  witnesses  who  mutually  support 


MIRACLES   AS    ATTESTING    REVELATION.  147 

each  other  without  the  possibility  of  collusion,  and  whose  testimony  perfectly 
agrees  with  collateral  facts  and  circumstances,  so  far  as  these  can  be  ascer- 
tained from  the  most  rigorous  investigations  into  the  literature  and  history 
of  their  time.  No  other  religion  professes  to  be  attested  by  miracles  at  all ; 
no  other  miracles  of  any  age  present  evidence  of  their  genuineness  compar- 
able to  these.  Indeed,  the  result  of  extended  investigation  is  simply  this  : 
The  Christian  miracles  are  the  only  series  of  miracles  that  have  the  slightest 
claim  to  rational  credence,  yet  no  man  can  rationally  doubt  that  the  Christian 
miracles  were  wrought  by  God. 

Here  we  might  leave  our  theme.  We  make  but  one  closing  remark.  The 
belief  in  many  fancied  manifestations  of  the  supernatural  has  vanished  with 
the  advance  of  civilization.  Sir  Matthew  Hale  and  his  belief  in  witches  are 
things  of  the  past.  But  the  belief  in  the  Christian  miracles  has  not  vanished  : 
it  has  not  decreased ;  it  sways  a  larger  number  of  minds,  and  minds  of 
higher  quality  and  culture,  to-day  than  ever  before.  With  civilization,  the 
belief  in  other  wonders  disappears.  With  civilization,  the  belief  in  the 
Christian  miracles  steadily  and  irresistibly  advances.  It  is  an  instance  of 
survival  of  the  fittest.  It  is  inexplicable,  except  by  difference  of  kind  between 
the  faith  and  the  superstition.  And  the  faith  whose  progress  is  never 
retrograde,  but  whose  dominion  perpetually  widens,  unless  the  laws  of  mind 
and  of  history  be  changed  in  the  interest  of  unbelief,  must  some  day  inevi- 
tably embrace  among  its  adherents  the  total  race  of  man. 


THE  METHOD  OF  INSPIRATION.* 


Among  sincere  believers  in  the  all-pervading  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures, 
there  are  minor  differences  of  opinion.  These  differences  have  respect 
chiefly  to  the  method  in  which  the  Holy  Spirit  wrought  upon  the  sacred 
writers.  Some  are  unable  to  conceive  of  any  inspiration  which  does  not 
involve  an  external  communication  and  reception.  Richard  Hooker,  the 
great  English  Churchman  of  the  sixteenth  century,  asserts  that  the  authors 
of  the  Bible  ' '  neither  spake  nor  wrote  any  word  of  their  own,  but  uttered 
syllable  by  syllable  as  the  Spirit  put  it  into  their  mouths."  We  may  call 
this  the  dictation-theory  of  inspiration.  There  are  undoubtedly  instances 
in  which  this  method  was  used  by  God.  When  Moses  went  into  the  taber- 
ernacle,  he  "heard  the  voice  speaking  to  him  from  between  the  cherubim." 
When  John  was  in  the  Spirit  on  the  Lord's-day,  he  was  bidden  to  write  cer- 
tain definite  words  to  the  seven  churches.  But  we  conceive  that  this  theory 
rests  upon  a  very  partial  induction  of  Scripture  facts.  It  unwarrantably 
assumes  that  occasional  instances  of  direct  dictation  reveal  the  invariable 
method  of  God's  communications  of  truth  to  the  writers  of  the  Bible. 

There  is  another  far  larger  class  of  facts  which  this  theory  is  wholly  unable 
to  explain.  There  is  a  manifestly  human  element  in  the  Scriptures.  There 
are  peculiarities  of  style  which  distinguish  the  productions  of  each  writer 
from  those  of  every  other, —  witness  Paul's  anacoloutha  and  his  bursts  of 
grief  and  of  enthusiasm.  There  are  variations  in  accounts  of  the  same 
scene  or  transaction,  which  indicate  personal  idiosyncrasies  in  the  different 
writers, —  witness  the  descriptions  of  Mark  as  compared  with  those  of  Mat- 
thew. These  facts  tend  to  show  that  what  they  wrote  was  not  dictated  to 
them,  but  was  in  a  true  sense  the  product  of  their  own  observation  and 
thought.  They  were  not  simply  pens  —  they  were  penmen  —  of  the  Spirit. 
God's  authorship  did  not  preclude  a  human  authorship  also. 

It  has  been  sought  to  break  the  force  of  these  facts  by  urging  that  the 
omniscient  and  omnipotent  Spirit  could  without  difficulty  put  his  com- 
munications into  all  varieties  of  human  speech.  Quenstedt,  the  Lutheran 
theologian,  declared  that  "the  Holy  Ghost  inspired  his  amanuenses  with 
those  expressions  which  they  would  have  employed,  had  they  been  left  to 
themselves."  We  are  reminded  of  Voltaire's  idea  that  God  created  fossils 
in  the  rocks,  just  such  as  they  would  have  been  had  ancient  seas  existed. 
A  theory  like  this  virtually  accuses  God  of  unveracity.  In  nature  he  has 
not  made  our  senses  to  deceive  us.  Much  less  in  his  word  has  he  led  our 
minds  astray  by  tilling  it  with  illusory  indications  of  intellectual  activity  on 
the  part  of  prophets  and  evangelists. 


*  Printed  in  the  Examiner,  Oct.  7  and  Oct.  14, 1880. 

148 


THE    METHOD    OF   INSPIRATION.  149 

"We  must  remember,  moreover,  that  large  parts  of  the  Scriptures  consist 
of  narratives  of  events  with  which  the  writers  were  personally  familiar.  It 
is  inconsistent  with  any  wise  economy  of  means  in  the  divine  administration, 
that  the  Scripture-writers  should  have  had  dictated  to  them  what  they  knew 
already,  or  what  they  could  inform  themselves  of  by  the  use  of  their  natural 
powers.  That  Luke  made  diligent  inquiry  as  to  the  facts  which  he  was  to 
record,  he  expressly  tells  us  in  the  preface  to  his  Gospel.  If,  after  all  this 
gathering  of  materials,  Luke  still  required  to  have  his  Gospel  dictated  to 
him  word  for  word,  it  is  difficult  to  see  the  need  of  the  preliminary  investi- 
gations. Why  employ  eye-witnesses  of  the  Saviour's  life,  like  John  ?  Might 
not  the  Gospel  which  proceeded  from  his  pen  have  been  equally  well  written 
by  one  who  never  saw  the  Lord,  nay,  by  one  who  lived  a  thousand  years 
before  his  coming  ? 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  these  considerations,  convincing  as  they  may 
seem,  can  weigh  nothing  against  the  plain  assertion  of  Paul  that  he  speaks 
"not  in  the  words  which  man's  wisdom  teacheth,  but  which  the  Holy  Ghost 
teach eth."  A  careful  examination  of  this  passage,  however,  will  show  that 
there  is  not  only  no  dictation  here,  but  that  all  such  mechanical  influence  is 
by  implication  excluded.  In  what  way  are  we  to  suppose  that  "man's  wis- 
dom teacheth  ?"  By  dictating  word  for  word  ?  Not  at  all.  It  is  rather  by 
so  tilling  the  writer's  mind,  that  he  uses  words  addressed  to  the  merely 
natural  tastes  and  opinions  of  men.  So  the  speech  "  taught  by  the  Spirit," 
or  "learned  of  the  Spirit,"  as  we  may  better  translate  the  phrase,  is  not  the 
utterance  of  words  dictated  one  by  one  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  but  simply  the 
expression  of  the  thought  with  which  the  Spirit  has  tilled  the  mind,  in  words 
of  whose  adequateness  and  appropriateness  that  same  Spirit  furnishes  the 
.-_ni!ir;nitee.  The  passage  teaches  nothing  more  than  that  the  general  manner 
of  discourse  was  ordered  by  God,  so  that  the  writers  joined  to  the  matter 
revealed  by  the  Spirit  words  which  they  had  also  learned  from  the  Spirit 
how  to  employ.  In  what  precise  way  the  Holy  Spirit  secured  a  right  use 
of  words  we  may  or  may  not  be  able  to  determine.  It  is  certain  that  this 
particular  passage  does  not  inform  us, —  much  less  does  it  constitute  a  direct 
affirmation  of  the  dictation-theory  of  inspiration. 

By  way  of  transition  to  what  seems  to  us  a  more  reasonable  conception  of 
the  general  method  of  inspiration,  we  may  add  to  all  the  preceding  objec- 
tions still  one  more.  The  theory  of  word-for-word  dictation  contradicts 
what  we  know  of  the  law  of  God's  working  in  the  soul.  The  higher  and 
nobler  God's  communications  are,  the  more  fully  is  the  recipient  in  posses- 
sion and  use  of  his  own  faculties.  To  Joseph's  dullness  of  perception  God 
speaks  in  a  vision  of  his  sleep,  but  to  Mary  the  angel  of  the  annunciation 
delivers  his  message  in  her  waking  hours.  We  cannot  suppose  that  the 
composition  of  the  Scriptures,  that  highest  work  of  man  under  the  influence 
of  God's  Spirit,  was  purely  mechanical.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems  plain  to 
us  that  Psalms  and  Gospels  and  Epistles  alike  bear  indubitable  marks  of 
having  proceeded  from  living  human  hearts,  and  from  minds  in  the  most 
active  and  energetic  movement.  But,  in  order  clearly  to  present  our  own 
view  of  God's  method,  it  will  be  necessary  to  say  a  preliminary  word  with 
regard  to  the  general  matter  of  divine  and  human  cooperation. 

There  are  those  who  conceive  of  God's  working  and  man's  working  as 


150  THE    MKTIIOI)    OF     INSPIRATION. 

mutually  exclusive  of  each  other.  They  cannot  comprehend  the  possibility 
of  an  act's  having  man  for  its  author  in  the  most  complete  sense,  and  yet 
being  in  an  equally  complete  sense  the  work  of  God.  Yet  just  such  coop- 
eration of  God  and  man  is  brought  to  our  view  in  the  apostle's  injunction  : 
'  *  Work  out  your  own  salvation  with  fear  and  trembling  ;  for  it  is  God  which 
worketh  in  you  both  to  will  and  to  work,  for  his  good  pleasure. "  Even  regen- 
eration and  conversion  are  respectively  the  divine  and  the  human  aspects  of 
a  change  in  which  God  and  man  are  equally  active,  although  logically 
speaking  the  initiative  is  wholly  with  God.  But  the  highest  and  most  won- 
derful proof  and  illustration  of  such  union  of  divine  and  human  activities  is 
found  in  the  person  of  the  God-man,  Jesus  Christ.  There  surely  the  fact 
that  a  work  is  human  does  not  prevent  its  being  also  divine,  nor  the  fact 
that  a  work  is  divine  prevent  its  being  also  human. 

It  is  the  great  service  to  theology  of  Dorner,  the  distinguished  German 
writer,  that  he  has  reiterated  and  emphasized  this  truth  that  man  is  not  a 
mere  tangent  to  God,  capable  of  juxtaposition  and  contact  with  him,  but  of 
no  interpenetration  and  indwelling  of  the  divine  Spirit.  Every  believer 
knows  that  the  effect  of  God's  union  with  his  soul  is  only  to  put  him  more 
fully  in  possession  of  his  own  powers ;  in  truth,  he  never  is  truly  and  fully 
himself  until  God  is  in  him  and  works  through  him.  Then  only  he  learns  how 
much  there  is  of  him,  and  of  what  lofty  things  he  is  capable.  Now  in  this 
truth,  as  we  conceive,  lies  the  key  to  the  doctrine  of  inspiration.  The 
Scriptures  are  the  production  equally  of  God  and  of  man,  and  are  never  to 
be  regarded  as  merely  human  or  merely  divine.  The  wonder  of  inspiration 
—  that  which  constitutes  it  a  unique  fact — is  in  neither  of  these  terms  sep- 
arately, but  in  the  union  of  the  two.  Those  whom  God  raised  up  and 
providentially  qualified,  spoke  and  wrote  the  words  of  God,  not  as  from 
without  but  as  from  within ;  and  that,  not  passively,  but  in  the  most  con- 
scious possession  and  the  most  exalted  exercise  of  their  own  powers  of 
intellect,  emotion  and  will. 

Inspiration  is  a  unique  fact,  and  in  attempting  to  illustrate  our  meaning, 
we  run  the  risk  of  misleading.  But  let  us  run  this  risk,  and  trust  to  subse- 
quent explanation  to  correct  any  false  inferences  from  our  illustrations. 
What  dictation  is,  we  know  without  any  example.  The  merchant  dictates  a 
letter  by  word  of  mouth,  and  after  it  is  written  reads  it  over,  and  if  it  is 
correct  authorizes  the  sending  of  it.  It  is  his  letter,  though  not  a  word  of 
it  is  in  his  handwriting.  This  is  the  first  method  —  a  method  employed,  as 
we  grant,  in  Scripture,  though,  as  we  also  believe,  only  in  rare  and  excep- 
tional cases.  There  is  a  second  method  which  may  conceivably  have  been 
employed.  In  an  interview  with  his  confidential  clerk,  the  same  merchant 
may  give  the  clerk  a  general  idea  of  the  letter  which  he  desires  to  have 
written,  but  may  leave  the  words  and  even  the  method  of  treatment  in  large 
degree  to  the  clerk's  discretion.  Still  it  is  the  merchant's  letter,  not  the 
clerk's.  In  fact,  it  would  be  to  all  intents  and  purposes  his  letter,  had  he 
given  no  special  directions  to  his  secretary,  but  had  left  him  to  be  guided  in 
his  writing  by  what  he  knew  of  the  general  spirit  and  business  methods  of 
his  employer, — that  is,  it  would  be  the  employer's  letter,  if  it  were  accepted 
by  that  employer  and  sent  forth  by  one  authorized  to  act  in  his  name.  Now 
it  is  possible  that  the  Scriptures  might  be  the  word  of  God,  even  though  the 


THE    MKTHOI)    OF     INSPIRATION.  151 

relation  between  the  divine  and  the  human  authors  should  in  some  cases  be 
u  o  more  close  than  this.  God  might  raise  up  men  and  providentially  pre- 
pare them  for  this  special  work ;  he  might  specially  call  them  to  it  by  inward 
impulse  or  by  the  outward  certification  of  miracle,  and  though  there  should 
be  no  dictation  and  no  suggestion  of  anything  more  than  the  general  idea 
to  be  expressed,  his  acceptance  of  their  work  and  publication  of  it  as  his 
own  might  constitute  it  as  fully  his  word,  as  it  would  be  if  he  had  dictated 
every  part. 

But  let  us  hasten  to  say,  however,  that  the  method  of  "  general  instruc- 
tions" suggested  by  the  illustration  just  given  seems  to  us  equally  insuffi- 
cient to  account  for  the  facts  with  the  method  of  dictation  previously  spoken 
of.  The  only  parts  of  the  Scripture  that  could  with  any  semblance  of 
probability  be  thought  of  as  composed  in  this  way  would  be  those  portions 
which  most  closely  resemble  secular  literature,  such  as  the  books  of  the 
Chronicles,  or  certain  of  the  Psalms,  or  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  But  even 
here,  the  loftiness  of  tone,  the  absolute  freedom  from  all  proved  historical 
error,  the  incidental  inculcation  of  profound  doctrine,  the  important  signifi- 
cance of  slight  shades  of  expression,  render  it  impossible  for  the  Christian 
render  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  over  the  whole  process  of  composition  a 
wisdom  higher  than  the  wisdom  of  this  world,  even  the  wisdom  of  the  Holy 
(Hiost,  must  have  presided.  While  we  reject  the  dictation-theory  of  inspir- 
ation as  an  explanation  of  the  general  method  in  which  the  Scriptures  were 
written,  we  reject  as  entirely  and  unqualifiedly  the  theory  that  God  simply 
put  his  ideas  into  the  minds  of  the  sacred  writers,  and  then  left  them,  in 
independence  of  himself,  to  the  hazardous  and  stupendous  task  of  furnishing 
the  whole  method  of  treatment  and  the  entire  means  of  expression. 

Is  there  a  middle  ground  between  these  two  extremes  ?  Or  rather,  is  there 
not  a  higher  point  of  view  from  which  all  the  truth  which  is  in  each  of  these 
theories  may  be  grasped,  while  the  error  is  excluded?  We  believe  that 
there  is.  A  third  illustration  will  prepare  the  way  for  stating  it.  There  are 
occasional  experiences  in  the  ministry  of  a  faithful  preacher  of  Christ's 
gospel,  when  the  word  of  his  master  seems  fulfilled:  "  It  is  not  ye  that 
speak,  but  the  Spirit  of  your  Father  which  speaketh  in  you."  After  thor- 
ough and  prayerful  preparation,  he  appears  before  a  public  audience  to  utter 
God's  truth  with  regard  to  sin  and  to  salvation.  As  he  proceeds  in  his 
discourse,  the  order  of  thought  upon  which  he  had  fixed  in  his  study  seems 
like  a  track  illumined  with  the  clear  light  of  heaven.  All  the  surroundings 
and  BUgge0tk>lUi  of  the  hour  are  lines  converging  toward  his  chosen  end  — 
the  impressing  of  a  definite  truth  upon  the  minds  of  his  hearers.  And  that 
truth  takes  possession  of  his  very  soul;  he  feels  its  unutterable  greatness, 
it  *  supreme  claims;  he  is  dying  to  utter  it  —  aye,  the  struggle  of  his  nature 
is  so  great  that  he  almost  dies  in  the  uttering  of  it  —  his  very  life  seems  to 
go  out  with  his  words.  Such  new  powers  of  thought  and  feeling  are  roused 
to  action  within  him,  that  he  wonders  at  himself ;  and  as  for  expression,  it 
seems  like  the  full  flowing  of  an  irrepressible  fountain  —  words  fit  themselves 
to  thought  with  an  exactness  and  grace,  a  persuasiveness  and  power,  of 
which  he  never  deemed  himself  capable.  In  short,  he  becomes  possessed 
with  the  truth,  and  he  proclaims  the  truth,  in  a  state  of  insight  and  exaltation 
that  puts  to  shame  all  his  common  moods,  and  gives  almost  a  taste  of  the 


152  THE   METHOD   OF    INSPIRATION. 

knowledge  and  love  and  power  of  seraphs  before  the  throne.  And  tho^e 
who  hear  are  moved,  at  first  they  know  not  why  ;  the  speaker  seems  lost  to 
sight,  and  God  draws  near;  it  is  as  if,  like  Moses,  they  were  admitted  to 
the  inner  sanctuary  of  the  Almighty,  and  heard  his  voice  from  between  the 
cherubim. 

The  sermon  is  ended,  but  not  the  thoughts  of  the  preacher.  What  are 
those  thoughts  ?  If  he  be,  as  we  have  supposed,  a  true  man  of  God,  they 
will  be  thoughts  of  the  deepest  awe  and  humility.  He  will  say:  "God 
spoke,  not  I."  He  will  praise  God,  and  wonder  that  God  has  so  distin- 
guished him  as  to  make  him  his  mouth-piece  and  ambassador.  But  at  the 
same  time  he  will  say  :  "  To-day  I  was  myself.  I  became  aware  of  hitherto 
undiscovered  powers.  How  great  a  thing  it  is  to  be  a  man,  and  to  use  my 
whole  humanity  for  him  who  redeemed  me  !  "  Passivity,  loss  of  conscious- 
ness and  will,  absorption  in  God  till  the  human  element  becomes  a  merely 
selfless  instrument  and  organ  of  the  divine,  these  are  precisely  what  his 
experience  is  not.  Now  the  whole-souled  movement  of  the  man  under  the 
influence  of  the  indwelling  Spirit  —  this  seems  to  us  to  be  the  best  earthly 
analogy  for  the  understanding  of  the  fact  of  inspiration.  As  we  have  already 
intimated,  this  illumination  of  the  preacher  by  the  Holy  Spirit  is  not  itself 
inspiration,  nor  at  the  best  does  it  furnish  anything  more  than  a  partial 
illustration  of  one  principal  feature  of  that  unique  work  of  God.  For  inspi- 
ration may  involve  revelation  of  new  truth,  while  illumination  is  never  more 
than  a  quickening  of  man's  cognitive  powers  to  perceive  the  old  ;  inspiration 
qualities  the  subject  of  it  to  put  God's  truth  into  permanent  and  written 
form,  while  illumination  merely  enables  the  man  to  unfold  and  utter  the 
word  that  has  been  written  already ;  inspiration  gives  absolute  and  final 
authority,  illumination  confers  an  authority  that  is  only  subordinate  and 
relative.  But  the  preacher's  illumination  by  the  Holy  Spirit  furnishes  a 
true  analogy  to  inspiration  in  this  one  respect,  namely,  that  it  involves  a 
complete  union  of  divine  and  of  human  activities,  in  distinction  from  the 
independent  working  of  two  equal  parties  on  the  one  hand,  or  the  mere 
mechanical  influence  of  dictation  on  the  other. 

The  possibility  of  such  working  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man  can  be  denied 
only  by  those  who  regard  man's  soul  as  a  region  so  sacred  and  independent 
that  God  would  not  enter  it  if  he  could,  and  could  not  enter  it  if  he  would. 
There  is  a  striking  similarity  between  their  view  of  inspiration  and  their 
view  of  miracles.  In  both  cases  they  hold  that  the  laws  of  nature  are  sus- 
pended or  violated  ;  in  both  cases  the  second  causes  are  reduced  to  passivity. 
The  attraction  of  gravitation  must  be  annulled,  in  order  that  Elisha  may  cause 
the  axe  to  float  upon  the  surface  of  the  water  ;  the  spiritual  life  of  Paul  must 
come  to  a  temporary  stand-still,  that  he  may  write  the  Epistle  to  Philemon. 
We  consider  these  views  to  be  based  on  a  radically  incorrect  conception  of 
the  relation  of  God  to  the  two  worlds  of  matter  and  of  mind.  God  is  in 
nature  and  in  mind  already, —  he  can  by  special  exercise  of  will  transcend 
the  powers  of  both,  while  yet  these  powers  are  working  in  full  intensity. 
As  gravitation  is  in  operation  even  while  the  hand  of  God  keeps  the  iron 
from  sinking,  so  all  the  laws  of  man's  mental  and  moral  nature  are  in  oper- 
ation at  the  same  time  that  God  uplifts  and  guides  them  in  inspiration. 

The  opinion  which  we  have  been  controverting  has  been  cherished  by 


THE   METHOD    OF    INSPIRATION.  153 

many  excellent  men,  from  a  conviction  that  it  alone  befitted  the  majesty  of 
God,  and  secured  the  sacred  writers  from  errors  arising  from  their  merely 
human  methods  of  thought  and  expression.  But  when  we  consider  that 
man  was  originally  made  to  be  inhabited  and  energized  by  God,  it  seems 
more  in  accordance  with  God's  plan  that  he  should  speak  through  man,  than 
merely  to  him.  The  exaggeration  of  the  divine  element  seems  to  us  as 
serious  an  error  as  the  exaggeration  of  the  human.  Dorner  well  calls  it  the 
docetic  view  of  inspiration.  It  virtually  holds  that  not  the  writers,  but  only 
the  writings,  were  inspired.  When  we  lose  sight  of  the  real  human  author- 
ship of  the  sacred  books,  we  incur  a  loss  comparable  only  to  that  which  we 
should  sustain  by  letting  go  the  human  side  of  our  Redeemer's  person.  A 
great  part  of  the  power  of  the  Bible  over  us,  like  the  attraction  of  Christ, 
arises  from  its  coming  to  us  with  the  voice  and  the  sympathies  of  our  com- 
mon humanity.  Inspiration  took  into  account  this  fact.  It  therefore  did 
not  remove,  but  rather  pressed  into  service,  all  the  personal  peculiarities  of 
the  writers,  together  with  their  defects  of  culture  and  literary  style.  In 
fact,  every  imperfection  not  inconsistent  with  truth  in  a  human  composition 
may  exist  in  inspired  Scripture.  The  Bible  is  the  "  word  of  God,"  but  we 
may  also  say  of  it,  in  a  peculiar  sense,  that  it  is  the  "  word  made  flesh."  It 
presents  t<>  us  truth  in  human  forms.  It  is  a  revelation,  not  for  a  select 
class,  but  for  the  common  mind.  And  rightly  understood,  this  very  human- 
ity of  the  Bible  is  one  of  the  best  proofs  of  its  divinity. 

Precisely  how  much  of  new  knowledge  and  power  was  added  to  each 
particular  Scripture  writer  by  the  fact  of  his  inspiration,  it  is  not  necessary 
or  possible  for  us  to  determine.  In  our  judgment,  the  chief  source  of  error 
in  common  treatises  on  inspiration  is  the  assumption  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
must  always  have  wrought  in  some  uniform  measure,  or  by  the  use  of  some 
uniform  means.  On  the  other  hand,  that  seems  to  us  the  best  definition  of 
inspiration,  which  defines  nothing  as  to  the  extent  or  manner  of  the  influence 
of  the  indwelling  Spirit.  It  is  enough  4o  say  that  inspiration  is  that  special 
influence  of  God  upon  the  minds  of  the  Scripture  writers,  in  virtue  of  which 
their  productions,  apart  from  errors  of  transcription  and  when  rightly  inter- 
preted, together  constitute  an  infallible  and  sufficient  rule  of  faith  and 
practice.  So  long  as  inspiration  is  regarded  as  an  influence  upon  the  minds, 
in  distinction  from  the  hands,  of  the  writers,  we  may  grant  as  unlimited 
variety  in  the  means  used  by  God  to  enlighten  them,  as  there  is  in  the  means 
he  uses  for  enlightening  a  sinner  at  conversion.  Inspiration  is  not  to  be 
defined  by  its  method,  but  by  its  result.  It  is  a  general  term,  including  all 
those  kinds  and  degrees  of  the  Holy  Spirit's  influence  which  were  brought 
to  bear  upon  the  minds  of  the  Scripture  writers  in  order  to  secure  the  putting 
into  permanent  and  written  form  of  the  truth  best  adapted  to  man's  moral, 
and  religious  needs.  Inspiration  may  often  include  revelation,  or  the  direct 
communication  from  God  of  truth  to  which  man  could  not  attain  by  his 
unaided  powers.  It  may  include  illumination,  or  the  quickening  of  man's 
mind  to  understand  truth  already  revealed.  Inspiration,  however,  does  not 
necessarily  and  always  include  either  revelation  or  illumination.  It  is  simply 
the  divine  influence  which  secures  a  correct  transmission  of  the  truth  to  the 
future  ;  and,  according  to  the  nature  of  the  truth  to  be  transmitted,  it  may  be 
only  an  inspiration  of  superintendence,  or  it  may  be,  at  the  same  time,  an 
inspiration  of  illumination  or  of  revelation. 


154  THE    METHOD    OF    INSPIRATION. 

This  seems  to  be  the  meaning  of  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 
when  he  tells  us  that  in  Old  Testament  times  God  spoke  to  the  fathers 
through  the  prophets  in  many  parts  and  in  many  ways.  Inspiration,  there- 
fore, may  be  best  regarded  as  a  bestowment  of  various  kinds  and  degrees  of 
knowledge  and  aid,  according  to  need,  sometimes  suggesting  new  truth, 
.sometimes  presiding  over  the  selection  of  preexisting  material,  though  always 
guarding  from  error  in  the  final  elaboration.  It  did  not  always,  nor  even 
generally,  involve  a  direct  communication  to  the  Scripture  writers  of  the 
words  they  wrote.  Thought  is  possible  without  words,  and  in  the  order  of 
nature  precedes  words.  The  Scripture  writers  appear  to  have  been  so 
influenced  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  that  they  perceived  and  felt  even  the  new 
truths  they  were  to  publish  as  discoveries  of  their  own  minds,  and  were  left 
to  the  action  of  their  own  minds  in  the  expression  of  these  truths,  with  this 
single  exception  that  they  were  supernaturally  held  back  from  the  selection 
of  wrong  words,  and  when  needful  were  provided  with  right  ones.  Inspira- 
tion is  therefore  verbal  as  to  its  result,  but  not  verbal  as  to  its  method. 

Yet  in  all  this  work  of  preparation  and  composition,  although  the  WTiters 
of  Scripture  used  their  natural  powers  and  opportunities  as  fully  as  they 
would  have  done  in  purely  secular  composition,  they  were  possessed  and 
animated  by  the  Spirit  of  God.  Notwithstanding  the  ever-present  human 
element,  there  is  an  all-pervading  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures  which  consti- 
tutes these  various  writings  an  organic  whole.  The  Bible  is  in  all  its  parts 
the  word  of  God.  Hence  each  part  is  to  be  judged,  not  by  itself  alone,  but 
in  its  connection  with  every  other  part.  The  Scriptures  are  not  to  be  inter- 
preted as  so  many  merely  human  productions  by  different  authors,  but  also 
as  the  work  of  one  divine  mind.  In  many  an  expression  of  prophet  or 
apostle,  that  divine  mind  may  have  intended  to  communicate  more  than  was 
present  to  the  consciousness  of  the  human  author.  Seemingly  trivial  things 
are  to  be  explained  from  their  connection  with  the  whole.  One  history  is 
to  be  built  up  from  the  several  accounts  of  the  life  of  Christ.  One  doctrine 
must  supplement  another.  The  Old  Testament  is  part  of  a  progressive 
system,  whose  culmination  and  key  are  to  be  found  in  the  New.  The  central 
subject  and  thought  which  binds  all  parts  of  the  Bible  together,  and  in  the 
light  of  which  they  are  to  be  interpreted,  is  the  person  and  work  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

This,  then,  is  the  sum  of  what  we  have  said  :  The  Scriptures,  except  in 
portions  of  insignificant  extent^  were  not  on  the  one  hand  written  from 
dictation,  nor  on  the  other  hand  composed  by  men  who  derived  their  general 
ideas  from  God,  while  they  were  left  to  themselves  so  far  as  the  expression 
of  those  ideas  was  concerned.  Bather  must  we  hold  to  a  possession  and 
enlightenment  of  the  writers  in  all  parts  of  their  work,  yet  such  a  possession 
and  enlightenment  as  left  them  in  the  fullest  exercise  of  their  natural  powers. 
When  they  wrote,  they  wrote  in  the  method  and  vocabulary  of  their  time, 
and  out  of  their  present  conscious  experience  under  the  influence  of  the 
Spirit.  Balaam  could  not  have  written  the  Gospel  according  to  John,  nor 
could  Paul  have  indited  the  Pentateuch.  When  they  made  researches  they 
were  guided  by  God ;  when  they  committed  the  results  of  their  researches  to 
writing,  he  kept  them  back  from  error  either  in  matter  or  in  expression. 
Wlien  they  were  called  to  prophesy  of  things  to  come,  the  Holy  Spirit 


THE    METHOD    OF    INSPIRATION.  IT).") 

opened  the  future  to  them  ;  when  they  gave  directions  to  the  churches,  thev 
did  it  in  the  wisdom  which  only  the  Holy  Spirit  could  impart.  But  in  all 
this  there  was  nothing  blind,  nothing  mechanical,  nothing  passive.  They 
were  as  truly  the  authors  of  what  they  wrote  as  was  the  Holy  Spirit.  As 
John  Locke  said  :  ' '  When  God  made  the  prophet,  he  did  not  unmake  the 
man. " 

Two  questions  need  to  be  answered  before  this  discussion  can  be  regarded 
as  sufficient.  The  first  is  this  :  Are  all  parts  of  Scripture  inspired  ?  We 
reply  :  All  parts  of  Scripture  are  inspired  in  their  connection  and  relation  to 
each  other.  No  statement  of  the  Bible  can  be  taken  out  from  its  context, 
and  be  called  complete  truth  by  itself.  We  read  in  Scripture  the  words  : 
"  There  is  no  God  ; "  but  we  have  no  difficulty  in  holding  these  to  be  inspired 
when  we  take  them  as  part  of  the  verse  :  "  The  fool  hath  said  in  his  heart, 
There  is  no  God."  This  principle  is  of  universal  application,  and  next  to 
the  principle  of  combined  human  and  divine  authorship,  we  regard  this  one 
of  the  articulated  and  organic  unity  of  all  Scripture  as  the  most  important 
to  an  understanding  of  the  fact  of  inspiration. —  The  second  question  is  this  : 
Are  there  degrees  of  inspiration  ?  We  answer :  There  are  degrees  of  value, 
but  not  degrees  of  inspiration.  Each  part  of  Scripture  is  rendered  com- 
pletely true,  when  interpreted  according  to  its  actual  meaning,  and  complete- 
ness has  no  degrees.  All  parts  of  the  human  body  have  life,  and  all  are 
indispensable  to  the  perfect  whole.  Yet  we  should  miss  the  brain  more  than 
we  should  miss  the  hair  that  covers  it,  and  the  heart  more  than  the  hand 
into  which  it  sends  its  blood.  For  all  this,  he  would  talk  absurdly  who 
should  speak  of  the  different  parts  of  the  body  as  having  different  degrees  of 
life.  So  the  Gospels  may  be  of  greater  value  to  us  than  the  minor  prophets, 
and  yet  the  inspiration  of  the  latter  be  as  complete  as  that  of  the  former. 

Thus  we  have  endeavored  to  set  forth  a  connected  view  of  the  method  of 
inspiration.  We  have  approached  the  subject  without  controversial  refer- 
ence to  recent  discussions  of  it  —  with  ireuic,  rather  than  polemic,  intent. 
We  are  convinced  that  the  contemplation  of  the  theme  from  the  point  of 
view  which  wo  have  chosen,  however  imperfect  and  fragmentary  our  own 
treatment  may  have  been,  will  enlarge  our  conceptions  not  only  of  the 
mysterious  greatness,  but  also  of  the  genuine  reasonableness,  of  the  doctrine 
of  inspiration. 


XL 

CHRISTIAN  INDIVIDUALISM: 


Every  man  has  his  gift,  and  he  is  responsible  for  that.  It  was  none  of 
Peter's  business  what  John  had  to  do,  and  Jesus  told  him  so.  Peter's  busi- 
ness was  to  follow  Christ  himself.  Here  we  are  taught  the  doctrine  of  Chris- 
tian individualism.  It  is  not  every  one  who  appreciates  his  individuality. 
Some  people  fancy  that  God  creates  things  in  lots ;  that  he  cares  only  for 
the  species  ;  that  all  the  members  of  a  race  are  essentially  alike.  But  they 
should  learn  better.  The  telescope  reveals  a  variety  in  God's  works  above 
us.  Stars  are  of  many  magnitudes  and  many  colors,  single  and  double,  satel- 
lites and  suns.  One  star  differeth  from  another  star  in  glory,  and  the  heav- 
ens in  ten  thousand  ways  illustrate  the  manifold  wisdom  of  God.  On  the 
earth  itself,  the  naturalist  and  the  botanist  find  not  only  an  ever-increasing 
number  of  species,  but  within  the  bounds  of  each  species  a  greater  and 
greater  number  of  varieties.  No  two  clover-leaves  and  no  two  blades  of 
grass  are  precisely  alike.  Men  of  science  are  beginning  to  discern  a  seem- 
ingly endless  versatility  in  nature.  So  inexhaustible  are  the  resources  of 
invention  displayed,  that  no  man  can  hope  to  accomplish  anything  unless 
he  gives  his  life  to  the  study  of  a  very  limited  field.  And  if  the  inquirer  be 
devout,  he  sees  God  in  this  variety  of  the  world,  and  cries  with  the  Psalm- 
ist:  "  O  Lord,  how  manifold  are  thy  works !  in  wisdom  hast  thou  made 
them  all." 

God's  freedom  is  illustrated  by  individuality  in  nature,  as  his  unifying 
and  organizing  mind  is  exhibited  in  the  classes  and  laws  of  nature.  Diver- 
sity in  unity,  and  unity  in  diversity,  seems  to  be  his  aim.  There  is  no  need 
that  any  two  things  should  be  precisely  alike,  for  the  wisdom  of  God  is 
infinite.  And  if  this  is  so  in  the  irrational  creation,  much  more  is  it  true  of 
man,  whose  glory  is  that  he  resembles  God  in  freedom.  No  two  faces  were 
ever  absolutely  alike  —  even  twins  always  differ.  The  few  lines  of  the  human 
countenance  are  so  manipulated  by  the  divine  Artist,  that  there  are  ten 
thousand  thousand  distinguishable  shades  of  expression.  Why  then  should 
we  think  that  souls  are  alike  ?  In  that  more  delicate  and  plastic  material, 
the  invisible  spirit,  what  an  incalculable  multitude  of  differences  there  must 
be  !  The  Germans  call  Jean  Paul  Bichter  "  Der  Einzige"— "  the  unique," 
—  and  the  epithet  indicates  the  love  they  bear  him  as  the  communicator  of 
a  fresh  and  peculiar  impulse  to  their  literature.  But  each  of  us,  as  well  as 
Jean  Paul,  is  a  unique  personage.  Each  "  dwells  like  a  star,  apart ;  "  each 
is  solitary,  impenetrable  to  any  other.  Each  has  his  own  gifts,  his  own 
tendencies,  his  own  powers,  his  own  capacities  for  joy  and  for  suffering. 


*  Preached  at  Vassar  College,  February  28,  1886,  as  a  sermon  on  the  text,  John  21 :  2U 
22— "  What  shall  this  man  do? What  is  that  to  thee?    Follow  thou  me." 

156 


CHRISTIAN    INDIVIDUALISM.  157 

We  do  not  know  ourselves,  until  some  great  crisis  of  our  history  reveals  to 
us  the  UD suspected  depths  of  our  natures.  Then  we  discover  a  capacity  for 
almost  boundless  sorrow,  for  agonizing  remorse,  for  consuming  desire,  for 
overwhelming  joy.  We  see  that  there  is  more  of  us,  a  hundred  times  over, 
than  we  had  ever  imagined  ;  that  we  are  fearfully  and  wonderfully  made ; 
that  there  are  powers  of  thought  and  feeling  and  will  within  us  that  make 
us  immortal ;  that  we  stand  over  against  God  with  personalities  as  single 
and  unique  as  his  own.  So  we  step  out  from  the  crowd  and  become  con- 
scious of  our  manhood  or  our  womanhood  ;  but  with  the  new  sense  of  our 
dignity  in  the  creation,  we  learn  for  the  first  time  of  a  responsibility  which 
we  must  bear,  and  of  a  destiny  which  we  must  determine. 

Now  from  this  fact  of  individuality,  which  we  recognize  when  once  it  is 
stated  to  us,  there  follow  certain  inferences  which  are  not  so  obvious,  but 
which  it  is  my  main  purpose  this  morning  to  impress  upon  you,  The  first 
is  this :  If  every  man  is  a  peculiar  being,  then  every  man  is  guilty  of 
peculiar  sins.  By  this  I  mean,  that  in  your  individual  character  and  life 
there  are  certain  embodiments  and  manifestations  of  sin  such  as  are  not  to 
be  found  anywhere  else  in  the  universe.  You  have  not  sinned  just  as  other 
people  have.  You  have  had  peculiar  gifts  and  opportunities,  which  have 
made  you  capable  of  a  peculiar  sort  of  transgression.  No  one  else  could 
have  sinned  just  as  you  have,  because  no  one  else  is  just  like  you.  You  have 
not  simply  repeated  the  common  sin  of  the  race  ;  for  in  you  there  is  a  new 
and  unique  centre  of  force  which  does  more  than  express  the  past :  it  adds 
to  the  past,  it  makes  a  character  and  influence  of  its  own.  You  have  not 
simply  imitated  and  reproduced  the  evil  examples  of  others  —  you  may  have 
done  that,  but  you  have  put  your  own  stamp  upon  every  deed.  There  is 
.something  very  solemn  in  that  word  "character."  It  meant  originally  the 
mark  which  the  engraver  makes  upon  the  metal  or  the  stone.  Then  it  came 
to  mean  the  collective  result  of  his  various  chisellings  and  cuttings.  And 
when  we  speak  of  human  character,  we  imply  that  each  human  being  is, 
with  every  act  and  desire  and  thought,  making  a  mark  upon  the  imperish- 
able substance  of  his  soul.  And  in  this  artistic  work  of  carving  out  his  char- 
acter each  one  of  us  shows  a  fearful  originality. 

If  you  should  find  in  the  woods  some  peculiar  species  of  poisonous  plant 
or  venomous  reptile,  and  should  be  t  >ld  that  it  was  no  descendant  from  races 
of  the  past,  but  was  a  new  creation,  you  would  start  back  from  it  wiih  an 
added  horror.  Now  your  sins  are  just  such  new  creations.  Man  can  create 
nothing  else  without  God  but  that,  but  he  can  create  sin,  and  he  has  created 
it.  And  you  have  exercised  your  mysterious  prerogative  by  bringing  into 
bring  acts,  and  desires,  and  thoughts  of  transgression,  st:ch  as  no  other 
being  in  the  universe  has  ever  originated.  Being  yourself  different  from 
every  other  creature,  you  have  been  able  to  use  your  will  in  a  course  of 
transgression  perfectly  individual  and  unique.  There  are  pejulia- aggrava- 
tions of  your  sins,  arising  from  the  peculiar  light  you  have  had  and  the 
peculiar  grace  you  have  resisted.  Your  sins,  for  this  reason,  have  consti- 
tuted a  peculiar  insult  to  the  divine  holiness,  and  they  have  had  a  peculiar 
evil  influence  over  others.  There  is  a  peculiar  account  that  you  have  to 
render  to  God.  God's  righteo;isn  -ss  could  never  be  vindicated  by  judging 
you  as  one  of  a  mass.  You  must  stand  singly  and  alone  before  the  judgment 


158  CHRISTIAN    INDIVIDUALISM. 

seat  of  Christ.  There  each  shall  receive  according  to  the  deeds  done  in  hi 
own  body.  And  there,  for  me  and  for  you,  if  we  are  unsaved,  must  be  an 
unveiling  of  the  secrets  of  the  heart  and  the  visiting  upon  each  of  a  pecu- 
liar guilt,  and  shame,  and  condemnation.  Ah,  when  I  think  of  my  individual 
sins,  with  all  their  peculiar  aggravations,  I  can  see  how,  in  some  particulars 
and  aspects,  I  may  be  in  my  unique  personality  an  illustration  of  the  enor- 
mity and  hatef illness  of  sin  such  as  neither  earth  nor  hell  can  elsewhere 
show.  And  what  is  true  of  me  is  true  of  you.  In  virtue  of  this  great  fact 
of  individuality,  both  you  and  I  should  call  ourselves,  as  Paul  called  himself, 
the  "chief  of  sinners  ;  "  should  acknowledge,  with  the  prophet  Amos,  our 
"manifold  transgressions  "  and  "  mighty  sins  ;  "  aye,  each  one  of  us  should 
cry,  as  the  Publican  cried,  "  God  be  merciful  to  me,  the  sinner,"  as  if  there 
were  no  other  sinner  upon  the  footstool  so  great  as  he. 

A  second  inference  is  this  :  If  every  man  is  a  peculiar  being,  then  a 
peculiar  wisdom  and  grace  of  God  are  needed  to  save  him.  It  is  not 
enough  for  God  to  decree  salvation  for  the  church  as  a  whole.  He  must 
set  his  love  upon  me  and  choose  me.  A  merely  general  election  might  not 
include  a  case  so  singular  as  mine  has  been. — It  will  not  do  for  Jesus  to  die 
simply  for  the  race  at  large.  He  must  die  for  me,  as  if  there  were  no  other 
to  be  saved  :  for  only  a  most  particular  and  personal  sacrifice  of  the  Son  of 
God  could  reach  my  case  and  atone  for  my  sins.  And  so  the  believer  looks 
to  the  cross  and  says  :  "  My  sins  gave  sharpness  to  the  nails,  and  pointed 
every  thorn."  "  The  Saviour  died  for  me."  "  He  loved  me,  and  gave  him- 
self for  me. " — It  will  not  do  for  Christ  to  offer  a  merely  general  pardon  to 
offenders.  No,  there  is  something  in  every  sinner's  case,  when  the  Hoi}' 
Spirit  enlightens  him,  that  seems  so  peculiarly  wicked  as  to  go  beyond  all 
ordinary  bounds  of  sin,  to  make  him  an  exceptional  case  of  transgression, 
and  to  put  him  beyond  the  reach  of  mercy.  The  convicted  sinner  feels  like 
Peter,  after  he  had  denied  his  Master,  that  though  there  may  be  salvation 
for  others,  there  can  be  none  for  him.  But  just  as  Christ  after  his  resurrec- 
tion said  :  "  Go,  tell  Peter,"  and  so  intimated  the  granting  of  a  special  par- 
don for  his  particular  case,  so  to  every  such  sinner  he  sends  by  his  Holy 
Spirit  a  special  message  of  forgiveness,  and  says:  "Thy  sins,  which  are 
many,  are  forgiven  thee  ;  go  in  peace." — It  is  not  enough  that  Jesus  should 
ask  blessings  for  his  followers  in  the  mass,  now  that  he  has  ascended  his 
throne ;  for  my  needs  are  such  as  are  found  nowhere  else  but  in  my  own 
soul.  He  must  intercede  particularly  for  me,  with  my  idiosyncrasies  and 
special  temptations  ;  for  the  grace  that  saves  others  will  never  be  sufficient 
to  save  me.  Christ  can  say  to  me,  as  he  said  to  Peter  :  "  I  have  prayed  for 
thee,  that  thy  faith  fail  not." — It  is  not  enough  that  Christ  should  bestow  on 
me  simply  the  common  influences  of  his  Spirit, —  the  same  influences 
which  are  bestowed  upon  all.  There  are  peculiar  depths  of  my  nature  that 
must  be  reached  ;  peculiar  and  serpentlike  convolutions  of  my  wicked  heart 
that  must  be  untwisted  ;  peculiar  intensities  of  evil  ambition  and  self-exalta- 
tion that  must  be  subdued,  if  I  am  ever  to  be  saved.  To  convert  and  to 
sanctify  each  sinner,  demands  a  mighty  operation  and  process  of  the  divine 
Spirit,  different  from  any  other  that  he  has  ever  wrought. — It  is  not  enough 
that  God  should  lead  me  by  his  Providence  as  he  leads  others.  No,  "he 
calleth  his  own  sheep  by  name,  and  leadeth  them  out."  "  He  leadeth  me,"' 


CHRISTIAN    INDIVIDUALISM.  151) 

aye,  **  he  leadeth  the  blind  by  a  way  that  they  knew  not  " —  knew  not,  because 
no  other  soul  ever  was  so  led,  or  could  be. 

Does  not  this  strange  fact  of  our  individuality  throw  light  upon  our  past 
experience  ?  You  have  sometimes  asked  :  ' '  Why  hast  thou  made  me  thus  ?  " 
"Why  hast  thou  so  dealt  with  me  ?  "  Well,  it  is  evident,  at  least,  that  there 
has  been  a  peculiar  dealing  of  God,  corresponding  to  your  peciiliar  nature. 
You  needed  a  peculiar  care  and  discipline,  and  just  what  you  needed  God 
has  uiven  to  you.  Is  it  not  a  matter  of  profound  gratitude  that  infinite  wis- 
dom can  give  a  personal  attention  to  you  and  your  salvation,  as  perfectly  as 
if  there  were  no  other  to  care  for  in  the  universe?  My  friends,  we  are  not 
saved  in  a  lump.  There  are  peculiar  dealings  of  God  with  each  individual 
soul.  My  experience  is  mine,  and  yours  is  yours,  and  there  is  no  possibility 
of  exchanging  them.  Just  as  each  separate  soldier  has  an  experience  of  his 
own  in  battle,  and  just  as  each  rescued  passenger  can  tell  a  different  story 
of  shipwreck,  so  each  history  of  salvation  will  have  a  thrilling  interest  of  its 
own.  No  other  being  in  all  God's  universe  has  been  saved  just  as  I  have 
been.  The  multitude  of  God's  thoughts  toward  me  is  more  than  I  can  num- 
ber. In  the  record  of  its  varied  experiences  under  the  mighty  influences  of 
God's  Providence  and  God's  Spirit,  shall  be  made  known  by  the  church,  to 
the  principalities  and  powers  in  heavenly  places,  the  manifold  wisdom  of 
God.  Each  soul  redeemed  Mid  brought  to  glory  shall  have  a  new  name, 
which  no  one  knoweth  but  lie  that  receiveth  it  —  the  sign  manual  of  God 
stamped  upon  him  in  a  way  unique  and  incommunicable.  And  each  soul 
will  sing  with  an  emphasis  and  meaning  all  its  own  : 

"  Ainnxinfr  tfruee,  how  su •<•<•(  the  sound. 
That  saved  a  wretch  like  me  !  " 

There  is  a  third  inference  :  If  every  man  is  a  peculiar  being,  then  every 
man  hax  a  peculiar  work  for  God  to  do.  Just  as  there  was  a  man  sent 
i'roni  (lo<l  whose  name  was  John,  and  that  John  the  Baptist  had  a  peculiar 
work  to  do,  corresponding  to  his  nature  and  endowments,  so  there  is  another 
man  sent  from  God  \\lmse  name  is — your  name,  whatever  that  may  be.  It 
is  not  for  nothing  that  God  lias  made  you  just  as  you  are,  and  has  treated 
you  just  as  he  has.  The  children's  hymn  explains  it  all : 

••  Diiiv  to  do  ritfht,  dare  to  l»e  true: 
Von  have  a  »n//7;  that  no  other  can  do  !  " 

"Every  man  for  himself" — in  a  Christian  sense.  As  you  are  peculiarly 
constituted,  as  you  have  peculiar  gifts,  and  opportunities,  as  you  have  had  a 
peculiar  experience  of  God's  forbearing  love  aud  saving  grace,  so  you  pecu- 
liarly represent  Christ,  so  you  are  to  reflect  a  peculiar  honor  on  your  Savior 
and  your  King.  There  is  a  peculiar  testimony  you  can  give  to  Christ  which 
no  other  man  on  earth  can  give.  Secret  communications  of  God's  truth  and 
grace  Lave  been  made  to  you.  They  are  hid  from  all  the  universe  besides. 
Your  peculiar  course  of  development  and  education  is  a  matter  of  interest  to 
angelic  beings,  and  it  is  you  who  are  to  make  known  what  God  has  done  for 
you.  There  is  a  peculiar  crown  which  you,  and  no  other,  can  cast  at  the  Re- 
deemer's feet ;  aye,  throughout  eternity,  there  is  a  peculiar  phase  of  the 
image  of  Christ  which  you  are  to  reflect,  and  a  peculiar  service  to  him  which 
you  are  to  render,  and  a  peculiar  glory  which  you  are  to  give  to  his  great 


160  CHRISTIAN    INDIVIDUALISM. 

I  confess  that  I  rejoice  to  think  that  I  am  to  be  of  some  peculiar  use  :  that 
I  can  do  something  that  no  other  being  can  do  ;  that  God  has  made  me  an 
indispensable  part  of  his  plan  of  revealing  himself  to  the  universe.  How  is 
it  with  you,  my  hearer  ?  Do  you  not  think  it  a  great  thing  to  be  made  some- 
thing of  by  God  ?  And  do  you  not  see  the  folly  and  the  crime  of  wishing 
to  be  somebody  else  ;  of  hiding  yourself  behind  somebody  else  ;  of  neglecting 
your  own  work  because  somebody  else  does  not  do  his  ?  When  the  master 
in  the  parable  went  into  a  far  country,  he  apportioned  to  his  servants,  "to 
every  man  his  work."  The  talents  were  distributed  to  every  man  according 
to  his  ability.  Paul  explains  the  parable  when  he  says  :  "To  each  one  is 
given  the  manifestation  of  the  Spirit,  to  profit  withal."  And  Peter  tells  the 
whole  story  of  our  duty,  when  he  says  :  "  As  every  man  hath  received  the 
gift,  even  so  minister  the  same  to  another,  as  good  stewards  of  the  manifold 
grace  of  God."  In  other  words  :  God's  grace  is  manifold,  varied,  multitudi- 
nous, as  the  number  of  his  redeemed.  Each  rescued  soul,  however  humble, 
has  his  peculiar  endowment  of  nature  and  of  the  spirit.  According  to  the 
quality  and  extent  of  God's  gifts  to  us,  we  are  to  minister  to  others,  as  faith- 
ful stewards  who  have  received  these  gifts,  not  that  we  may  spend  them  upon 
ourselves,  but  that  we  may  employ  them  for  the  interest  of  the  owner,  and 
for  the  good  of  the  souls  whom  he  died  to  save. 

I  would  that  this  solemn  thought  of  the  peculiarity  of  our  work  might  not 
ba  lost  upon  us.  It  is  so  easy  to  think  that  if  we  do  not  do  our  work  some 
one  else  may  do  it  for  us.  Oh,  remember  that,  being  different  from  every 
other,  no  other  man  or  angel  can  ever  take  your  place.  If  you  do  not  do 
your  work,  your  work  will  not  be  done.  It  is  so  easy  to  say  :  "I  will  do 
this,  upon  condition  that  some  other  person  will  do  that. "  Oh,  remember 
that  you  are  a  solitary  individual  before  God,  and  that  he  says  to  you  as 
Christ  said  to  Peter,  when  he  asked  what  John  should  do  :  "  What  is  that 
to  thee ?  follow  thou  me."  It  is  so  easy  to  make  others  doing,  or  ability  to 
do,  the  measure  of  our  own.  Oh,  remember  that  each  one  of  us  shall  give 
account  of  himself  to  God  ;  that  to  whom  much  has  been  given,  of  him  much 
shall  be  required  ;  that  even  he  who  had  the  one  talent,  and  hid  it,  was  cast 
out  and  rejected,  because  he  had  not  made  it  into  two. 

I  have  said  that  this  individuality  implies  peculiar  sins  on  our  part  and 
peculiar  grace  on  the  part  of  God.  I  have  said  that  it  implies  that  every 
man  has  a  peculiar  work  for  God  to  do.  But  our  theme  will  not  be  complete 
without  a  fourth  inference.  If  every  man  is  a  peculiar  being,  then  for 
every  faithful  worker  there  is  a  peculiar  reward.  Rewards  in  God's 
administration  are  matters  of  grace,  not  of  debt;  and  yet  we  are  to  !><> 
rewarded  "  according  to  our  works."  Not  on  account  of  our  works,  as  if 
by  working  we  could  put  God  under  obligation  to  us,  but  according  to  our 
works  —  in  proportion  to  what  we  have  done  and  the  faithfulness  with  which 
we  have  done  it.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  the  rewards  of  all  ,^hall  be  the 
same.  The  laborers  in  the  vineyard  each  one  received  his  penny.  So  in 
the  great  future  all  souls  will  be  equally  full  of  the  love  and  goodness  of 
God  —  full  to  the  utmost  measure  of  their  capacity.  But  then  their  capaci- 
ties shall  differ,  and  one  shall  be  able  to  hold  more  than  another.  A  small 
pail  can  be  just  as  full  as  a  great  tub,  but  the  great  vessel  can  hold  much 
more  than  the  small  one.  And  the  difference  in  reward  shall  be  determined 


CHRISTIAN    INDIVIDUALISM.  161 

by  the  peculiarities  of  the  service  each  man  has  rendered.  He  who  gives 
«ven  the  cup  of  cold  water  in  the  name  of  a  disciple  shall  in  no  wise  lose  his 
peculiar  reward.  The  servant  whose  pound  has  gained  five  pounds  shall 
be  rewarded  with  authority  over  five  cities,  and  the  servant  whose  pound 
has  gained  ten  pounds  shall  be  rewarded  with  authority  over  ten. 

But  the  peculiarity  of  the  reward  shall  be  graduated,  not  only  to  the 
peculiarity  of  the  work  that  each  has  done,  but  to  the  peculiarity  of  the 
nature  of  him  who  receives  it.  Joy  shall  be  the  reward  of  heaven  —  but  it 
shall  be  in  each  case  a  joy  with  which  a  stranger  intermeddleth  not.  "Your 
joy  no  man  taketh  from  you."  It  is  a  joy  which  the  highest  archangel 
cannot  share,  because  it  is  the  vibrating  of  all  the  strings  of  a  peculiar  nature 
at  the  soft  touch  of  the  fingers  of  infinite  Love. — Power  shall  be  the  reward 
of  heaven.  The  power  of  complete  self-mastery  will  be  a  peculiar  reward, 
because  no  other  soul  in  the  universe  can  know  the  struggles  through  which 
your  soul  has  passed  in  resisting  its  peculiar  temptations  and  in  subduing 
its  peculiar  sins.  George  Eliot  once  said  that  the  reward  of  a  duty  done  is 
the  power  to  do  another.  As  with  every  new  work  for  Christ  accomplished 
we  pass  on  to  larger  and  larger  achievement,  peculiar  power  of  service  shall 
be  the  reward  of  the  peculiar  gifts  and  endowments  which  we  lay  at  the 
Master's  feet. — Love  shall  be  the  reward  of  the  faithful  —  a  love  that  shall 
admit  the  great  love  of  God  to  fill  up  all  the  interstices  and  gaps  and  empti- 
nesses of  our  natures,  as  water  poured  into  a  bowl  not  only  fills  it  full,  but 
adapts  itself  to  the  peculiar  form  of  the  vessel  that  contains  it. — Holiness 
shall  be  the  reward  of  the  faithful.  There  is  a  mineral  called  diaphane  that 
becomes  transparent  only  in  water.  It  shall  be  the  blessing  of  heaven  that 
this  being  of  ours,  now  so  clouded  and  opaque  through  the  effects  of  sin, 
shall  be  immersed  in  the  divine  purity,  and  in  that  bath  of  regeneration  shall 
be  made  pure  as  God  is  pure. — God  himself  shall  be  the  reward  of  heaven 
—  a  God  who  can  adapt  himself  with  infinite  inventiveness  and  wisdom  to 
every  peculiarity  of  the  beings  he  has  made,  can  be  seen  from  a  different 
point  of  view  by  every  separate  mind,  and  can  be  felt  in  a  different  way  by 
each  separate  heart  of  all  those  he  has  redeemed.  Shakspeare  has  been 
called  the  myriad-minded,  but  there  is  no  end  to  the  sides  and  aspects  of 
God's  being,  and  no  finite  mind  can  know  the  whole.  The  great  reward  of 
heaven  will  be  that  each  redeemed  soul  can  say:  "O,  God,  thou  art  my 
God ! " 

So  the  reward  will  be  peculiar,  as  the  nature,  and  the  sin,  and  the  grace, 
and  the  work,  are  peculiar.  The  reward  will  be  the  raising  to  the  highest 
power,  and  the  exalting  to  the  intensest  activity,  of  that  peculiar  faculty  and 
endowment  which  God  imparted  to  the  soul  at  the  beginning.  Here  is  a 
Christian  evolution  that  passes  in  grandeur  and  dignity  all  that  material 
evolution  of  which  scientific  men  delight  to  speak.  They  tell  us  of  a  world 
thrown  off  from  a  fiery  revolving  nebula,  chaotic  and  formless  at  the  first, 
but  gradually  assuming  outline  and  order,  and  bringing  forth  a  constantly 
increasing  variety  of  life  and  beauty.  I  can  hear  the  sons  of  God  shouting 
for  joy,  as  God  says  "Let  there  be  light!"  and  the  ordered  sphere  goes 
whirling  by  ;  and  I  can  conceive  of  those  same  angelic  hosts  adoring  yet  more 
that  wisdom  that  in  the  long  course  of  its  subsequent  history  has  made  the 
germinal  world  planted  so  long  ago  amid  the  great  spaces  of  the  universe  to 
11 


162  CHRISTIAN   INDIVIDUALISM. 

develope  into  such  beauty  and  glory  of  mountain  and  field  and  flood.  But 
there  is  another  evolution  grander  than  all  this.  It  is  found  in  the  history 
of  a  redeemed  soul.  Springing  at  its  beginning  from  the  creative  hand  of 
God,  a  mere  rudimentary  germ  of  life  and  mind,  it  passes  into  the  chaos  and 
night  of  sin,  until  that  same  omnipotent  Word  that  called  the  light  out  of 
darkness  causes  to  shine  in  upon  it  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory 
of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ.  Then  the  long  training  of  the  rescued 
spirit,  through  providence  and  grace,  through  temptation  and  affliction, 
through  Christian  work  and  achievement,  until  the  soul  reaches  a  full-orbed 
manhood  in  Christ  Jesus.  On  and  still  on  shall  the  process  go,  labor  becom- 
ing more  and  more  the  highest  rest,  work  becoming  more  and  more  reward, 
every  faculty  developed  to  greatness,  every  peculiar  excellence  brought  to  a 
unique  and  unexampled  beauty,  until  as  the  sons  of  God  see  this  spiritual 
product  of  God's  wisdom  go  sweeping  by,  they  shall  be  compelled  to  say 
that  it  passes  in  glory  all  the  thrones  and  dominions  and  principalities  and 
powers  of  their  celestial  hierarchy,  that  its  history  illustrates  God's  might  and 
foreseeing  wisdom  better  than  all  the  material  worlds  that  float  in  space,  that 
its  heights  of  intellectual  and  moral  greatness  are  more  glorious  than  the 
whiteness  of  Alpine  summits  when  smitten  by  the  first  light  of  the  rising 
sun,  that  its  capacities  for  loving  and  expressing  God  are  greater  than  the 
depths  of  ocean  when  they  reflect  the  untroubled  glory  of  the  starlit  skies. 

When  I  think  of  the  magnificent  developments  of  individuality  which  the 
great  future  shall  witness,  of  the  grand  array  of  crowned  heads  which  heaven 
will  present,  each  one  a  ruler  over  his  own  principality  and  all  of  them  kings 
and  priests  unto  God,  I  look  back  with  horror  to  the  awful  perversity  of 
Satan's  lie  to  our  first  parents  :  ' '  Ye  shall  be  as  God,  knowing  good  and  evil. " 
Seeking  to  be  a  God  to  himself,  all  these  noble  prospects  of  endless  devel- 
opment were  blasted  and  swept  away.  But  in  Christ  they  are  all  restored. 
It  is  not  yet  made  manifest  what  we  shall  be,  but  we  know  that  if  he  shall 
be  manifested  we  shall  be  like  him,  for  we  shall  see  him  even  as  he  is.  Eye 
hath  not  seen,  nor  hath  ear  heard,  neither  hath  entered  into  the  heart  of  man, 
what  God  hath  prepared  for  them  that  love  him.  We  shall  judge  angels, 
and  all  things  shall  be  ours,  because  we  are  Christ's,  and  Christ  is  God's.  It 
was  written  of  ancient  judges  :  "I  said  ye  are  gods."  The  name  of  gods 
was  given  them,  because  they  were  the  representatives  of  God  and  were 
filled  with  his  Spirit.  So  we  shall  be  gods  in  the  world  to  come,  because 
in  this  unique  and  peculiar  nature  which  belongs  to  each  of  us  God  shall 
dwell  and  manifest  himself.  We  shall  shine  like  the  sun  in  the  kingdom  of 
our  Father,  because  we  live  forever  in  the  light  of  him  who  is  the  one  and 
only  Sun. 

God  help  us  then  each  one  to  say  :  "I  am  unlike  every  other  soul  that 
God  ever  made.  I  have  sinned  as  no  other  ever  has.  He  has  saved  me,  and 
led  me,  in  a  different  way  from  any  other.  I  owe  to  him  therefore  a  kind 
and  quality  of  service  such  as  no  other  human  being  has  ever  rendered.  I 
am  bound  to  have  views  of  truth  and  of  duty  such  as  no  other  Christian  ever 
had.  I  am  bound  to  mark  out  for  myself  a  course  of  spiritual  development 
and  a  plan  of  outward  work  that  shall  be  as  original  as  the  leadings  of  God. 
So  only  can  I  be  a  true  man  in  Christ,  an  independent  actor  in  history,  a 
living  force  under  God  in  the  development  of  his  plans,  a  king  forever  in 


CHRISTIAN    INDIVIDUALISM.  163 

God's  kingdom."  It  is  to  this  lofty  development  of  Christian  individuality 
that  God  calls  iis — to  be  Christ's  lieutenants  in  the  universe.  Oh,  you  who 
love  power !  take  the  lasting,  the  eternal  power  that  conies  through  serving 
Christ.  Use  mind,  heart  and  will,  your  ability  to  plan  and  to  give,  your 
voice  and  influence,  your  capacity  to  work  and  your  power  of  getting  others 
to  work  —  use  all  these  in  the  kingdom  and  patience  of  Jesus  Christ  now 
and  here,  and  he  will  not  only  fill  you  with  his  Spirit  and  make  you  a  master 
of  circumstances  and  a  master  of  men,  but  he  will  perpetuate  your  power 
beyond  death,  and  increase  it  throughout  the  great  hereafter  ;  for  he  himself 
has  said  :  "  To  him  that  overcometh,  will  I  give  to  sit  down  with  me  in  my 
throne,  even  as  I  also  overcame  and  sat  down  with  my  Father  on  his  throne. " 


XII. 

THE  NEW  THEOLOGY: 


The  New  Theology,  so  called,  is  a  theology  of  exaggerated  individual- 
ism. What  this  means,  and  what  are  the  errors  and  probable  results  of  the 
system,  will  appear  as  we  go  on.  It  is  well  to  remember,  however,  that  the 
new  always  has  its  roots  in  the  old,  and  before  describing  the  phenomenon 
of  the  present  I  wish  to  mention  some  of  its  historical  connections  in  the  past. 

I  trace  the  history  of  this  tendency  in  theology  as  far  back  as  to  the  nominal- 
ism of  Roscelin,  Duns  Scotus,  and  Occam.  To  these  philosophers,  general 
conceptions  have  their  source  only  in  the  mind  ;  there  is  nothing  correspond- 
ing to  them  in  the  actual  world.  Genera  and  species  are  mere  names  ;  indi- 
viduals are  the  only  realities.  Upon  this  view,  science  is  the  study  only  of 
units  :  in  truth,  there  can  be  no  science,  for  science  would  imply  law  and  the 
binding  of  particulars  into  unity. 

There  is  of  course  a  realism  equally  objectionable  —  the  realism  which 
would  hold  to  the  independent  existence  of  universals  —  the  horse  in  general, 
apart  from  all  individual  horses.  With  Dr.  H.  B.  Smith,  we  "hold  to  univer- 
salia  in  re,  but  insist  that  the  universals  must  be  recognized  as  realities,  as 
truly  as  the  individuals  are. " 

There  have  been  two  chief  applications  of  this  nominalistic  principle  in 
theology  :  the  first  is  its  application  to  the  nature  of  God  ;  the  second,  its 
application  to  the  nature  of  man.  In  the  former  case  the  result  has  been 
either  a  practical  tritheism  on  the  one  hand,  which  denies  the  possibility  of 
a  divine  nature  without  a  divine  person,  and  so  holds  that  there  must  be 
three  Gods  because  there  are  three  who  possess  a  divine  nature  ;  or  on  the 
other  hand  a  practical  unitarianism,  which  holds  that  as  there  is  but  one  God, 
so  only  one  person  can  possess  the  divine  nature.  Nestorianism  for  a 
similar  reason  held  that  Christ  was  two  persons  instead  of  one,  because  it 
could  not  conceive  of  human  nature  in  him  without  independence  and  indi- 
viduality. 

Nominalism  has,  moreover,  conceived  of  the  divine  attributes  as  mere 
names,  with  which,  by  a  necessity  of  our  thinking,  we  clothe  the  one  simple 
divine  essence.  It  holds  that  the  attributes  are  not  distinct  from  God's  essence 
or  from  each  other.  This  is  to  deny  that  we  can  know  God  at  all ;  for  know- 
ing is  not  possible  without  distinguishing.  Set  this  false  tendency  to  regard 
God  as  a  being  of  absolute  simplicity  has  infected  much  of  the  post-reforma- 
tion theology,  and  is  found  as  recently  as  Schleiermacher,  Eothe,  and  Ols- 
hausen.  Schleiermacher  makes  all  the  attributes  to  be  modifications  of 
power ;  Bothe,  of  omniscience  ;  and  Olshausen  attempts  to  prove  that  the 


*  Printed  in  the  Baptist  Quarterly  Review,  for  January,  1888. 

164 


THE    NEW   THEOLOGY.  1(J5 

Word  of  God  must  have  objective  and  substantial  being,  by  assuming  that 
knowing  is  equivalent  to  willing  ;  whence  it  would  seem  to  follow  that,  since 
God  wills  all  he  knows,  he  must  will  moral  evil.  It  is  only  an  application 
of  the  same  principle  when  we  find  Horace  Bushnell,  one  of  the  progenitors 
of  the  New  Theology,  identifying  righteousness  in  God  with  benevolence, 
and  denying  for  that  reason  that  any  atonement  needs  to  be  made  to  God. 
Herbert  Spencer  only  carries  the  principle  further  when  he  concludes  God 
to  be  simple  unknowable  force.  Hence  we  can  adopt  the  statement  of  Tho- 
masius  :  "If  God  were  the  simply  One,  TO  OTT^-  kv,  the  mystic  abyss  in  which 
every  form  of  determination  were  extinguished,  there  would  be  nothing  in 
the  unity  to  be  known."  Hence  "nominalism  is  incompatible  with  the  idea 
of  revelation.  We  teach,  with  realism,  that  the  attributes  of  God  are  objec- 
tive determinations  in  his  revelation,  and  as  such  are  rooted  in  his  inmost 
essence. " 

More  important,  however,  for  our  present  purpose  is  the  application  of 
nominalism  to  the  nature  of  man.  Mankind  upon  this  view  is  but  a  collec- 
tion of  individuals.  The  race  is  not  an  organic  whole.  Souls  are  individu- 
ally created  by  God,  not  propagated  with  the  body  from  a  common  stock. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  an  archetypal  humanity,  of  which  each  man  is  a 
natural  evolution  and  a  partial  illustration.  The  genus  "man"  is  but  a 
name  which  we  attach  to  the  multitude  of  individual  men.  This  is  the 
atomistic  account  of  humanity  ;  individual  men  have  as  little  organic  connec- 
tion with  each  other  as  the  sand-grains  in  a  sand-hill.  They  influence  one 
another  as  do  the  bricks  which  children  set  up  in  a  row  —  each  receives  the 
impact  of  its  next  neighbor  entirely  from  without,  and  there  is  no  living 
unity  between  them.  Hence  there  can  be  no  common  fall  of  humanity  in 
its  first  father  —  each  man  falls  by  himself  and  for  himself,  just  as  each  angel 
did.  It  would  seem  to  follow  that  there  can  be  no  common  salvation,  and 
that  Christ  can  be  no  more  the  source  of  a  new  humanity  to  believers,  than 
Adam  was  the  source  of  sin  and  guilt  to  the  race  at  large.  There  is  no  con- 
demnation in  Adam,  there  is  no  justification  in  Christ ;  for  there  is  no  real 
union  of  humanity  with  either. 

Over  against  this  nominalistic  conception  of  humanity,  I  put  the  realistic 
doctrine  which  I  regard  as  implicitly  contained  in  Scripture.  This  regards 
humanity  at  large  as  the  outgrowth  of  one  germ.  Let  me  illustrate  my 
meaning.  Though  the  leaves  of  a  tree  appear  as  disconnected  units  when 
we  look  down  upon  them  from  above,  a  view  from  beneath  will  discern  the 
common  connection  with  the  twigs,  branches,  trunk,  and  will  finally  trace 
their  life  to  the  root,  and  to  the  seed  from  which  it  originally  sprang.  So 
the  race  of  man  is  one,  because  it  sprang  from  one  head.  Its  members  are 
not  to  be  regarded  only  atomistically,  as  segregated  individuals ;  the  deeper 
truth  is  the  truth  of  organic  unity.  Yet  we  are  not  realists  of  the  mediaeval 
sort.  We  do  not  believe  in  the  separate  existence  of  universals.  Our  real- 
ism only  asserts  the  real  historical  connection  of  each  member  of  the  race 
with  its  first  father  and  head,  and  such  a  derivation  of  each  from  him  as 
makes  us  partakers  of  the  character  which  he  formed.  Adam  was  onc"e  the 
race  ;  when  he  fell,  the  race  fell ;  we  have  the  very  nature  which  transgressed 
and  corrupted  itself  in  him.  I  may  add  that  the  new  conceptions  of  the 
reign  of  law  and  of  the  principle  of  heredity  which  prevail  in  modern  science 


166  THE    NEW   THEOLOGY. 

are  working  to  the  advantage  of  Christian  theology.  The  doctrine  of  Adam's 
natural  headship  is  only  a  doctrine  of  the  hereditary  transmission  of  char- 
acter from  the  first  father  of  the  race  to  his  descendants.  I  do  not  deny 
man's  individuality  and  personal  responsibility  ;  I  only  deny  that  this  is  the 
whole  truth.  Besides  personal  sin,  there  is  race-sin.  The  New  Theology  is 
false  by  defect.  It  is  the  theology  of  nominalism.  It  regards  man  simply 
as  an  individual.  It  holds  that  each  human  soul  is  immediately  created  by 
God  and  has  no  other  relations  to  moral  law  than  those  which  are  individual ; 
whereas,  all  human  souls  are  organically  connected  with  each  other,  and 
together  have  a  corporate  relation  to  God's  law,  by  virtue  of  their  derivation 
from  one  common  stock. 

The  second  source  to  which  I  trace  the  New  Theology  is  the  idealism  of 
Berkeley,  Hume,  Kant,  and  Hegel,  or  rather  the  modern  idealism  of  which 
these  philosophers  are  earlier  and  later  repre  ^entatives.  This  general  method 
of  thought  regards  the  mind  as  conversant  only  with  ideas.  The  tendency 
has  its  root  in  Locke's  teaching  that  all  the  materials  of  our  knowledge  come 
originally  from  sensation ;  the  mind  only  examines  and  rearranges  the 
impressions  received  from  sense ;  carry  the  principle  a  little  further,  and  we 
must  maintain  that  all  we  know  of  an  external  world  is  these  impressions  — 
the  external  world  is,  in  fact,  nothing  but  these  impressions,  and  this  of 
course  implies  a  denial  that  any  such  thing  as  substance  is  known  at  all. 
Here  again  is  exaggerated  individualism  —  the  reduction  of  all  knowledge 
to  the  knowledge  of  particulars.  This  individualism,  applied  to  matter, 
makes  things  to  be  only  thoughts ;  and  Berkeley  saves  the  unity  of  the 
external  world,  not  by  recognizing  created  substance  in  which  qualities 
inhere,  but  by  referring  the  impressions  we  receive  directly  to  God  the  Cre- 
ator. Hume  justly  thought  it  a  poor  rule  that  would  not  work  both  ways, 
and  he  applied  the  rule  not  only  to  matter  but  to  mind.  The  same  individ- 
ualism which  denies  substance  in  the  outer  world  must  logically  deny 
substance  in  the  inner  world ;  we  need  no  soul  within,  any  more  than  we 
need  matter  without ;  what  we  call  soul  is  but  a  series  of  ideas  —  a  string  of 
beads  without  any  string.  Hume  apparently  did  not  see  that  the  very  first 
"impression  "  presupposes  the  existence  of  something  to  be  impressed,  that 
is,  presupposes  a  soul  within  ;  just  as  the  cognition  of  quality  presupposes 
something  to  which  the  quality  belongs,  that  is,  presupposes  material  sub- 
stance without.  Yet  Mill  and  Spencer  have  followed  along  this  same  line, 
and  are  equally  with  Hume  sensational  philosophers. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  the  refusal  to  recognize  the  validity  of  the  mind's 
intuitive  cognition  of  substance  should  result  in  the  loss  of  God  as  well  as 
the  loss  of  the  soul.  Kant  maintained  that  things  conform  to  cognition,  not 
cognition  to  things.  Things  in  themselves  are  unknown.  Behind  phenom- 
ena lies  a  world  which  human  reason  cannot  penetrate.  Compelled  to  think 
as  we  are,  we  can  never  know  whether  or  not  the  reality  corresponds  to  our 
thought.  No  wonder  that  Hegel  rebelled  against  this  agnosticism,  and  went 
to  the  opposite  extreme  of  maintaining  that  the  process  of  thought  guaran- 
teed its  own  validity ;  that  thought,  in  fact,  was  existence,  and  existence  was 
thought.  Hence  in  his  system  we  have  the  merging  of  reality  in  a  thought- 
process  ;  thought  thinks ;  there  is  thinking  without  a  thinker.  There  is  no 
need  of  postulating  any  divine  essence,  any  more  than  there  is  need  of 


THE    NEW   THEOLOGY.  167 

postulating  any  substance  for  the  world  or  for  the  soul.  God  becomes  a 
universal,  but  impersonal,  intelligence  and  will ;  an  intelligence  and  will  that 
come  to  consciousness  only  in  man.  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  will,  even  in 
man,  never  reaches  a  self-determination  that  can  be  called  freedom ;  and 
intelligence  in  man  never  reaches  a  proper  self -consciousness  ;  for  how  can 
either  of  these  be,  where  there  is  no  real  substantial  self?  Soul  is  not 
recognized  as  anything  separate  from  the  whole  of  which  it  forms  a  part, 
and  of  which  it  is  the  necessary  manifestation.  So  idealism,  aiming  to  save 
the  life  of  thought,  really  loses  it ;  refusing  to  recognize  substance  or  essence, 
and  confining  itself  to  particulars,  it  finally  gives  up  the  individuality  both 
of  man  and  of  God. 

Not  all  idealists,  however,  carry  the  system  to  its  logical  conclusions. 
Many  a  modern  theologian  has  adopted  idealistic  principles  without  con- 
sistently applying  them.  The  doctrine  of  the  immanence  of  God  which 
forms  so  large  an  element  in  the  New  Theology  has  been  derived  from  ideal- 
istic sources,  and  is  distinctly  Berkeleian  and  Hegelian  in  its  spirit.  The 
theology  of  Elisha  Mulford,  Theodore  T.  Hunger,  and  Newman  Smyth,  is 
a  theology  which  tends  to  make  God  in  the  human  spirit  the  only  cause. 
God  and  man  are  still  recognized  as  personal,  but  the  life  of  man  is  merged 
to  a  large  extent  in  the  life  of  God.  Internal  revelation  is  substituted  for 
external ;  all  men  are  conceived  of  as  more  or  less  inspired  ;  the  boundaries 
between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  are  broken  down.  Some  recent 
writers  *  pride  themselves  on  having  discovered  anew  the  thought  which 
made  the  early  church  so  devoted  and  yet  so  active  —  the  thought  that  in 
God  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,  and  they  ascribe  the  decline  of 
Christianity  to  the  fact  that  Augustine  and  Calvin  lost  sight  of  it,  and  looked 
upon  God,  after  a  deistic  fashion,  as  a  mechanical  contriver  of  the  universe 
and  a  worker  upon  it  from  without.  As  if  some  of  the  noblest  utterances  of 
this  great  truth  of  God's  immanence  had  not  proceeded  from  Augustine's 
and  from  Calvin's  lips  !  t  Let  us  give  all  proper  emphasis  tx>  the  truth  of 
God's  immanence  ;  let  us  grant  that  it  did  not  receive  sufficient  attention  in 
the  days  of  Butler  and  Paley  ;  let  us  welcome  the  new  light  that  is  thrown 
upon  it  to-day.  But,  then,  let  us  equally  remember  that  God  not  only 
speaks  with  the  still,  small  voice  in  the  constitution  of  man  and  in  the  course 
of  human  history,  but  also  by  outward  miracles  of  healing  and  resurrection, 
by  the  incarnation  and  death  of  his  Son,  and  by  the  external  revelations  of 
Scripture.  God's  immanence  is  a  vast  truth  ;  but  we  must  not  let  it  hide 
from  our  eyes  the  other  truth  of  God's  transcendence.  He  who  is  "in  all," 
and  ' '  through  all, "  is  also  ' '  above  all "  ;  and,  if  he  had  not  by  miracle  proved 
his  transcendence,  we  probably  should  never  have  believed  in  his  imma- 
nence. 

It  is  mainly,  however,  through  the  identity -system  of  Jonathan  Edwards 
that  idealism  has  influenced  the  New  Theology.  To  this  identity-system, 
therefore,  as  its  third  source,  I  trace  the  movement  in  thought  which  I  am 
considering. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Jonathan  Edwards  was  an  idealist.     We  do 


*See  Allen,  Continuity  of  Religvms  Thought. 
+  See  Augustine's  Confessions,  I :  I. 


168  THE    NEW   THEOLOGY. 

not  know  that  he  ever  met  Berkeley,  during  the  Bishop's  stay  in  America,  or 
that  he  ever  read  a  work  of  Berkeley's,  though  Berkeley's  Principles  of 
Human  Knowledge  was  published  before  Edwards's  Freedom  of  the  Will. 
It  was  probably  through  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  Berkeley's  American  friend 
and  disciple,  and  Jonathan  Edwards's  teacher  at  Yale  College,  that  Edwards 
received  his  tirst  bent  to  idealism.*  The  latter  gives  us  his  own  statement 
of  philosophical  doctrine,  as  follows  : 

"  When  I  say  the  material  universe  exists  only  in  the  mind,  I  mean  that  it  is  abso- 
lutely dependent  on  the  conception  of  the  mind  for  its  existence  ;  and  does  not  exist  as 
spirits  do.  whose  existence  does  not  consist  in,  nor  in  dependence  on,  the  conceptions  of 
other  minds.  .  .  .  All  existence  is  mental  ....  the  existence  of  all  exterior  things  is 
ideal.  .  .  .  That  which  truly  is  the  substance  of  all  bodies  is  the  infinitely  exact  and 
precise  and  perfectly  stable  idea  in  God's  mind,  together  with  his  stable  will  that  the 
same  shall  gradually  be  communicated  to  us,  and  to  other  minds,  according  to  fixed 
and  exact  established  methods  and  laws." 

Jonathan  Edwards  was  no  traducian.  Yet  he  was  a  believer  in  original 
sin,  and  held  to  such  a  unity  of  Adam's  posterity  with  their  first  father  as 
made  them  justly  responsible  for  his  first  sin.  This  unity  was  constituted, 
not  by  the  historical  descent  of  the  bodies  and  souls  of  Adam's  posterity 
from  the  body  and  soul  of  Adam,  but  rather  by  the  idea  and  will  of  God, 
which  can  make  any  two  things  to  be  identical.  The  radical  error  in  his 
philosophy  was  his  denial  of  substance.  The  past  existence  of  the  moon  in 
the  heavens  is  not  the  cause  of  its  present  existence  —  God's  will  is  the  cause  ; 
preservation  is  a  continuous  creation  ;  every  instant  the  moon  is  new-created 
by  God.  Similarly,  Edwards  had  no  thought  of  a  common  humanity,  flow- 
ing by  natural  generation  from  Adam  to  us,  ard  still  less  had  he  the  idea  of 
a  realistic  presence  of  the  race  in  its  first  father.  A  union  with  Adam  in 
acts  and  exercises  is  sufficient,  and  such  a  union  exists  by  divine  decree. 
The  idea  of  this  unity,  in  God's  mind,  itself  constitutes  the  realty.  Our 
sinful  acts  and  exercises  are  Adam's,  and  Adam's  acts  and  exercises  are  ours. 

So  Edwards  held  that  God  imputes  Adam's  sin  to  his  posterity  by  arbi- 
trarily identifying  them  with  him  —  identity,  on  the  theory  of  continuous 
creation,  being  only  what  God  appoints.  I  do  not  mean  that  this  is  a  com- 
plete account  of  Edwards's  doctrine  of  sin.  Since  God's  appointment  did 
not  furnish  sufficient  ground  for  imputation,  Edwards  joined  the  Placean 
doctrine  to  the  other,  and  showed  the  justice  of  the  condemnation  by  the 
fact  that  man  is  depraved.  He  added,  moreover,  the  consideration  that  man 
ratifies  this  depravity  by  his  own  act.  Thus  he  tried  to  combine  three  views. 
But  all  were  vitiated  by  his  doctrine  of  continuous  creation,  which  logically 
made  God  the  only  cause  in  the  universe,  and  left  no  freedom,  guilt  or 
responsibility  to  man.  He  thought  too  little  of  sin  as  a  nature,  and  located 
responsibility  too  much  in  the  acts  and  exercises  which  we  put  forth.  It  is 
no  wonder  that  his  followers  repudiated  his  doctrine  of  the  union  of  our 
acts  and  exercises  with  Adam's,  and  denied  that  sin  is  in  any  sense  a  nature. 
Baird,  in  his  Elohim  Revealed,  has  remarked  that  Edwards's  idea  that  the 
character  of  an  act  is  to  be  sought  somewhere  else  than  in  its  cause  involves 
the  fallacious  assumption  that  acts  have  a  subsistence  and  moral  agency  of 
their  own,  apart  from  that  of  the  actor. 

This  divergence  from  the  truth  led  to  the  exercise-system  of  Hopkins  and 


*  Krauth.  Berkeley's  Principles  of  Knowledge.  Prolegomena,  pages  36  and  37. 


THE    NEW    THEOLOGY.  169 

Emmons,  who  not  only  denied  moral  character  prior  to  individual  choices, 
that  is,  denied  sin  of  nature,  but  attributed  all  human  acts  and  exercises  to 
the  direct  efficiency  of  God.  Hopkins  declared:  "All  power  is  in  God. 
This  is  the  proper  efficient  cause  of  every  event.  All  creatures  which  act  or 
move,  exist  and  move  or  are  moved,  by  him."*  Emmons  said  :  "We  can- 
not conceive  that  even  omnipotence  is  able  to  form  independent  agents, 
because  this  would  be  to  endow  them  with  divinity.  And  since  all  men  are 
dependent  agents,  all  these  motions,  exercises,  or  actions  must  originate  in 
a  divine  efficiency. "  t  God  therefore  creates  all  the  volitions  of  the  soul, 
and  effects  by  his  almighty  power  all  changes  in  the  material  world.  Accord- 
ing to  this  view,  the  contact  of  fire  with  the  finger,  the  stroke  of  the  axe  on 
the  tree,  are  only  the  occasions  —  divine  omnipotence  is  the  cause  —  of  the 
tree's  falling  and  the  finger's  burning.  All  causal  connections  between  the 
different  objects  of  the  universe  are  at  an  end.  No  such  things  as  physical 
forces  exist.  Nature  becomes  a  mere  phantom,  and  God  is  the  only  cause 
in  the  universe.  It  seems  plain  to  me  that  this  doctrine  tends  to  pantheism. 
If  all  natural  forces  are  merged  in  the  one  all-comprehending  will  of  God, 
why  should  not  the  human  will  be  merged  in  the  will  of  God  also  ?  Why 
should  not  mind  and  matter  alike  be  the  phenomena  of  one  force  which  has 
the  attributes  of  both  ?  Such  a  scheme  makes  supernatural  religion  impos- 
sible, for  the  reason  that  nature  is  denied,  and  everything  —  that  is  to  say, 
nothing  —  becomes  supernatural.  How  shall  we  save  the  sense  of  sin,  if 
every  sinful  thought  and  impulse  is  the  result  of  the  divine  efficiency  ?  And, 
finally,  how  shall  we  save  the  character  of  God,  if  he  is  the  direct  author  of 
moral  evil? 

It  was  such  difficulties  as  these  which  led  the  main  body  of  New  England 
theologians  to  reject  the  exercise-system,  with  its  attribution  of  all  man's 
states  and  acts  to  the  divine  efficiency.  But  as  they  still  followed  Edwards 
in  his  rejection  of  substance  or  nature,  the  result  was  an  almost  unmitigated 
individualism.  Snialley,  Dwight  and  Woods  were  apparently  conservative. 
N.  W.  Taylor  best  represents  the  tendencies  of  the  system.  He  agreed  with 
Hopkins  and  Eramons  that  there  is  no  imputation  of  Adam's  sin  or  of  inborn 
depravity.  He  called  that  depravity  physical,  not  moral.  But  he  made  all 
sin  to  be  personal.  He  held  to  the  power  of  contrary  choice.  Adam  had 
it,  and,  contrary  to  the  belief  of  Augustinians,  he  never  lost  it.  Man  "not 
only  can  if  he  will,  but  he  can  if  he  won't."  He  can,  yet,  without  the 
Spirit,  will  not.  Yet  he  did  not  hold  to  the  Arminian  liberty  of  indifference 
or  contingence.  He  believed  in  the  certainty  of  wrong  action,  yet  in  power 
to  the  contrary.  "  The  error  of  Pelagius,"  he  says,  "  was  not  in  asserting 
that  man  can  obey  God  without  grace,  but  in  saying  that  man  does  actually 
obey  God  without  grace."  \  Dr.  Park,  of  Andover,  is  understood  to  teach 
that  the  disordered  state  of  the  sensibilities  and  faculties  with  which  we  are 
born  is  the  immediate  occasion  of  sin,  while  Adam's  transgression  is  the 
remote  occasion  of  sin.  The  will,  though  influenced  by  an  evil  tendency, 
is  still  free ;  the  evil  tendency  itself  is  not  free,  and  therefore  is  not  sin. 
This  doctrine,  though  less  radical  than  that  of  Dr.  Taylor,  is  notwithstand- 


*  Hopkins,  Works,  1:164-167. 
t  Emmons,  Wurks,  4  : 381. 
Moral  Government,  2  : 132. 


170  THE    NEW    THEOLOGY. 

ing  at  a  vast  remove  from  that  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  Here  is  no  union  of 
nature,  or  union  of  act,  with  Adam  ;  no  imputation  of  Adam's  sin  or  of  our 
hereditary  depravity.  On  the  whole,  the  history  of  New  England  theology 
shows  a  tendency  to  emphasize  less  and  less  the  depraved  tendencies  prior 
to  actual  sin,  and  to  maintain  that  moral  character  begins  only  with  indi- 
vidual choice, —  most  of  the  New  England  theologians,  however,  holding  that 
this  individual  choice  begins  at  birth. 

If  the  reader  has  followed  me  thus  far,  he  will  be  able  to  recognize  in  the 
New  Theology  many  of  the  traits  I  have  been  describing,  and  to  trace  them 
to  their  sources.  Nominalism  treats  human  nature  as  a  mere  name.  Ideal- 
ism regards  substance  as  non-existent.  The  identity-system  makes  acts  and 
exercises  the  be-all  and  end-all  of  our  moral  life.  All  these  are  features  of 
an  exaggerated  individualism  ;  and  of  this,  as  I  said  at  the  beginning, 
the  New  Theology  is  the  latest  and  most  popular  theological  expression. 
That  this  is  so  will  be  more  fully  apparent,  if  I  mention  now  certain  of  its 
more  specific  ideas.  I  propose  to  characterize  them  in  each  case  by  a  catch- 
word, more  or  less  descriptive.  I  do  this  mainly  for  the  sake  of  clearness, 
and  as  a  sort  of  mnemonic ;  I  would  therefore  have  the  catch-word  inter- 
preted by  the  following  text,  rather  than  have  the  text  interpreted  by  the 
catch-word. 

The  first  specific  idea  of  the  new  theology,  then,  is  that  of  the  Christian 
consciousness.  The  new  method  of  thought,  while  not  formally  setting 
aside  the  Scriptures  or  assigning  to  them  an  inferior  authority,  sets  side  by 
side  with  them  another  standard  of  faith  and  practice,  namely,  the  intuitions 
and  experience  of  the  believer.  It  connects  itself  very  naturally  with  what 
we  may  call  the  illumination-theory  of  inspiration,  which  regards  inspiration 
as  merely  an  intensifying  and  elevating  of  the  religious  perceptions  of  the 
Christian,  the  same  in  kind,  though  greater  in  degree,  with  the  illumination 
of  every  believer  by  the  Holy  Spirit ;  and  which  holds,  not  that  the  Bible  is, 
but  that  it  contains  the  word  of  God  —  not  the  writings,  but  only  the  writers 
being  inspired.  Those  who  hold  to  this  general  form  of  doctrine,  as  they 
bring  inspiration  down  to  a  lower  level,  would  correspondingly  bring  illumi- 
nation up,  so  that  both  shall  walk  upon  the  same  plane.  It  is  the  idealistic 
scheme  of  which  we  have  already  spoken.  It  depreciates  the  outward  rev- 
elation, with  the  intent  of  exalting  the  inward.  The  spirit  of  scientific  unity 
seems  to  constrain  it ;  since  there  is  undoubtedly  something  of  the  nature 
of  inward  revelation,  all  revelation  must  of  necessity  be  inward.  Christian 
consciousness  becomes  the  only  medium  of  receiving  religious  truth.  The 
intuitions  of  the  Christian  are  the  final  test.  And  so  we  have  Christian 
preachers  declaring  that  they  will  preach  no  doctrines  which  they  have  not 
realized  in  their  own  experience,  and  private  Christians  asserting  that  what 
they  cannot  understand  they  will  not  believe.  Neither  these  preachers,  nor 
these  Christians,  seem  to  perceive  that  they  are  acting  upon  the  essential 
principle  of  rationalism,  and  that,  so  far  as  they  act  upon  it,  they  are  not 
believers  at  all.  If  I  will  accept  nothing  and  preach  nothing  but  what  my 
reason  can  demonstrate  and  my  intellect  comprehend,  why  call  myself  a 
Christian  ?  As  Lessing  said  so  well :  "  What  is  the  use  of  a  revelation  that 
reveals  nothing  ?" 

We  get  good  from  the  Scriptures,  only  in  proportion  as  we  understand 


THE   NEW   THEOLOGY.  171 

them.  But  we  are  not,  for  that  reason,  to  keep  back  from  men  the  Scrip- 
tures which  we  do  not  understand — others  may  understand  the  truth  we 
speak,  better  than  we  do.  We  have  an  objective  message  and  communication 
from  God,  and  this  it  is  our  business  as  ambassadors  to  deliver,  whether 
men  will  hear,  or  whether  they  will  forbear.  The  Old  Testament  prophets 
were  not  absolved  from  the  duty  of  publishing  God's  word,  although  they 
themselves  searched  "what  time  or  what  manner  of  time  the  Spirit  of  Christ, 
which  was  in  them,  did  point  unto,  when  it  testified  beforehand  the  suffer- 
ings of  Christ  and  the  glories  that  should  follow  them. "  And  New  Testa- 
ment prophets  are  under  equal  obligation  to  "declare  the  whole  counsel  of 
God,"  in  spite  of  their  own  personal  ignorance  of  its  full  meaning.  We  get 
the  good  of  truth  only  by  understanding  it,  and  we  understand  it  only  as 
the  Holy  Spirit  takes  of  the  things  of  Christ  and  shows  them  to  us.  Yet 
we  are  to  accept  the  truth,  and  to  publish  the  truth,  whether  we  understand 
it  or  not. 

What,  now,  is  the  relation  of  Christian  consciousness  to  the  Scriptures  ? 
Or,  to  put  the  same  question  in  different  form  :  How  far,  and  in  what  sense, 
are  the  experience  and  judgment  of  the  Christian  to  be  trusted,  where 
Scripture  is  either  ambiguous  or  silent  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  the  very  word 
"consciousness,"  which  plays  so  important  a  part  in  this  discussion,  might 
teach  a  good  lesson  to  the  advocates  of  the  New  Theology.  Consciousness, 
like  conscience,  is  an  accompanying  knowledge.  As  those  who  would  make 
conscience  legislative,  or  would  give  to  it  original  authority,  are  untrue  to 
the  meaning  of  the  word  itself,  which  intimates  that  conscience  subsumes 
particular  acts  or  states  under  a  standard  previously  accepted  from  some 
other  source,  and  judges  them  by  or  in  connection  with  that  standard,  so 
consciousness  is  a  con-knowing ;  in  mental  philosophy,  a  knowing  of  my 
own  acts  or  states,  in  connection  with  my  knowledge  of  self ;  in  the  matter 
we  are  discussing,  a  knowing  of  doctrine  or  duty,  in  connection  with  the 
permanent  standard  given  us  in  Scripture. 

Consciousness  is  in  no  case  a  new  or  collateral  source  of  truth.  Experi- 
ence is  only  a  testing  or  trying  of  truth  already  revealed.  Intuition  is  not 
creative ;  it  only  recognizes  objective  realities  that  were  already  there  to  be 
recognized.  And  so  all  these  words,  loosely  employed  as  they  frequently 
are,  should  be  kept  to  their  primary  meaning.  The  Christian  consciousness 
is  a  con-knowing  of  the  things  of  God,  in  connection  with  and  by  means  of 
his  written  word.  It  is  not  a  norma  normanx,  but  a  norma  normata  ;  and 
this  it  must  ever  be,  at  least  in  our  present  state,  for  the  reason  that  sin  yet 
remains  to  blind  us.  The  spiritual  perception  of  the  Christian  is  always 
rendered  to  some  extent  imperfect  and  deceptive  by  remaining  depravity. 
"The  ethico-religious  consciousness"  is  by  itself  utterly  untrustworthy;  it 
must  ever  be  rectified,  as  the  judgments  of  conscience  are  to  be  rectified,  by 
comparison  with  express  divine  revelation ;  where  revelation  speaks,  there 
Christian  consciousness  may  safely  speak ;  where  that  is  silent,  the  latter 
must  be  silent:  "To  the  law  and  to  the  testimony!  If  they  speak  not 
according  to  this  word,  surely  there  is  no  morning  for  them." 

Equally  plain  is  it  that  nothing  which  we  know  of  the  work  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  warrants  the  attribution  to  the  Christian  consciousness  of  authority 
aside  from  or  co-ordinate  with  that  of  Scripture.  Despite  the  claims  of 


172  THE    NEW   THEOUHJY. 

advocates  of  "the  inner  light,"  from  George  Fox  to  the  latest  enthusiast,  it 
still  remains  true  that  the  Holy  Spirit  works  only  by  showing  us  the  word  ; 
the  "  sword  "  or  instrument  of  the  Spirit  is  "the  word  of  God."  The  Holy 
Spirit  takes  of  the  "things  of  Christ,"  "brings  them  to  remembrance," 
unfolds  the  truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus."  All  this  indicates  not  a  new,  but  the 
revival  of  a  past,  revelation  ;  not  the  providing  of  a  new  reservoir,  but  dis- 
tribution from  a  reservoir  already  filled  ;  not  communication  of  new  truth, 
but  illumination  of  the  mind  to  perceive  the  meaning  of  truth  revealed 
already.  So  the  Holy  Spirit  merely  turns  the  outer  word  into  an  inner  word, 
and  makes  its  truth  and  power  manifest  to  the  heart.  Any  other  doctrine 
than  this  is  covert  mysticism  —  new  communications  from  God,  aside  from, 
or  co-ordinate  with,  those  embodied  in  the  Scriptures.  We  can  no  more 
make  theology  without  Scripture,  than  the  Israelites  in  Egypt  could  make 
bricks  without  straw. 

The  New  Theology,  in  emphasizing  the  fact  of  the  Holy  Spirit's  work 
within,  is  bringing  into  needed  prominence  a  fact  which  has  been  too  much 
neglected.  Thus  far  I  hope  for  good  results  from  this  movement  of  thought, 
and  rejoice  that  the  third  person  of  the  blessed  Trinity  is  recognized  as  the 
author  of  all  internal  revelation.  But  all  new  movements  in  thought  tend 
to  extremes.  I  fear  that  the  animating  principle  of  the  new  movement  is 
not  so  much  zeal  for  the  Holy  Spirit's  work  as  it  is  disinclination  to  recog- 
nize the  outward  revelation  of  God,  which  the  Holy  Spirit's  work  presup- 
poses ;  and  therefore  that  the  tendency  of  it  will  be  not  so  much  to  mysti- 
cism as  to  naturalism  and  rationalism.  Let  us  ever  remember  that,  as  man 
can  reveal  himself  by  works  and  words,  so  can  God.  Internal  revelation 
proceeds  only  upon  the  basis  of  external  revelation  ;  it  presupposes  external 
revelation  ;  reflects,  confirms,  and  establishes  it.  As  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the 
organ  of  internal,  so  Christ  is  the  organ  of  external,  revelation.  We  must 
not  exaggerate  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  for  that  is  to  depreciate  the 
work  of  Christ.  We  must  not  overstate  the  internal  evidence  for  Christian- 
ity, for  that  is  to  discredit  miracles  and  the  supernatural  generally.  We 
must  not  insist  on  the  immanence  of  God,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  transcend- 
ence. And  yet  all  these  errors  the  New  Theology  is  ia  danger  of  committing 
when  it  elevates  Christian  consciousness  into  a  source,  however  subordinate, 
of  Christian  doctrine.  The  moment  we  exalt  Christian  experience  into  an 
authority,  we  undermine  the  Scriptures  which  constitute  the  only  safe 
foundation  for  Christian  experience.  The  logical  result  will  sooner  or  later 
be  the  teaching  that  the  only  inspiration  is  Christian  experience,  and  that 
all  Christian  experience  is  inspiration.  We  shall  then  cherish  a  thousand 
blind  hopes  for  which  revelation  furnishes  no  solid  basis  ;  but  with  these 
hopes  will  come  a  thousand  vagaries  of  doctrine,  and  finally  both  the  vaga- 
ries and  the  hopes  will  be  succeeded  by  the  uncertainty,  the  unbelief,  and 
the  despair,  into  which  an  unbridled  rationalism  plunges  the  soul. 

There  is  a  second  specific  idea  of  the  New  Theology  whioh  I  must  now 
mention.  It  has  to  do  with  the  person  and  work  of  the  second  person  of 
the  Trinity,  as  the  last  had  to  do  with  the  person  and  work  of  the  third  per- 
son of  the  Trinity.  I  know  of  no  phrase  that  better  expresses  the  idea  than 
that  of  the  extra-temporal  Christ.  Of  course  there  is  an  antithesis  intended 
here.  The  extra-temporal  Christ  is  not  the  Christ  of  our  earthly  history,. 


THE    NEW   THEOLOGY.  173 

but  the  Christ  who  is  beyond  present  time  and  space  ;  the  eternal  Logos 
who  upholds  all  things,  while  at  the  same  time  he  exists  beyond  them. 
Here,  too,  we  must  acknowledge  that  a  great  truth  —  a  truth  often  ignored 
—  is  brought  out  and  emphasized.  Christ  is  * '  the  Lamb  slain  from  before 
the  foundation  of  the  world."  "In  him  all  things  consist."  He  is  "the 
same  yesterday,  and  to-day,  and  forever."  The  whole  physical  universe  is 
dependent  upon  Christ ;  but  it  is  equally  true  that  the  intellectual  and  moral 
world  is  dependent  on  him  also  ;  he  is  "the  light  that  lighteth  every  man." 
Let  us  thank  the  New  Theology  for  recalling  theological  thought  to  this 
truth.  But  with  its  inculcation  of  this  truth  there  goes  too  often  a  tendency 
to  forget  that  the  historical  manifestation  of  Christ  is  in  the  Scriptures 
declared  to  be  the  only  ground  of  hope  for  sinners,  and  it  is  this  tendency 
which  we  must  criticise  and  reprehend. 

Let  me  make  plain  this  objection  to  the  New  Theology.  It  substitutes  an 
extra-temporal  Christ  for  the  Christ  of  historic  fact,  and  bases  its  hopes 
rather  upon  Christ's  ideal  and  essential  nature  than  upon  his  actual  mani- 
festation in  humanity.  In  this  I  seem  to  see  the  influence  of  Schleiermacher, 
in  whom  idealism  found  its  champion,  and  through  whom  idealism  has 
infected  the  religious  thinking  of  Germany.  Schleiermacher  had  little  con- 
fidence in  Christianity  as  an  external  and  historical  fact ;  even  the  incarna- 
tion and  resurection  of  Christ,  as  literal  events,  he  discredited,  by  calling 
them  unnecessary  to  the  vindication  of  our  faith  ;  the  Christ  within  seemed 
to  him  much  more  important  than  the  Christ  without ;  Christian  feelings 
and  not  outward  facts  were  made  to  be  the  real  sources  of  theology.  Schlei- 
ermacher did  noble  service  in  bridging  over  the  gulf  between  the  old  ration- 
alism and  the  new  evangelical  faith.  He  "builded  better  than  he  knew," 
when  he  declared  that  Christianity  could  rest  its  argument  upon  the  facts  of 
the  inner  life  of  the  believer.  But,  as  has  been  well  said,  he  was  another 
Lazarus ;  he  came  forth  with  the  grave-clothes  of  a  pantheistic  philosophy 
entangling  his  steps.  He  did  not  see  that  the  loftier  the  structure  of  Chris- 
tian life  and  doctrine,  the  greater  the  need  that  its  foundation  be  secure ; 
and  that  the  authority  of  Christ  as  a  teacher  of  supernatural  truth  rests  upon 
his  miracles,  and  specially  upon  the  miracle  of  his  resurrection.  The  inward 
wonders  of  the  Christian  life  will  not  long  impress  men,  if  the  historical 
facts  of  Jesus'  incarnation  and  resurrection  are  denied.  These  inward  won- 
ders, like  the  outward  miracles,  will  be  attributed  to  merely  natural  causes, 
and  Christianity  will  be  counted  only  the  pleasing  dream  of  the  enthusiast. 

As  with  Jesus'  life  and  teaching,  so  with  his  atonement ;  the  New  Theology 
tends  to  substitute  the  inward  for  the  outward.  It  has  accepted  very  fully 
the  idea  that  there  is  no  principle  in  the  divine  nature  that  needs  to  be  pro- 
pitiated. It  is  man,  not  God,  who  needs  to  be  reconciled.  The  atonement 
is  subjective,  not  objective.  It  has  effect,  not  to  satisfy  divine  justice,  but 
so  to  reveal  divine  love  as  to  soften  human  hearts  and  lead  them  to  repent- 
ance ;  in  other  words,  Christ's  sufferings  were  necessary,  not  in  order  to 
remove  an  obstacle  to  the  pardon  of  sinners  which  exists  in  the  mind  of  God, 
but  in  order  to  convince  sinners  that  there  exists  no  such  obstacle.  We  see 
here  again  the  nominalistic  element.  Righteousness  in  God  is  no  distinct 
attribute  ;  it  is  a  mere  name  for  benevolence.  Hence  Dr.  Bushnell's  vie  w 
that  an  internal  change  in  man  himself  is  all  that  is  needful ;  hence  Dr.  Park's 


174  THE   NEW   THEOLOGY. 

view  that  the  cross  is  not  an  execution  of  justice,  but  only  an  exhibition  of  jus- 
tice —  a  scenic  representation  of  God's  regard  for  law,  which  will  make  it  safe 
for  his  government  to  pardon  the  violators  of  law.  All  this  makes  the  atone- 
ment histrionic  instead  of  real,  converts  it  from  an  objective  into  a  subjec- 
tive fact,  and  transfers  its  place  from  the  court  of  God's  justice  to  the  secret 
heart  of  the  believer.  In  short,  the  theory  exalts  the  Christ  in  us  at  the 
expense  of  the  Christ  outside  of  us,  and  does  this  in  respect  to  the  atone- 
ment just  as  much  as  it  had  previously  done  in  respect  to  revelation  in  gen- 
eral. 

There  is  an  error  here  so  subtle,  and  yet  so  fundamental,  that  we  may  do 
well  carefully  to  consider  it.  It  is  the  error  of  supposing  that  because  out- 
ward revelation  and  atonement  are  limited  by  the  conditions  of  space  and 
time,  they  cannot  have  in  them  any  infinite  or  absolute  element,  and  there- 
fore we  must  look  beyond  them  for  something  larger  and  more  spiritual.  It 
is  of  a  piece  with  the  mistake  of  Philip.  Philip  would  have  looked  beyond 
the  present  historic  Christ  in  order  to  find  the  Father.  But  Jesus'  words 
were  a  sufficient  correction  of  his  error  :  "  Have  I  been  so  long  time  with 
you,  and  yet  hast  thou  not  known  me,  Philip  ?  he  that  hath  seen  me  hath 
seen  the  Father ;  how  sayest  thou,  show  us  the  Father  ?  "  Do  we  desire  an 
ideal  and  spiritual  Christ  ?  We  shall  find  him  only  in  the  crucified  and 
risen  Redeemer.  In  him  is  "all  the  fullness  of  the  Godhead  bodily,"  that 
is,  in  bodily  form.  The  Christ  of  history  divinely  expresses  the  eternal 
Logos,  nay,  the  very  mind  and  heart  of  the  whole  Godhead  ;  for  "  God  was 
in  Christ,  reconciling  the  world  unto  himself. "  The  outward  atonement  has 
compressed  into  it  the  whole  compass  and  meaning  of  redemption  —  God's 
love,  in  union  with  humanity,  offering  itself  as  a  sacrifice  to  God's  holiness, 
outraged  by  human  sin.  Human  symbols  only  partially  express  the  truth 
they  are  intended  to  convey  ;  divine  symbols  express  the  whole  —  nay,  they 
are  the  truth  and  the  fact  itself,  put  into  the  forms  of  sense  and  time.  Do 
we  wish  to  know  more  about  the  meaning  of  the  outward  word  ?  Then  let 
us  not  add  to  it  our  human  speculations ;  let  us  only  study  more  closely 
what  the  word  itself  declares.  Do  we  desire  to  know  more  about  what 
Christ  will  do  beyond  this  present  earthly  sphere  ?  Then  let  us  study  anew 
his  historical  manifestation  ;  for  the  historical  Christ  is  the  extra-temporal 
Christ  manifested.  Eternity  will  only  unfold  the  truth  which  we  already 
possess  in  germ.  As  omnipresence  is  the  presence  of  the  whole  of  God  in 
every  place,  so,  in  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ  which  we  have  already, 
we  possess  the  substance  of  God's  eternal  truth. 

The  third  and  last  specific  idea  of  the  New  Theology  may  be  characterized 
as  that  of  a  second  probation.  I  am  aware  that  the  phrase  will  not  be  accepted 
by  many  of  the  advocates  of  the  views  I  am  examining,  and  I  grant  that  it 
needs  qualification.  The  probation  for  which  they  contend  is  not,  they  say, 
a  second  probation,  since  those  who  undergo  it  have  never  had,  prior  to  that, 
any  proper  probation  at  all.  It  is  not  claimed  that  a  future  probation  is 
enjoyed  by  all,  but  only  that  it  is  enjoyed  by  those  who  have  had  no  oppor- 
tunity here  to  learn  of  the  historic  Christ.  I  must  be  allowed  to  say,  how- 
ever, that  the  probation  claimed  is  fairly  called  a  second  probation,  if  only 
those  to  whom  it  is  granted  are  moral  creatures  here ;  for  a  moral  creature 
here,  under  only  the  providential  government  of  God  and  with  the  mere 


THE    NEW   THEOLOGY.  175- 

light  of  conscience  within,  is  being  tested  and  tried  in  character.  Whether 
this  probation  is  a  proper  probation,  is  really  the  question  at  issue.  The 
advocates  of  the  New  Theology  declare  that  for  multitudes  it  is  not  a  proper 
probation.  They  say  that  for  the  heathen,  as  well  as  for  infants,  the  oppor- 
tunity to  decide  for  or  against  Christ,  since  it  is  not  given  here,  must  be 
given  hereafter.  The  immutable  God  must  deal  alike  with  all.  Since  Christ 
has  died  for  all,  all  must  have  a  chance  to  accept  him  as  a  Savior.  For 
some  at  least,  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  must  be  done  the  other  side  of 
death.  To  some,  Christ  is  offered  as  a  Savior  in  the  next  world,  rather 
than  in  this. 

I  wish  to  point  out  first  of  all  that  this  view  is  but  a  corollary  of  the  nom- 
inalistic  individualism,  which  I  described  in  an  earlier  portion  of  this  essay. 
The  view  rests  upon  an  atomistic  conception  of  the  race  as  a  mere  collection 
of  units.  It  can  be  successfully  met,  only  by  those  who  accept  the  Scriptu- 
ral doctrine  of  the  organic  unity  of  humanity  and  its  common  fall  in  Adam. 
New  School  theology  cannot  erect  any  sufficient  barrier  against  it.  It  can- 
not find  what  it  regards  as  a  fair  and  sufficient  probation  for  each  individual 
since  the  first  sin  ;  and  the  conclusion  is  easy,  that  there  must  be  such  a  fair 
probation  for  each  individual  in  the  world  to  come.  So  New  School  theol- 
ogy inevitably  becomes  New  Theology,  and  only  illustrates  the  ultimate 
results  of  evil  that  flow  from  what  at  first  seemed  an  unimportant  deviation 
from  Scriptural  doctrines.  Let  us  advise  those  who  take  this  view  to  return 
to  the  old  theology.  Grant  a  fair  probation  for  the  whole  race  already 
passed,  and  the  condition  of  mankind  is  no  longer  that  of  mere  unfortunates 
unjustly  circumstanced,  but  rather  that  of  beings  guilty  and  condemned,  to 
whom  present  opportunity,  and  even  present  existence,  is  matter  of  pure 
grace,  —  much  more  the  general  provision  of  a  salvation,  and  the  offer  of  it 
to  any  human  soul.  To  put  my  thought  yet  more  clearly :  This  world  is 
already  a  place  of  second  probation  ;  and,  since  this  second  probation  is  due 
wholly  to  God's  mercy,  no  probation  after  death  is  needed  to  vindicate  either 
the  justice  or  the  goodness  of  God.  Since  one  probation  of  the  race  was 
passed  before  our  conscious  experience  began,  since  our  present  individual 
life  is  already  a  second  probation  and  is  wholly  a  matter  of  grace,  it  is  pre- 
sumption itself  for  any  human  being  to  demand  in  the  future  life  still  another 
and  a  third  probation. 

But  aside  from  a  denial  of  a  common  probation  and  fall  in  our  first  father, 
which  the  New  Theology  involves,  it  commits  the  yet  more  palpable  error  of 
denying  the  universal  guilt  of  mankind.  I  do  not  mean  that  this  guilt  is 
formally  denied,  but  that  it  is  so  explained  as  to  make  it  equivalent  to  mere 
misfortune  or  disease,  and  to  absolve  it  from  all  obligation  to  suffer  punish- 
ment. Of  course  no  advocate  of  the  New  Theology  is  a  believer  in  the  guilt 
of  inborn  depravity.  Denial  of  our  oneness  with  Adam  in  the  first  trans- 
gression carries  with  it  a  denial  of  responsibility  for  the  direct  consequences 
of  that  transgression.  Sin  consists  in  sinning,  says  the  New  Theology ;  and 
by  sinning  it  means  only  individual  and  personal  transgression.  The  vast 
number  of  those  who  never  in  this  world  come  to  conscious  moral  life  can 
have  no  sin  or  guilt  to  be  atoned  for ;  they  need  no  Christ,  and,  if  they  enter 
heaven  at  all,  they  enter  it  by  right  of  native  innocence.  Sinful  dispositions 
are  sinful,  not  because  they  are  sin,  but  because  they  lead  to  sin.  And,. 


176  THE    NEW    THEOLOGY. 

since  God  takes  into  consideration  the  degree  of  light  which  men  enjoy, 
those  who  in  heathen  lands  are  destitute  of  knowledge  of  the  gospel  are 
supposed  to  be  in  much  the  same  condition  as  infants  or  idiots,  and  it  is  said 
of  them  that  "  where  there  is  no  law,  there  is  no  transgression."  So  our 
conviction  of  the  guilt  of  the  heathen  is  weakened,  and  it  is  held  to  be  unjust 
in  God  to  punish  them,  —  at  least  until  after  they  have  heard  of  Christ  and 
have  consciously  rejected  him. 

Here  is  the  weakness  of  Dorner's  Eschatology,  from  which,  as  from  an 
armory,  many  of  the  offensive  weapons  of  the  New  Theology  are  drawn. 
Dorner  began  his  great  work  on  Christian  doctrine  with  a  just  and  profound 
view  of  sin,  as  unlikeness  to  God  and  self-determination  of  the  will  against 
him.  But  in  the  Eschatology  this  view  is  exchanged  for  another  which 
practically  ignores  the  element  of  guilt,  and  makes  the  sinner  a  mere  crea- 
ture, with  just  claims  to  God's  pity.  All  this  falls  in  with  the  pantheistic 
tendency  of  our  time  to  regard  sin  as  a  natural  necessity,  instead  of  being, 
as  it  is,  the  wilful  revolt  of  the  free  will  from  God.  Let  us  take  our  stand 
upon  that  law  of  God  which  is  a  reflection  of  his  holiness  and  is  identical 
with  the  constituent  principles  of  being  ;  that  law  which  demands  absolute 
perfection  in  thought,  desire,  word,  deed,  aye,  even  in  the  very  substance 
of  the  soul ;  that  law  which  declares  all  falling  short  of  this  standard  as  sin 
and  guilt,  deserving  not  pardon  but  punishment.  The  heathen  can  claim 
nothing  from  God  ;  the  Scripture  expressly  declares  that  they  are  "by  nature 
children  of  wrath. "  God  is  under  no  obligation  to  them.  They  are  guilty 
by  birth,  and  guilty  by  overt  transgression.  Not  one  of  them  has  a  claim 
to  grace  in  this  present  world ;  much  less  has  he  a  claim  to  grace  in  the 
world  to  come.  Does  the  New  Theology  believe  that  the  heathen  are  guilty  ? 
if  so,  let  it  cease  to  argue  that  the  justice  of  God  requires  that  they  should 
have  a  chance  to  accept  salvation,  either  here  or  hereafter. 

The  fact  that  Christ,  as  eternal  Logos,  exists  beyond  the  bounds  of  his 
historic  work  is  often  urged  to  break  the  force  of  this  argument  from  the 
guilt  of  the  heathen.  But  let  us  remember  that  this  manifestation  of  Christ 
is  granted  to  the  heathen  even  here  and  now.  As  he  is  "the  light  that 
lighteth  every  man,"  all  natural  conscience  and  all  religious  ideas,  so  far  as 
they  have  truth  in  them,  are  derived  from  him.  Before  his  advent  in  the 
flesh,  patriarchs  were  saved  by  believing  in  him,  and  the  antediluvian  world 
was  condemned  for  rejecting  him ;  for,  whether  in  believing  or  rejecting, 
they  had  to  do  with  him  who  is  the  only  revealer  of  God,  of  whom,  and 
through  whom,  are  all  things.  God  did  not  even  then  leave  himself,  he 
does  not  now  leave  himself,  without  a  witness.  The  heathen  are  without 
excuse,  because  "that  which  is  known  of  God  is  manifest  among  them." 
Missionaries  find  everywhere  the  knowledge  of  law;  there  is  a  universal 
sense  of  sin  ;  every  man  in  some  way  violates  conscience,  and  feels  justly 
condemned.  The  New  Theology  speaks  of  a  supra-historic  Christ,  and 
prides  itself  on  emphasizing  his  inward  work  in  human  hearts.  Let  it  rec- 
ognize the  fact  that  Christ  is  already  doing  a  supra-historic  work  ;  that  the 
revelation  of  nature  is  itself  a  revelation  of  Christ ;  that  men  do  not  need  to 
see  the  cross  on  which  he  died,  in  order  to  reject  him.  In  short,  in  this 
great  controversy  between  God  and  the  sinning  children  of  men,  let  us  put 
ourselves  upon  the  side  of  God  and  not  upon  the  side  of  his  enemies.  Let 
us  declare  God  to  be  true,  though  we  have  to  call  every  man  a  liar. 


THE    NEW   THEOLOGY.  177 

If  men  may  accept  Christ  or  reject  him,  even  without  knowing  of  his  his- 
torical manifestation  in  the  flesh,  what  limits  can  we  put  to  his  work  of 
mercy  ?  We  put  no  limits  but  those  which  his  word  declares.  The  patri- 
archs, though  they  had  no  knowledge  of  a  personal  Christ,  were  saved  by 
believing  in  God  so  far  as  God  had  revealed  himself  to  them  ;  and  whoever 
among  the  heathen  are  saved  must  in  like  manner  be  saved  by  casting  them- 
selves as  helpless  sinners  upon  God's  plan  of  mercy,  dimly  shadowed  forth 
in  nature  and  providence.  But  such  faith,  even  among  the  patriarchs  and 
heathen,  is  implicitly  a  faitli  in  Christ,  and  would  become  explicit  and  con- 
scious trust  and  submission,  whenever  the  historic  Christ  were  made  known 
to  them.  Christ  is  the  word  of  God  and  the  truth  of  God  ;  he  may  there- 
fore be  received  even  by  those  who  have  not  heard  of  his  manifestation 
in  the  flesh ;  we  may  hope  that  "many  shall  come  from  the  east  and  the 
west,  and  shall  sit  down  with  Abraham  and  Isaac  and  Jacob  in  the  kingdom 
of  heaven."  For  "  God  is  no  respecter  of  persons  ;  but  in  every  nation  he 
that  feareth  him  and  worketh  righteousness  is  acceptable  to  him. "  A  proud 
-and  self-righteous  morality  is  inconsistent  with  salvation ;  but  a  penitent 
and  humble  reliance  upon  God  as  a  Savior  from  sin  and  a  guide  of  conduct 
is  an  implicit  faith  in  Christ ;  for  such  reliance  casts  itself  upon  God  so  far 
as  God  has  revealed  himself,  and  the  only  revealer  of  God  is  Christ.  But 
as  the  Scriptures  intimate  that  men  may  be  saved  by  an  implicit  trust  in 
Christ,  so  they  equally  intimate  that  men  may  be  lost  by  only  implicitly 
rejecting  him.  As  men  can  be  saved  by  casting  themselves  as  sinners  upon 
the  mercy  of  a  Christ  whose  very  name  they  do  not  know,  so  they  can  be 
lost  by  transgressing  the  law  and  resisting  the  drawings  of  that  same  Christ 
who  speaks  to  them  only  in  nature,  in  conscience,  and  in  providence.  How 
long  his  Spirit  will  strive  with  man,  and  when  the  day  of  his  grace  shall  end, 
reason  cannot  inform  us ;  the  objective  word  is  the  only  source  of  knowledge. 
Since  his  atonement  is  a  matter  of  grace,  not  of  justice,  it  can  be  applied 
when  and  where  he  pleases.  Only  he  can  tell  us  upon  what  terms,  and  for 
how  long,  men  can  obtain  salvation.  And  what  saith  the  Scripture  ?  Does 
it  hold  out  the  hope  that  after  death,  for  the  heathen  or  for  any  others,  there 
may  still  be  opportunities  of  faith  and  pardon  ?  On  the  other  hand,  we  have 
the  declarations  that  "they  that  sin  without  law  shall  perish  without  law  ;  " 
we  shall  all  be  "  manifest  before  the  judgment  seat  of  Christ" —  not  that  each 
may  have  new  opportunity  for  salvation,  but  "that  each  may  receive  the 
things  done  in  the  body."  Of  the  wicked,  it  is  said  that  their  "  end  is  to  be 
burned."  "  It  is  appointed  unto  men  once  to  die,  and  after  this,"  not  a  new 
probation,  but  "  judgment."  In  the  next  world,  between  the  righteous  and 
the  wicked  there  is  " a  great  gulf  fixed,"  impassable  to  both.  "They  that 
have  done  ill "  shall  come  forth  from  their  graves,  not  to  undergo  a  new  pro- 
bation, but  "unto  the  resurrection  of  judgment."  All  these  Scripture  pas- 
sages indicate  finality  in  the  decisions  of  this  present  life  ;  and  for  this  reason 
Protestant  churches  have  never  thought  it  right  to  pray  for  the  dead.  We 
know  that  conversion  and  renewal  are  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  but  we 
have  no  Scripture  evidence  that  the  influences  of  the  Spirit  are  exerted,  after 
death,  upon  the  still  impenitent ;  there  is  abundant  evidence,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  the  moral  condition  in  which  death  finds  men  is  their  condition 
forever. 
12 


178  THE    NEW   THEOLOGY. 

I  began  rny  article  by  calling  the  New  Theology  a  theology  of  exaggerated 
individualism.  I  have  spoken  of  its  historical  connections,  and  have  traced 
it  back  to  nominalism,  idealism,  and  the  identity-system  of  Jonathan 
Edwards.  I  have  noted  and  criticized  the  most  prominent  specific  ideas  of 
the  New  Theology,  namely,  the  Christian  consciousness,  the  extra-temporal 
Christ,  and  the  future  probation  of  those  who  have  not  in  this  life  had  the 
gospel  preached  to  them.  But  there  are  certain  practical  results  to  be  appre- 
hended from  this  tendency  in  the  theological  world,  which,  as  the  applica- 
tion of  my  subject,  I  feel  compelled,  finally,  though  very  summarily,  to 
mention.  The  theology  of  exaggerated  individualism,  will,  in  my  judgment, 
do  much  to  accelerate  that  deterioration  of  family  life  which  has  often  been 
pointed  out  as  a  sign  that  Christianity  is  losing  its  hold  upon  the  nation. 
The  individualistic  theory  of  the  family  is  an  outgrowth  of  the  individual- 
istic theory  of  the  race.  To  great  masses  of  our  population  marriage  is  but 
a  civil  contract,  which,  so  far  as  the  mere  right  of  the  thing  is  concerned,  is 
dissoluble  at  pleasure.  After  marriage,  as  before  marriage,  the  parties  are 
two,  not  one ;  the  merging  of  the  two  into  each  other,  the  constitution  of  a 
new  organic  unity  —  in  short,  the  very  idea  of  the  family  bond  —  is  absent ; 
the  individual  is  still  a  law  unto  himself,  instead  of  being  under  law  to 
another.  Hence  the  frequent  discord  which  invades  the  family,  and  the 
increasing  prevalence  of  divorce.  The  same  exaggerated  individualism 
appears  in  the  labor- strifes  of  our  day.  Every  man  is  for  himself,  whether 
he  be  capitalist  or  workman.  Each  thinks  of  his  rights,  but  thinks  much 
less  of  his  duties.  The  idea  of  the  organic  unity  of  society,  of  merging  per- 
sonal interests  in  the  interests  of  the  whole,  of  thinking  not  simply  of  his 
own  things  but  of  the  things  of  others  also,  this  idea  is  fast  dying  out.  We 
need  to  revive  and  reinforce  it  by  the  inculcation  of  human  unity  and  broth- 
erhood. The  Scriptures  furnish  us  with  our  doctrine.  The  family  is  one  ; 
society  is  one ;  the  nation  is  one  ;  the  race  is  one.  Because  one  blood  flows 
in  our  veins  and  we  have  one  divine  Father,  we  are  members  one  of  another. 

In  the  life  of  the  church  this  principle  is  more  important  still,  and  forget- 
f ulness  of  it  brings  results  yet  more  pernicious.  There  is  a  vital  union  with 
the  Redeemer  which  joins  all  Christians  to  one  another.  In  connecting 
themselves  with  Christ  they  become  members  of  a  mighty  organism  per- 
vaded with  the  common  life  of  the  Head.  In  a  true  sense  the  Christian 
ceases  to  be  an  individual,  and  merges  himself  in  the  body ;  he  can  say  : 
«'  For  me  to  live  is  Christ;"  "no  longer  live  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me." 
And  yet  how  plain  it  is,  that  to  many  Christians  there  never  yet  has  come 
this  sense  of  the  real  meaning  of  their  relation  to  Christ,  and  to  his  body,  the 
church.  An  exaggerated  individualism  yet  rules  them.  They  have  no  con- 
ception of  the  church  as  an  organism  which  derives  its  life  from  Christ,  a 
living  unity  into  which  they  have  merged  themselves.  They  have  no  sense 
of  the  dignity  of  their  position,  as  belonging  to  Christ's  body,  or  as  respon- 
sible for  the  condition  of  the  whole.  "  Am  I  my  brother's  keeper  ?  "  is  still 
their  cry.  Surely  nothing  is  so  much  needed  in  our  church-life  as  the  sub- 
stitution of  the  instinct  of  unity  for  the  spirit  of  isolation  and  division. 
And  what  better  recipe  can  be  given  than  the  inculcation  of  the  Scripture 
doctrine  of  union  with  Christ  ?  But  that  doctrine  cannot  be  taken  by  itself. 
Side  by  side  with  it  is  the  other  doctrine  of  union  with  Adam.  As  justitica- 


THE   NEW   THEOLOGY.  179 

tion  comes  to  all  who  receive  their  spiritual  life  from  Christ,  so  condemna- 
tion comes  to  all  who  receive  their  natural  life  from  Adam.  And  so  the 
highest  conception  of  the  Christian  life,  and  the  highest  efficiency  of  the 
Christian  church,  are  inseparably  bound  up  with  the  acceptance  of  the  old 
doctrine  of  the  organic  unity  of  the  race  and  its  common  fall  in  the  person 
of  its  first  father. 

This  subject  has  a  special  relation  to  the  ministry  and  to  missions.  It  has 
been  felt  of  late  that  there  was  a  great  falling  off  in  the  number  of  recruits  ; 
that  the  disposition  to  enter  the  ministry  was  waning  ;  that  there  was  no  suf- 
ficient impulse  to  prosecute  the  work.  I  venture  to  suggest  a  reason  for 
this.  Christian  people  are  losing  out  of  their  thoughts  the  idea  of  oneness 
with  the  race  ;  and  young  men  are  no  longer  pressed  with  the  conviction  that, 
as  a  part  of  this  common  humanity,  they  are  bound  to  do  all  they  can  to  save 
it.  We  are  bound  to  love  our  neighbor  as  ourselves,  because  our  neighbor 
is  ourselves.  It  was  because  Christ  was  one  with  us  that  he  was  bound  to  die. 
In  order  to  revive  the  sense  of  obligation  to  preach  the  gospel,  we  need  first 
to  inculcate  the  organic  unity  of  the  race.  And  what  is  true  of  ministers  is 
true  of  the  church  at  large.  The  only  sufficient  incentive  to  missionary 
effort  is  that  sense  of  unity  which  Christ's  teaching  and  example  are  calcu- 
lated to  inspire.  All  that  separates  the  heathen  from  us,  or  makes  their  fate 
dependent  upon  the  decisions  of  another  world,  is  a  hindrance  to  missions. 
We  must  feel  ourselves  the  brothers  of  all,  and  we  must  feel  that  their  fate 
is  in  our  hands,  if  we  are  ever  to  put  forth  the  effort  necessary  to  their  con- 
version. Only  upon  the  view  that  Paul  regarded  the  heathen  as  lost  if  they 
did  not  in  this  life  learn  of  Christ  and  accept  him,  can  we  explain  his  con- 
suming missionary  zeal.  Only  upon  the  view  that  "  the  heathen  perish  day 
by  day,"  can  we  explain  the  communication  of  Paul's  spirit  to  the  mission- 
aries of  modern  times.  If  the  salvation  of  the  heathen  practically  depends 
upon  the  prayers  and  gifts  and  labors  of  the  church,  we  may  hope  yet  to  see 
Christendom  pouring  into  heathen  lands  its  men  and  its  treasure,  in  order  to 
bring  the  nations  to  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ.  But  if  the  heathen  are  not 
shut  up  to  this  life  as  their  only  time  of  mercy,  if  a  vast  future  of  larger 
opportunity  opens  to  them  beyond  death,  not  only  will  the  Christian  world 
cease  to  feel  their  guilt,  but  it  will  cease  to  feel  their  danger.  "  The  nerve 
of  missionary  enterprise  will  be  cut,"  and  the  day  of  Christ's  triumph  will 
be  postponed,  until  there  rises  a  new  generation  with  deeper  convictions  of 
the  sinf ulness  of  sin,  and  with  deeper  compassion  for  the  millions  that  yearly 
perish  for  lack  of  knowledge. 

The  New  Theology  exaggerates  the  principle  of  individualism,  and  thinks 
that  it  gains  thereby  a  nobler  view  of  man.  But  it  looks  only  at  the  individ- 
ual man ;  of  humanity  as  a  whole,  fallen  in  Adam  and  sunk  in  a  common 
guilt,  it  has  no  conception  ;  hence  it  can  never  rise  to  the  sublime  concep- 
tion of  a  common  redemption  in  Christ  and  of  the  common  dependence  of 
the  race  upon  the  one  historical  Savior.  It  needs  the  idea  of  man  as  man,  to 
lift  it  out  of  doctrinal  inconsistency  and  practical  inefficiency.  Not  only 
theoretical  considerations  but  observed  effects  argue  that  the  well-worn  path 
is  the  path  of  safety  —  via  trita,  via  tuta.  We  have  no  need  of  the  New 
Theology,  for  the  old  is  better. 


XIII. 

THE  LIVING  GOD.* 


Many  of  you  have  been  struck  with  the  frequent  recurrence  in  Scripture 
of  the  phrase  "the  living  God."  If  you  look  carefully  you  will  find  this 
designation  in  all  parts  of  the  Bible,  from  the  Pentateuch,  where  Israel  is 
said  to  have  "heard  the  voice  of  the  living  God  "  speaking  from  Mount  Sinai, 
to  the  Bevelation,  where  the  flying  angel  is  said  to  "  have  the  seal  of  the  liv- 
ing God,"  and  God  is  spoken  of  as  "he  that  sitteth  upon  the  throne,  who 
liveth  forever  and  ever."  This  recognition  of  God  as  "the  living  God "  is 
combined  with  the  mention  of  all  his  other  attributes  and  works,  and  these 
acquire  new  lustre  from  the  association,  while  they  in  turn  reflect  light  upon 
the  meaning  of  the  phrase  with  which  they  are  combined.  The  text  explains 
what  I  mean.  There  the  fact  that  God  is  the  one  only  and  true  God,  and 
that  he  exercises  from  everlasting  to  everlasting  the  attributes  of  kingship, 
shows  that  the  life  of  God  is  an  all-originating  and  all-controlling  life,  shows 
in  fine  that  it  is  life  in  the  highest  sense.  We  need  not  wonder  at  finding 
this  lofty  view  of  the  divine  Being  so  plainly  declared,  nor  at  finding  the 
conception  of  God  as  the  living  God  underlying  the  whole  Scripture.  The 
very  purpose  for  which  the  Hebrew  nation  existed  was  to  root  deeply  in 
human  consciousness  this  idea  of  the  one  living  and  true  God.  And  how 
deeply  it  was  rooted  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  among  the  Jews  all  natural 
forces  came  to  be  looked  upon  as  directly  under  God's  hand,  and  as  mani- 
festing his  will,  so  that  the  Psalmist,  in  his  description  of  the  storm,  leaves 
out  all  mention  of  secondary  causes,  and  says  in  so  many  words,  "  The  God 
of  glory  thundereth."  So  completely  were  the  apostles  delivered  from  all 
conception  of  God  as  a  dead  abstraction,  or  as  capable  of  a  rival,  that  they 
almost  by  instinct  besought  the  worshippers  of  idols  to  ' '  turn  from  these 
vanities  unto  the  living  God. "  If  we  have  in  any  degree  lost  sight  of  this 
truth,  we  need  to  get  back  to  it,  for  a  mistake  here  will  vitiate  our  whole 
view  of  Christian  doctrine,  and  may  work  incalculable  injury  in  our  actual 
lives.  Let  us  first  inquire  what  it  means  to  say  that  God  is  the  living  God, 
and  secondly,  what  this  conception  of  God  involves  by  way  of  consequence. 
First,  the  meaning  of  it :  Life,  in  God,  must  mean  much  more  than  it 
does  in  man  —  must  mean  nothing  less  than  an  all-originating  and  all-sus- 
taining life.  Man,  in  a  sense,  has  life  and  gives  life ;  but  he  knows  that  what 
life  he  has  is  not  originated  by  himself,  but  has  come  to  him  apart  from  his 
own  knowledge  or  will.  His  reason  compels  him  to  infer  the  existence  of 
another  life  from  which  his  own  originally  sprang.  He  knows  that  he  does 
not  sustain  his  own  life  from  day  to  day.  The  machinery  of  his  frame  works 


*  Originally  prepared  as  a  sermon  upon  the  text,  Jer.  10:  10— "The  Lord  is  the  true 
God;  he  is  the  living1  God,  and  an  everlasting  king." 

180 


THE    LIVING    GOD.  181 

on  even  in  his  sleep, —  some  other  life  keeps  all  things  moving.  Indeed,  all 
the  life  of  nature,  not  originating  itself,  and  not  able  to  account  for  itself, 
must  be  referred  back  to  some  higher  life  that  originates  and  preserves  it. 
And  this  life  in  which  all  other  life  is  grounded,  great  as  it  is,  and  beyond 
all  our  efforts  to  comprehend  it,  belongs  to  God.  Our  first  conception  of 
him  is  that  of  one  who  not  only  has  life,  but  who  has  it  in  overflowing  fullness, 
so  that  he  is  the  source  and  principle  of  all  other  life  which  the  universe  con- 
tains. This  is  the  main  thought  of  the  104th  Psalm.  With  a  little  altera- 
tion, I  may  use  the  following  words  of  a  noted  interpreter  :  "You  find  there, 
more  than  in  any  other  ancient  poetry,  the  distinct  recognition  of  the  abso- 
lute dependence  of  the  universe,  as  created,  upon  the  Creator.  '  He  is  before 
all  things,  and  by  him  all  things  subsist. '  But  this  is  not  all.  God's  work 
is  not  regarded  as  a  thing  of  the  past  merely, —  the  universe  is  not  a  machine 
once  set  going  and  then  left  to  its  fate  or  to  inexorable  laws.  The  great 
Worker  is  ever  working.  The  world  and  all  things  owe  not  only  their  origin 
but  their  present  form  to  the  operation  of  God.  He  who  made,  renews,  the 
face  of  the  earth.  It  is  the  same  profound  view  of  the  relation  of  the  cos- 
mos to  the  Creator  which  Paul  exhibits  in  his  speech  on  Mars'  Hill.  He 
too  is  careful  not  to  separate  the  past  from  the  present.  God,  who  made  the 
world  in  the  past,  did  not  leave  the  work  of  his  fingers  :  the  streaming  forth 
4 if  his  omnipotence  and  love  was  not  checked  or  stayed;  on  the  contrary, 
every  part  of  his  creation  rests  at  every  moment  on  his  hands,  '  seeing  he 
giveth '  continually,  '  to  all,  life  and  breath  and  all  things. ' "  God  then  is  the 
living  God,  as  IK  ing  the  soul  which  animates  a  universe  that  would  be  dead 
without  him. 

And  yet  some  who  have  maintained  this  truth  most  earnestly,  have  declared 
thai  this  principle  of  universal  life  is  itself  unintelligent  and  unconscious, 
and  that  the  great  life  of  the  universe  comes  to  consciousness  only  in  indi- 
viduals, whether  of  this  or  other  races.  In  opposition  to  this  the  Scriptures 
maintain  again  that  this  life  of  God  is  a  life  of  the  spirit,  conscious,  intelli- 
gent, self -determining,  free  ;  acting  in  infinite  wisdom  for  infinitely  worthy 
ends  ;  and  displaying  in  all  its  acts  the  glory  of  a  perfect  character  —  a  char- 
acter of  holiness  and  love.  If  we  do  not  admit  this  to  be  a  true  representation 
of  God,  we  put  God  below  man  —  the  Creator  below  the  creature.  Indeed 
we  cannot  account  for  man  at  all,  or  for  the  wonderful  adaptations  of  the 
universe.  There  are  marks  of  intelligent  design  everywhere.  Means  are 
fitted  to  ends.  The  God  who  so  fitted  and  adapted  one  part  of  his  creation 
to  another  must  be  a  God  of  intelligence  and  purpose  and  benevolent  impulse. 
There  must  be  a  thinking  and  willing  above  us,  separate  from  the  thinking 
and  willing  of  the  creature,  —  or  else  the  creature  could  never  have  been  made 
to  think  and  will.  Nothing  can  produce  what  is  above  itself, —  the  offering 
of  the  beast  is  only  a  beast,  not  a  man.  All  the  universe,  if  there  were  no 
life  in  it  but  that  of  blind  natural  forces,  could  not  produce  anything  that 
was  not  blind  and  unintelligent  like  itself.  But  man  on  the  other  hand, 
being  gifted  with  the  power  of  thought  and  will,  instinctively  reasons  that 
the  power  that  gave  him  being  must  think  and  will  also  ;  otherwise  there  is 
no  adequate  cause  for  his  existence.  And  David  puts  the  argument  in  poetic 
yet  unanswerable  form  when  he  asks  :  "  He  that  planted  the  ear,  shall  he 
not  hear  ?  He  that  formed  the  eye,  shall  he  not  see  ?  He  that  teacheth 
man  knowledge,  shall  not  he  know  ?  " 


182  THE   LIVING   GOD. 

And  so  our  reason  drives  us  to  the  belief  in  God  as  a  personal  Being  — 
distinct  from  his  works  and  exalted  above  his  works,  even  while  he  is  mov- 
ing all  the  wheels  of  his  great  system.  And,  as  man's  personality  implies  a 
conscious  intelligence,  a  self-determining  will,  a  character,  an  end,  so  apply- 
ing these  same  ideas  to  God,  when  raised  to  their  highest  power,  we  see 
in  God  a  consciousness  that  embraces  at  the  same  moment  all  things  in  the 
universe  and  in  himself  ;  a  will  that  ordains  either  directly  or  by  permission 
all  existences  and  events ;  a  character  that  makes  every  thought  and  determi- 
nation infinitely  benevolent  and  holy ;  an  end  in  creation  and  in  his  own 
existence  infinitely  worthy  of  himself.  But  what  is  the  deepest  and  most 
central  idea  of  this  personal  life?  I  answer,  it  is  the  idea  of  tvill  —  will 
exercised  in  all  things  in  infinite  freedom  and  infinite  power.  Ask  yourself 
what  it  is  that  most  contributes  to  make  you  a  living  soul,  and  you  find  it  is 
yonr  freedom,  your  power  under  certain  limitations  to  become  an  originating 
cause.  If  man  were  a  mere  machine,  moved  by  forces  entirely  external  to 
himself,  he  would  not  be  man, —  he  would  not  call  himself  alive.  But  this 
will  within  us,  which  forms  decisions,  chooses  ends,  leaps  forward  towards 
the  objects  of  its  choice,  and  guides  all  the  enginery  of  the  nature  onward 
with  it  to  the  goal,  this  is  our  great  heritage,  this  gives  us  all  the  substantial 
existence  we  have,  this  constitutes  our  dignity  in  the  creation.  The  plant 
or  the  brute  acts  only  as  it  is  acted  upon ;  it  chooses  no  end  for  which  to 
work  ;  it  has  no  spontaneity  of  life.  But  man  stands  nearest  God  by  virtue 
of  this  faculty  which  in  a  certain  sense  creates,  bringing  forth  new  thoughts, 
desires,  and  acts,  and  exerting  a  force  which  is  felt  in  its  last  vibrations 
in  every  part  of  the  universe  and  by  God  himself. 

And  yet,  as  I  just  said,  man  exerts  this  living  force  only  under  limitations. 
External  circumstances  confine  him.  His  own  nature  binds  him.  How  he 
came  to  be  what  he  is,  he  does  not  know  ;  and  he  can  alter  himself  as  little 
as  he  can  make  over  again  the  outward  world.  And  so  this  will-power"  which 
man  exerts,  and  which  constitutes  the  essence  of  his  life,  only  feebly  reflects 
the  energy  of  will  that  exists  in  God.  What  must  this  will  be,  that  consti- 
tutes the  central  principle  of  God's  personality  —  that  makes  him  in  deed 
and  in  truth  the  living  God  ?  You  can  see  at  once  that  his  will  has  no 
external  restrictions.  ' '  None  can  stay  his  hand,  and  say  '  what  doest  thou  ?  ' ' 
You  can  see  that,  will  being  essential  to  his  personality,  he  does  nothing 
without  a  will  —  no  blind  action  —  no  unconscious  action  like  that  of  our 
sleep  and  our  dreams,  but  wherever  God  works  through  the  universe  —  and 
he  works  everywhere  —  he  works  in  all  his  personality,  works  as  a  living, 
conscious,  moral  agent,  works  with  perfect  freedom  the  present  decrees  of 
an  infinite  will. 

It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  as  the  life  of  God  is  a  self-existent  life, 
so  it  is  sufficient  to  itself.  God  does  not  need  the  universe,  nor  any  creature, 
to  supplement  his  existence  or  render  him  more  happy.  He  is  the  ever- 
blessed  God  because,  independently  of  the  things  he  has  made,  he  possesses 
infinite  resources  of  knowledge  and  communion  and  joy  in  his  own  holy 
nature.  And  these  are  secured  to  God  forever  by  the  fact  that  in  his  nature 
there  are  distinctions  which  are  revealed  to  us  under  the  figure  of  persons, 
Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost.  Before  the  world  was,  these  existed,  so  that 
God  in  himself  had  objects  of  contemplation  and  of  love  from  eternity  — 


THE    LIVING    GOD.  183 

objects  infinitely  surpassing  his  after  creation,  in  magnificence  and  glory. 
God  is  the  living  God,  because  his  life  is  an  absolutely  independent  and 
self-sufficient  life.  And  so  all  his  acts  and  f orth-puttings  of  power,  whether 
in  creation  or  in  providence  or  in  redemption,  are  free  acts,  dictated  not  by 
necessity  but  by  pure  disinterested  love.  Any  other  conception  than  this 
denies  in  effect  that  he  is  the  living  God.  If  there  be  anything  in  him 
which  compels  him  to  create  or  to  reveal  himself,  then  he  ceases  to  be  free. 
And  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  the  most  rational  of  all  doctrines, 
because  only  by  it  can  the  independence  of  God,  or  in  other  words  his  God- 
hood,  be  maintained.  The  Unitarian  view  of  the  absolute  simplicity  of  the 
divine  nature  leaves  God  without  an  object,  without  love,  without  com- 
munion, unless  he  finds  it  in  the  world.  Eternity  past,  on  this  theory,  must 
l>e  an  eternity  of  desolation  ;  and,  to  escape  this  conclusion,  many  a  Unitarian 
thinker  is  driven  to  believe  in  the  eternity  of  matter  and  so  to  put  side  by 
side  with  God  an  eternal  something  which  he  did  not  originate,  and  which 
determines  and  limits  him.  This  is  to  destroy  his  Deity  altogether.  And 
the  only  refuge  from  this  is  the  Pantheistic  conception  of  God  and  nature 
as  one,  and  of  an  unintelligent,  half-material  God  that  comes  to  life  and 
consciousness  only  in  individual  minds.  And,  that  Unitarianism  tends  to 
Pantheism  and  the  denial  of  all  real  life  in  God,  is  abundantly  shown  by  the 
history  of  Mohammedanism  and  modern  Judaism  on  the  one  hand,  and  on 
the  other  by  the  rapid  downward  progress  of  New  England  thought  from 
the  cautious  Unitarianism  of  Channing  to  the  half-fledged  Pantheism  of 
Theodore  Parker  and  the  full-fledged  Pantheism  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 
How  much  better  than  all  this,  how  much  more  rational  and  how  much 
more  safe  the  Scriptural  view  of  a  trinity  of  persons  in  the  divine  nature  — 
a  view  which  maintains  the  absolute  perfection  of  God  by  declaring  his 
eternal  independence  and  self-sufficiency  —  a  view  which  recognizes  in 
him  a  fullness  of  resources  that  needs  no  creature  and  no  universe  to 
render  it  more  complete,  that  provides  eternal  and  infinite  objects  of  con- 
templation and  the  means  of  perfect  love  and  fellowship  without  going 
outside  of  his  own  nature,  and  that  shows  how  the  eternal  existence  of  these 
objects  of  regard  can  never  hamper  or  limit  him,  because  they  are  not  created 
objects,  but  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  equal  partakers  of  his  essence 
and  the  sharers  of  his  throne. 

Thus,  I  have  attempted  to  explain  the  meaning  of  the  phrase  "  the  living 
God,"  and  have  shown  that  it  involves  the  ideas,  first,  of  an  all-originating 
and  sustaining  life,  in  opposition  to  the  views  of  the  Deist  who  would  ban- 
ish God  from  the  universe  he  has  made  and  set  a-going ;  secondly,  of  a 
consciously  voluntary  life,  in  opposition  to  the  views  of  the  Pantheist  who 
would  entomb  God  in  the  great  machine  and  confound  him  with  it ;  thirdly, 
of  an  eternally  independent  and  self-sufficient  life,  in  opposition  to  the 
views  of  the  Unitarian,  who  would  deny  the  distinction  of  persons  in  the 
Godhead  and  logically  destroy  his  Deity  by  making  him  dependent  upon 
his  creation.  If  you  have  followed  me  thus  far,  you  will  appreciate  two  most 
important  and  valuable  results  which  flow  from  this  conception  of  God  as 
the  living  God.  And  the  first  is,  that  it  utterly  delivers  us  from  the  tyranny 
of  the  modern  idea  of  law,  which  so  weakens  the  faith  and  oppresses  the 
hearts  of  many  believers.  I  say  the  tyranny  of  the  modem  idea  of  law, 


184  THE   LIVING    GOD. 

and  by  this  I  mean  the  overstraining  of  the  idea  so  that  it  encompasses  and 
swallows  up  all  things  —  the  universe,  freedom,  and  God  himself.  How 
many  there  are  who  begin  to  doubt  whether  the  dominion  of  fixed  law  leaves 
any  room  for  miracles,  for  answers  to  prayer,  for  pardoning  grace,  for  regen- 
erating power  !  Now  I  think  it  is  easy  to  see,  after  what  has  been  said,  that 
these  doubts  all  rest  upon  a  mistaken  notion  of  the  nature  of  law  and  of  its 
relation  to  God.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  decry  the  true  idea  of  "  the  reign  of 
law  "  which  constitutes  the  strength  and  inspiration  of  modern  science.  I 
stand  for  it.  I  rejoice  in  it  as  almost  a  new  revelation  of  the  perfections  of 
God  himself.  But  on  that  very  account  I  am  unwilling  to  sacrifice  that 
which  is  its  greatest  glory  —  its  connection  with  the  unseen  worker  who 
manifests  himself  through  it.  To  deify  law,  and  put  it  in  place  of  God, — 
that  is  to  unmake  it,  to  destroy  it.  To  imagine  some  blind,  unconscious 
force  shaping  all  things  into  forms  of  beauty  and  regulating  all  the  changes 
of  nature  and  of  history, —  that  is  to  put  ourselves  under  the  awful  sceptre 
of  fate,  and  to  turn  law  into  a  hideous  monstrosity.  And  from  this  concep- 
tion, the  revelation  of  God  as  the  living  God  delivers  us.  If  he  is  the 
all-originating,  all-sustaining,  all-controlling  One,  and  no  force  is  exerted 
in  the  universe  without  his  permission  and  superintendence,  then  law 
assumes  a  different  aspect  to  us.  The  laws  of  nature  and  the  laws  of  the 
Spirit  are  all  manifestations  of  the  harmony  of  his  nature  and  the  power  of 
his  will.  His  laws  are  fixed  because  his  will  is  infinitely  wise  and  so  infinitely 
unchanging, —  and  the  regular  sequences  of  nature  are  but  the  orderly 
methods  of  his  operation.  What  is  law  ?  Can  you  give  any  better  definition 
of  it  than  this  —  a  steady  will  enforced  by  power?  Can  you  define  the 
phrase  "laws  of  nature  "  any  better  than  by  saying  that  they  are  the  mani- 
festations of  a  present  God,  enforcing  an  infinitely  wise  and  changeless  will 
by  the  exercise  of  infinite  power  ?  See  then  how  all  these  laws  which  we 
are  tempted  to  look  upon  as  dead  material  things  are  revelations  of  a  per- 
sonal will,  a  present  upholder  and  mover,  in  other  words,  a  living  God ! 
However  closely  these  laws  may  press  me  or  cross  me,  there  is  an  infinite 
personality  in  them.  God  in  all  the  rectitude  and  benevolence  of  his  char- 
acter is  present  in  them,  not  suffering  them  to  bring  wrong  or  harm  to  his 
creatures,  but  making  all  things  in  the  universe  "  work  together  for  good  to 
them  that  love  him." 

This  conception  of  God  as  the  living  God  delivers  us  from  the  tyranny  of 
the  idea  of  law,  moreover,  by  showing  us  that  God  is  not  confined  to  the 
domain  of  nature's  laws,  but  while  he  is  in  them,  is  also  above  them,  making 
them  serve  him.  You  know  how  man  uses  the  laws  of  nature  and  makes 
them  serve  him.  As  he  did  not  originate  them,  so  he  cannot  destroy  them 
or  dispense  with  them.  If  he  thinks  to  override  one  of  them,  like  the  law 
of  gravitation,  he  comes  down  with  broken  bones.  But  it  is  wonderful  how 
he  can  combine  them  to  produce  new  effects  which  nature  never  would  have 
produced  of  herself.  By  making  use  of  the  expansion  of  steam  and  combin- 
ing this  with  other  known  mechanical  laws,  he  can  bring  in  a  force  which 
shall  counteract  the  law  of  gravitation  and  can  lift  himself  in  an  elevator 
from  the  bottom  to  the  top  of  a  building  without  breaking  his  bones  at  all. 
And  the  chemist  can  so  combine  the  forces  of  nature  as  to  produce  ice  in  a 
red-hot  crucible.  So  man,  limited  as  he  is,  is  yet  above  nature,  and  by 


THE   LIVING   GOD.  185 

combining  nature's  laws  in  new  ways  can  make  them  serve  his  purposes. 
And  now,  if  man  can  do  this,  has  the  living  God  less  power  than  man? 
Cannot  he  combine  the  laws  of  nature  in  unseen  ways  to  accomplish  his 
plans  and  to  answer  the  prayers  of  his  people  ?  Nay,  cannot  he  do  more 
than  this,  namely,  exercise  an  absolute  spontaneity  and  freedom  by  making 
new  beginnings  in  history  without  any  reference  to  natural  law  at  all  ?  It 
is  the  glory  of  man  that  his  will  is  in  part  an  originating  force,  not  wholly 
determined  by  the  antecedents  of  his  situation,  but  capable  of  new  decisions 
unconnected  with  his  former  life  and  for  which  no  laws  of  nature  can  account. 
And  cannot  God  in  like  manner  exercise  his  infinite  freedom  of  will,  insert- 
ing a  new  and  personal  force  into  nature,  and  thus  working  miracles  of 
healing  and  resurrection  and  renewing  of  the  soul  ?  Oh,  yes  !  Our  God  is 
not  a  dead  God,  but  a  living  God.  Law  is  not  an  exhaustive  expression  of 
his  will.  After  law  has  uttered  its  last  word,  there  is  still  room  for  another 
and  more  glorious  manifestation  of  God  in  the  merciful,  helpful,  pardoning, 
restoring  aspects  of  his  character  —  and  that  manifestation  we  call  grace. 
Nature  is  the  loose  mantle  in  which  he  commonly  reveals  himself  ;  but  he  is 
not  fettered  by  the  robe  he  wears  —  he  can  thrust  it  aside  when  he  will  and 
"make  bare  his  arm  "  in  providential  interpositions  for  earthly  deliverance, 
and  in  mighty  movements  within  the  bounds  of  history  for  the  salvation  of 
the  sinner  and  for  the  setting  up  of  his  kingdom. 

The  other  benefit  which  results  to  us  from  this  conception  of  God  as  the 
living  God,  is  the  new  vividness  and  reality  which  it  gives  to  all  God's  deal- 
ings with  our  individual  souls.  So  all-pervasive  is  the  false  conception  of 
law  of  which  I  have  spoken,  that  many  Christians  have  come  to  think  of 
God's  moral  attributes  and  doings  as  conditioned  by  it.  They  have  come 
to  expect  more  from  natural  causes  in  their  own  experience  and  in  the 
progress  of  religion  in  the  world  than  they  expect  from  God.  Their  God 
is  a  God  in  fetters  —  a  God  confined  and  constrained,  not  only  by  the  laws 
of  his  own  creation,  but  by  the  laws  of  his  own  being.  And  so  holiness  and 
love  and  grace  have  come  to  be  abstractions  to  them,  and  they  have  "limited 
the  holy  One  of  Israel. "  I  fear,  indeed,  that  in  much  of  our  modern  preach- 
ing this  idea  has  insensibly  exerted  far  too  great  an  influence.  Even  God's 
moral  law  has  put  on  the  semblance  of  a  mere  law  of  nature,  in  which  the 
personality  and  living  will  of  God  is  lost  sight  of.  Sin  is  conceived  of  as 
misfortune  and  weakness,  like  the  misstep  that  breaks  the  limb  on  a  dark 
night,  instead  of  the  transgression  of  command  and  the  opposition  to  God 
which  the  guilty  conscience  declares  it  to  be.  A  merely  subjective  atone- 
ment that  will  repair  the  injury  done  to  itself  by  the  individual  soul  is  said 
to  be  all-sufficient,  while  the  offended  personality  of  God  and  the  necessity 
of  satisfaction  to  his  outraged  holiness  are  forgotten. 

And  the  punishment  of  the  sinner  for  rejecting  the  atonement  is  made  to 
consist  only  in  the  reaction  of  natural  law,  instead  of  consisting  also  in  the 
just  retribution  and  wrath  which  a  personal  God  who  hates  all  sin  visits  upon 
him  who  persists  in  ungodliness  and  tramples  under  his  feet  the  blood  of 
Jesus.  In  fine,  a  materializing,  semi-pantheistic  conception  of  law  has  risen 
like  a  vapor  from  the  lower  levels  of  physical  research,  and  has  enshrouded 
every  one  of  the  mountainous  truths  of  revelation  that  used  to  stand  out  so 
clear  in  sunlight,  till  the  life  and  glory  of  them  is  all  gone.  Do  you  know 


186  THE    LIVING    GOD. 

the  reason  ?  The  sunlight  that  once  gave  them  splendor  and  beauty  was 
the  light  that  shone  from  the  face  of  a  personal  and  living  God,  and  when 
the  sun  sets,  the  mountains  must  be  dark  ! 

Bat  this  conception  of  God  as  the  living  God  gives  us  back  our  faith. 
Divine  holiness  is  no  abstraction  now,  but  a  living  attribute  of  God,  pene- 
trated through  and  through  with  the  energy  and  activity  of  will.  Moral 
law  comes  now  to  be  the  manifestation,  not  simply  of  what  God  is,  but  of 
what  he  wills  and  demands.  Obedience  is  recommended  now  not  simply  by 
our  needs  but  by  the  authority  of  God  —  it  is  not  only  the  best  policy 
of  the  soul  to  yield  itself  to  him,  but  it  is  his  bounden  duty  —  and 
disobedience  is  enmity  against  the  law  giver.  Now  we  need  an  atonement, 
not  only  to  reconcile  us  to  God,  but  to  reconcile  God  to  us.  Now  we  need 
a  forgiveness  which  shall  bring  us  as  guilty  sinners  into  communion  once 
more  with  a  personal  God.  And  how  wonderfully  personal  on  this  better 
view  does  grace  become  ;  not  simply  the  remanding  us  to  some  new  work- 
ing of  law,  by  which  all  shall  be  made  of  us  that  naturally  can  be,  but  the 
free,  unbought  extension  to  us  of  God's  will  and  purpose  of  redemption, 
restoring  us  to  his  favor  and  making  us  sons  of  God  !  So  in  redemption,  as 
in  creation  and  providence,  we  recognize  the  relation  of  a  personal  God  t<> 
our  souls,  putting  into  every  act  and  effort  of  his  love  the  warmth  and  direct- 
ness of  an  infinite,  divine  affection.  So  we  come  into  a  fellowship  with  God 
which  would  have  been  utterly  impossible  if  God  had  been  only  another 
name  to  us  for  law.  We  find  one  who,  "in  opposition  to  all  dead  abstrac- 
tions, all  vague  head-notions,  is  the  living  Person,  the  source  and  fountain 
of  all  life,  loving  and  loved  in  return. "  It  was  this  for  which  the  Psalmist 
longed  when  he  cried:  "As  the  hart  panteth  after  the  water-brooks,  so 
panteth  my  soul  after  thee,  O  God  !  My  soul  thirsteth  for  God,  for  the  liv- 
ing God.  When  shall  I  come  and  appear  before  God  ?"  "  What  we  want," 
says  Robertson,  "is  not  infinitude,  but  a  boundless  One ;  not  to  feel  that 
love  is  the  law  of  this  universe,  but  to  feel  One  whose  name  is  Love.  For 
else,  if  in  this  world  of  order  there  be  no  one  in  whose  bosom  that  order  is 
centred,  and  of  whose  being  it  is  the  expression :  in  this  world  of  manifold 
contrivance,  no  personal  affection  which  gave  to  the  skies  their  trembling 
tenderness,  and  to  the  snow  its  purity ;  then  order,  affection,  contrivance, 
wisdom,  are  only  horrible  abstractions,  and  we  are  in  the  dreary  universe 
alone.  It  is  a  dark  moment  when  the  sense  of  that  personality  is  lost :  more 
terrible  than  the  doubt  of  immortality.  For,  of  the  two,  eternity  without  a 
personal  God,  or  God  for  seventy  years  without  immortality,  no  one  after 
David's  heart  would  hesitate.  '  Give  me  God  for  life,  to  know  and  be  known 
by  Him  !  No  thought  is  more  hideous  than  that  of  an  eternity  without 
Him.'" 

And  yet  I  do  not  know  that  we  should  ever  be  convinced  of  this,  if  God 
had  not  shown  his  will  and  power  in  the  incarnation.  The  greatest  proof  of 
will  and  power  is  self -limitation ;  and  the  self -limitation  of  God  in  the  person 
of  Christ,  the  voluntary  resigning  of  his  glory,  the  narrowing  of  himself  to 
our  human  conditions,  and  the  taking  upon  him  of  our  burdens  of  guilt  and 
penalty,  these  show  personality  as  nothing  else  could.  Not  will  alone,  but 
heart  also,  must  go  to  the  making  of  a  man.  So  he  in  whose  image  we  are 
made  shows  most  that  he  is  the  living  God  by  the  exhibition  of  his  love  in 


THE    LIVING    GOD.  187 

the  cross.  For  "  God  was  in  Christ,  reconciling  the  world  unto  himself  ;  " 
and,  as  Jesus  himself  said  :  "  He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father." 
If  we  have  ever  thought  that  God  was  a  dead  God,  identical  with  the  wheels 
and  processes  of  nature  ;  if  we  have  ever  thought  of  him  as  only  a  thinking 
mechanism,  a  God  of  mere  Idea  and  Reason,  as  cold  and  emotionless  as  the 
white  clouds  above  our  heads  or  the  snow  beneath  our  feet ;  if  we  have  ever 
thought  of  him  as  mere  force  or  arbitrary  will,  without  care  for  the  creatures 
who  sin  and  who  suffer ;  let  our  eyes  be  opened  to  see  the  light  of  the 
knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ.  There  we  see 
that  God  has  heart  as  well  as  mind  and  will,  that  his  nature  is  tremblingly 
sensitive  to  our  human  griefs  and  needs,  that  he  has  an  eye  to  pity  and  an  arm 
to  pave.  The  living  Christ,  in  whom  God  manifests  himself  as  the  Way, 
the  Truth  and  the  Life,  is  the  final  and  conclusive  proof  that  God  is  the  liv- 
ing God. 

There  are  two  Scripture  sentences  which  I  would  leave  with  you  in  con- 
clusion. They  suggest  more  than  a  thousand  admonitions  or  invitations 
could.  They  are  both  found  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  the  one 
sounds  as  if  addressed  to  the  children  of  God,  the  other  as  if  addressed  to 
those  who  know  not  God.  The  first  is  this:  "Ye  are  come  unto  Mount 
Zion,  and  \\uto  the  city  of  the  living  God. "  It  suggests  the  glorious  heritage 
of  the  Christian  with  whom  God  has  entered  into  relations  of  personal 
friendship  and  communion,  and  the  infinite  possibilities  that  lie  before  him 
in  that  future  city  which  the  boundless  freedom  and  the  inventive  mind  of 
God  shall  fill  with  wonders  of  blessing  and  glory  to  those  who  love  him. 
The  other  text  suggests  the  boundless  possibilities  of  misery  and  shame  and 
condemnation  that  lie  before  the  unrepenting  sinner,  when  once  he  shall  see 
face  to  face  that  infinite  Being  whom  he  has  made  his  enemy.  Ponder  this 
text,  O  sinner  :  "  It  is  a  fearful  thing  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  living  God  !" 


XIV. 

THE  HOLINESS  OF  GOD.* 


Have  you  ever  come  to  the  very  verge  of  death,  and  then  been  suddenly 
and  unexpectedly  delivered  ?  If  you  have  not,  there  are  some  lessons  that 
you  have  yet  to  learn.  Such  times  of  rescue  are  full  of  instruction.  The 
veil  that  hides  the  supernatural  from  us  seems  withdrawn.  God  fills  the 
whole  horizon  of  our  thought.  We  cease  to  regard  him  as  a  dream  of  the 
fancy  or  as  an  appendage  of  our  comfort.  We  see  him  as  he  is  —  the  per- 
sonal and  living  God,  the  centre  and  stay  of  all  things,  the  only  eternal 
reality.  In  such  hours,  too,  the  conscience  speaks,  and,  in  the  hush  of 
earthly  passion  and  selfishness,  we  perceive  those  moral  attributes  which 
chiefly  make  God  to  be  God. 

It  was  such  a  rescue  from  imminent  destruction  that  occasioned  the  utter- 
ance of  the  text.  It  is  part  of  the  song  which  the  saved  people  of  Israel 
sang  on  the  shore  of  the  Bed  Sea,  after  that  fearful  night  in  which  Pharaoh 
and  his  host  had  perished.  They  looked  back  upon  the  waters  through 
which  they  had  passed  in  safety,  but  in  which  their  enemies  had  been  over- 
whelmed, and  depths  of  God's  nature  seemed  opened  to  their  view  that  were 
deeper  than  the  depths  of  the  sea.  There  was  an  attribute  of  God  which 
had  never  been  mentioned  in  previous  revelations,  never  before  had  been 
put  into  a  single  word  and  so  expressed  to  men,  but  which  stood  out  clear  and 
bright  forever  from  the  day  that  Moses  and  the  children  of  Israel  sang  unto 
the  Lord  :  ' '  Who  is  like  unto  thee,  O  Lord,  among  the  gods  !  who  is  like 
unto  thee,  glorious  in  holiness  !" 

That  song,  in  which  the  holiness  of  God  was  the  culminating  theme,  was 
not  merely  the  natural  expression  of  a  new-born  nation's  gratitude  and  wor. 
ship  —  it  was  an  inspired  song  also.  And  the  witness  of  inspiration  to  God's 
holiness  has  never  ceased.  Beginning  here  in  the  Pentateuch  it  goes  on,  in 
an  ever-broadening  and  deepening  stream,  until  we  reach  the  book  of  Beve- 
lation.  Throughout  the  Bible,  holiness  is  the  attribute  insisted  on  more 
than  any  other.  Do  you  say  that  this  is  only  because  in  man's  state  of  sin, 
his  first  and  most  pressing  need  is  to  be  convinced  that  God  is  holy  ?  But 
in  heaven  there  is  no  sin,  yet  in  heaven  cherubim  and  seraphim  continually 
do  cry  :  "Holy,  holy,  holy,  Lord  God  Almighty  !"  Do  you  say  that  this 
prominence  is  given  to  holiness  only  because  the  revelation  of  it  is  adapted 
to  our  present  stage  of  progress  and  capacity  ?  But  look  beyond  the  pres- 
ent ;  see  the  eternal  future  portrayed  in  the  Apocalypse ;  hear  the  host  of 


*  Originally  prepared  as  a  sermon  on  the  text,  Ex.  15:  11— "Glorious  in  holiness,"  and 
preached  in  the  Chapel  of  the  University  of  Rochester,  on  the  Day  of  Prayer  for  Colleges,, 
January  31, 1878 ;  subsequently  printed  as  an  article  in  the  Examiner,  January  26,  Feb- 
ruary 9,  and  February  22, 1882. 

188 


THE    HOLINESS    OF    GOD.  189 

the  redeemed  upon  the  shores  of  another  sea,  in  which  the  last  of  God's  foes 
has  been  overthrown  ;  there  they  sing  again  :  "Who  shall  not  fear  thee,  O 
Lord,  and  glorify  thy  name  ?  for  thou  only  art  holy  !  " 

Since  the  greatest  thought  of  the  finite  is  the  infinite,  and  our  ruling  con- 
ception of  God  must  make  or  mar  our  earthly  career  and  settle  our  eternal 
destiny,  how  important  a  thing  it  is  that  we  should  have  worthy  thoughts  of 
the  divine  holiness  !  May  the  Spirit  of  holiness  enlighten  us  while  we  inquire 
what  holiness  in  God  is,  how  it  is  distinguished  from  other  attributes,  and 
what  place  and  rank  it  holds  in  his  nature. 

The  theme  which  we  are  to  consider  is  the  greatest  of  themes,  and  one  of 
the  most  difficult.  The  difficulty  arises  partly  from  the  relation  of  the  divine 
attributes  to  the  divine  essence.  But  here,  at  any  rate,  it  is  plain  that  the 
attributes  are  not  themselves  God,  nor  are  they  mere  names  for  human 
conceptions  of  God.  They  have  an  objective  existence.  They  are  actual 
qualities,  distinguishable  from  each  other  and  from  the  essence  to  which 
they  belong.  As  in  matter,  so  in  mind,  qualities  imply  a  substance  in 
which  they  find  their  unity.  God  is  a  spiritual  substance,  and  of  this  sub- 
stance the  attributes  are  inseparable  characteristics  and  manifestations. 

Holiness  is  one  of  these  characteristic  qualities  of  God.  We  call  it  an 
attribute,  because  we  are  compelled  to  attribute  it  to  God  as  a  fundamental 
power  or  principle  of  his  being,  in  order  to  give  rational  account  of  certain 
constant  facts  in  his  self-revelations.  The  attributes  are  qualities  without 
which  God  would  not  be  God.  Intellect  is  an  attribute  of  man,  because  man 
would  not  be  man  without  it.  —  And  here  arises  another  difficulty.  Every 
essential  attribute  of  a  moral  being  has  both  its  active  and  its  passive  sides. 
Active  truth  presupposes  passive  truth  ;  truthful  speaking,  thinking,  know- 
ing, are  impossible  without  truth  of  being. 

Otherwise,  the  attributes  of  God  would  be  his  acts  ;  his  very  being  would 
be  synonymous  with  his  volition.  This  cannot  be  ;  although  such  names  as 
Thomasius  and  Julius  Miiller  might  be  cited  as  its  advocates.  If  God  were 
primarily  will,  and  the  essence  of  God  were  his  act,  it  would  be  in  the  power 
of  God  to  annihilate  himself,  and  our  primitive  belief  in  God's  necessary 
existence  would  be  a  delusion.  Behind  all  the  active  aspects  of  God's  attri- 
butes we  must  recognize  the  passive.  Love  is  an  active  principle  in  God, 
but  it  could  not  be  active  unless  there  were  a  foundation  for  this  activity  in 
its  very  natiire.  And  in  any  thorough  analysis  of  the  attributes,  either  of 
man  or  of  God,  the  consideration  of  the  passive  side  must  come  first, — the 
thought  of  the  attribute  as  quality  must  come  before  the  thought  of  the 
attribute  as  power. 

Let  us  now  apply  what  has  been  said  to  the  attribute  of  holiness.  What 
is  holiness  ?  I  think  we  shall  say  at  once  that  it  is  purity.  When  we  speak 
of  a  pure  soul,  we  mean  not  simply  that  the  acts  of  that  soul  show  an  unde- 
viating  rectitude,  that  its  words  are  transparently  true  and  just,  that  its  very 
emotions  and  thoughts  are  free  from  all  sensuous  or  selfish  stain,  but  we 
mean  that  the  spirit  itself,  in  its  inmost  substance  and  essence,  is  devoid  of 
all  tendency  or  impulse  toward  the  wrong. 

Among  men  we  know  that  there  is  only  an  approximation  to  such  purity  as 
this.  Absolute  purity  is  not  even  an  episode  with  us.  We  are  never  wholly 
single  in  our  motive.  Even  when  we  would  do  good,  evil  is  present  with  us, 


190  THE   HOLINESS   OF   GOD. 

and  below  the  surface-stream,  which  sometimes  seems  so  clear,  there  are  tur- 
bid undercurrents  which  God  sees  even  if  we  do  not.  Most  often  two 
streams,  plain  even  to  our  own  sight,  flow  on  side  by  side,  like  the  Arve 
after  its  junction  with  the  Rhone  ;  or  the  Ohio,  made  up  of  the  Alleghanv 
and  the  Monongahela,  not  yet  fully  united.  The  muddy  current  is  the  cur- 
rent of  our  natural  life,  but  we  are  compelled  to  recognize  in  the  clear  stream 
a  branch  of  the  river  of  the  water  of  life  that  flows  from  the  throne  of  God. 
That  stream  which  joins  itself  to  ours  to  purify  and  cleanse  is  clear  as  crys- 
tal. It  proceeds  from  deep  unfathomable  fountains  in  the  being  of  God, 
and  it  flows  on  and  on  without  change  or  stint  forever.  What  then  must 
that  purity  be  from  which  all  purity  in  men  or  angels  is  derived,  as  the 
trickling  rill  from  the  inexhaustible  reservoir  ! 

And  yet  we  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  think  of  holiness  in  God  as  if  it 
were  a  passive  purity  only.  All  God's  thoughts  and  deeds  in  truth  are  pure, 
because  they  flow  from  deeper  than  Artesian  sources  in  his  clear  and  perfect 
nature.  But  then  we  are  speaking  of  a  moral  nature,  even  when  we  use 
these  physical  analogies.  The  purity  of  God  is  also  a  purity  that  reveals 
itself  in  active  will.  Men  ignore  this  consciously  or  unconsciously.  They 
conceive  of  holiness  in  God  as  a  still  and  moveless  purity,  like  the  unspotted 
whiteness  of  the  new-fallen  snow,  or  the  stainless  serenity  of  the  blue  sky 
after  a  summer  rain.  They  forget  that  all  God's  moral  attributes  are  pene- 
trated and  pervaded  by  will. 

In  God  there  is  nothing  inert.  He  is  alive  in  every  part.  That  mighty 
will  which  brought  the  universe  into  being,  and  which  unweariedly  sustains 
it  from  hour  to  hour — that  mighty  will  whose  reflection  and  result  we  see 
in  the  fixed  successions  of  nature,  and  in  the  majestic  order  of  science  — 
that  will  is  the  active  element  in  God's  holiness.  Holiness  is  purity,  but 
purity  unsleeping  —  the  most  tremendous  energy  in  the  universe  eternally 
and  unchangeably  exerting  itself — "  that  living  Will  that  shall  endure,  when 
all  that  seems  shall  suffer  shock." 

Holiness,  then,  is  not  the  passive  material  purity  that  is  unconscious  of 
itself  and  indifferent  to  change  or  injury.  It  is  purity  in  conscious  and 
determined  movement.  All  the  intensity  of  human  volition,  all  the  com- 
bined energy  of  all  human  wills,  is  as  feebleness  compared  with  that  concen- 
tration of  mental  and  spiritual  power  which  is  involved  in  the  holiness  of 
God.  Holiness  in  him  is  imaged  in  the  sea  of  glass,  of  which  the  book  of 
Be velation  speaks.  It  is  of  crystal  purity,  but  there  is  more  than  that .  In  it 
the  enemies  of  God  are  overwhelmed.  It  is  a  "sea  of  glass  mingled  with 
fire  ! " 

I  have  said  that  God's  holiness  is  purity  exercising  will  —  purity  willing. 
What  is  the  object  of  this  willing  ?  I  answer,  itself.  Holiness  in  God  is 
purity  willing,  affirming,  asserting,  maintaining,  itself.  In  virtue  of  his 
holiness,  God  eternally  asserts  and  maintains  his  own  moral  excellence.  We 
have  a  faint  analogue  in  human  experience.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  a  man's 
duty  to  himself.  You  respect  no  man  who  does  not  respect  himself.  You 
revere  genuine  dignity  of  character.  When  the  fierceness  of  slander  or  of 
temptation  assaults  the  true  man,  there  is  no  nobler  sight  on  earth  than  to 
see  him  holding  fast  his  integrity,  and  asserting  his  innocence  before  God 
and  the  world.  So  did  Job  of  old,  and  within  certain  limits  God  justified 


THE   HOLINESS   OF    GOD.  191 

Job's  self -affirming  righteousness  against  the  cruel  accusations  of  his  false 
friends. 

Self-preservation  is  the  law  of  life.  Shall  it  be  the  law  of  all  the  lower 
creation,  teaching  the  birds  and  the  beasts  their  arts  of  defense,  and  men 
and  nations  to  be  jealous  of  their  rights  and  liberties,  and  shall  it  not  be  the 
law  of  virtue,  that  highest  life  of  all  ?  Shall  purity  not  stand  for  itself  and 
maintain  its  own  existence  ?  Ah,  it  is  not  till  men  have  purity,  that  they 
feel  their  right  to  live.  It  is  the  pure  soul  that  has  in  it  the  clear  instinct  of 
immortality.  Get  God's  life  into  you,  and  it  becomes  duty  to  live,  and  to 
assert  and  maintain  that  life  forevermore. 

Aye,  there  are  times  in  the  experience  of  the  Christian  when  this  new  and 
God-given  purity  seems  lifted  up  above  the  strife  with  sin.  For  a  moment 
we  seem  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  our  heavenly  freedom.  Then  we  see  that 
holiness  is  not  simply  the  antithesis  to  moral  evil,  so  that  its  existence  is 
dependent  upon  the  existence  of  that  which  is  its  opposite.  We  see  that 
purity  in  the  soul  is  a  positive  thing,  and  not  a  negative.  Without  a  glance 
at  the  sin  that  seems  for  a  brief  space  put  beneath  our  feet,  our  whole  being 
rejoices  that  it  reflects  something  of  the  light  which  no  man  hath  seen  or  can 
see,  and  that  it  will  reflect  that  light  of  the  divine  purity  throughout  eternity. 

These  are  but  faint  analogies,  but  they  are  real  analogies,  of  something 
infinitely  higher  than  themselves.  There  is  a  self-preserving  instinct,  a 
self-maintaining  life,  a  self -asserting  purity  in  man.  And  is  there  no  instinct 
of  self-preservation  in  God  ?  Shall  the  central  life  of  all  life  not  maintain 
itself  ?  Shall  the  source  of  all  purity  not  respect  itself  and  assert  itself  ? 
We  say,  "  Let  justice  be  done  though  the  heavens  fall."  Let  us  rather  say, 
11  Because  justice  is  done,  the  heavens  do  not  fall."  If  God  could  be  unjust 
to  himself,  the  universe  would  perish.  The  purity  of  God,  forever  main- 
taining itself,  divine  perfection  asserting  itself  as  the  highest  good  and  the 
highest  end,  infinite  moral  excellence  willing  its  own  perpetuity  and  domin- 
ion—  this  is  the  holiness  of  God.  Purity  of  substance,  energy  of  will, 
self-affirmation  —  these  make  up  the  idea  of  it.  In  a  word,  holiness  in  God 
is  the  self -affirming  purity  of  the  divine  nature. 

Let  us  now,  as  the  second  division  of  our  great  theme,  inquire  what 
relation  the  holiness  of  God  sustains  to  other  attributes  of  his  being.  And 
first,  to  justice.  The  answer  easily  presents  itself.  Justice  is  simply  tran- 
sitive holiness,  or  holiness  exercised  toward  creatures.  The  same  holiness 
which  exists  in  God  in  eternity  past,  manifests  itself  as  justice,  so  soon  as 
moral  intelligences  come  into  being.  Before  creation  God  was  holiness, 
just  as  he  was  love  and  truth.  The  one  God — Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost — 
is  sufficient  to  himself.  As  he  has  in  himself  an  infinite  object  of  knowl- 
edge, he  is  the  eternal  truth.  As  he  has  in  himself  an  infinite  object  of 
affection,  he  is  the  eternal  love.  And  as  he  has  in  himself  an  infinite  object 
of  will,  he  is  the  eternal  holiness.  The  trinity  in  unity  assures  God's  inde- 
pendence, his  sovereignty,  his  blessedness.  He  does  not  need  to  create  for 
his  own  sake.  Because  God  is  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Spirit,  there  is  the 
foundation  for  intelligence,  communion,  activity,  in  the  infinite  ranges  of 
his  own  being.  If  he  creates,  therefore,  it  is  not  to  augment  his  own  bless- 
edness, but  to  communicate  it  to  others.  If  he  makes  the  worlds,  it  is  not 
of  necessity,  but  of  grace. 


192  THE   HOLINESS   OF   GOD. 

God  is  holy,  whether  creation  exists  or  not.  But  the  moment  moral 
creatures  come  into  being,  this  holiness  of  God  has  relations  to  them,  and 
holiness  in  relation  to  creatures  is  justice.  The  self-affirming  purity  of  God 
demands  a  like  purity  in  those  who  have  been  made  in  his  image.  As  God 
wills  and  maintains  his  own  moral  excellence,  so  all  creatures  must  will  and 
maintain  the  moral  excellence  of  God.  There  can  be  only  one  centre  in  the 
solar  system.  The  sun  is  its  own  centre  and  the  centre  for  all  the  planets 
also.  So  God's  purity  is  the  object  of  his  own  will,  and  it  must  be  the  object 
of  all  the  wills  of  all  his  creatures  also.  See  how  all  arbitrariness  is  excluded 
here.  God  is  what  he  is  —  infinite  purity.  He  cannot  change.  If  creatures 
are  to  attain  the  end  of  their  being,  then,  they  must  be  like  God  in  moral 
purity.  Justice  is  nothing  but  the  publication  and  enforcement  of  this 
natural  necessity. 

The  law  of  God,  therefore,  is  simply  a  transcript  of  God's  being  —  the 
holiness  of  God  in  the  form  of  moral  requirement.  Law  can  no  more  be 
different  from  what  it  is,  than  God  can  be  different  from  what  he  is.  And 
justice  does  not  make  law  —  it  only  reveals  law.  Justice  is  holiness  declaring 
to  creatures,  in  their  own  constitution,  in  conscience,  in  providence,  and  in 
the  written  word,  the  fundamental  facts  of  being. 

In  this  sense  justice  is  legislative  holiness.  But  justice  is  executive  holi- 
ness also.  God  will  not  only  demand  purity  in  his  creatures,  but  he  will 
enforce  this  demand.  That  mighty  will  that  asserts  the  divine  purity  as  the 
thing  of  supreme  worth,  will  flow  on  like  an  infinite  river  and  bear  upon  its 
bosom  the  whole  universe  of  moral  beings.  Resist  that  current,  and  you  are 
overwhelmed  by  it.  Because  God  is  God,  you  must  perish.  That  mighty 
will  is  the  substance  and  strength  of  law.  When  you  make  your  thrust 
against  the  law,  by  transgression,  you  find  that  law  is  elastic  ;  because  the 
living  will  of  God  is  in  it,  there  is  a  counter-thrust  that  prostrates  and 
destroys  you. 

And  so  retributive  justice,  binding  moral  evil  and  penal  misery  together 
in  inevitable  and  dreadful  union,  is  simply  the  reaction  of  God's  holiness 
against  its  antagonist  and  would-be  destroyer.  Punishment  is  God's  holy 
will  maintaining  and  vindicating  the  divine  purity.  Justice  itself  is  legis- 
lative and  retributive  holiness ;  and  God  can  cease  to  demand  purity  and  to 
punish  sin,  only  when  he  ceases  to  be  holy,  that  is,  only  when  he  ceases  to 
be  God. 

Holiness,  in  the  form  of  justice,  is  therefore  necessarily  the  detecter  and 
-condemner  and  punisher  of  impurity  and  selfishness.  The  whole  nature  of 
God  is  affected  with  revulsion  from  moral  evil,  and  not  only  with  revulsion 
but  with  abhorrence  and  indignation.  But  let  us  remember  that  this  anger 
of  God  against  the  wicked  is  not  a  human  anger.  In  it  is  no  passion  or 
malice.  It  is  the  legitimate  expression  of  God's  purity,  the  calm  judicial 
vindication  of  his  righteousness,  the  exact  apportionment  of  retribution  to 
transgression.  God's  holiness  as  much  binds  him  to  punish  sin,  as  sin  binds 
the  sinner  to  be  punished. 

Years  ago  the  city  of  Rochester  witnessed  a  strange  scene.  Senator  Ira 
Harris,  then  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court,  was  to  pronounce  sentence  of 
death  upon  a  brutal  criminal,  whose  ignorance  of  the  English  language  made 
necessary  the  intervention  of  an  interpreter,  even  to  communicate  to  him 


THE   HOLINESS   OF   GOD.  193 

the  meaning  of  the  words  that  sealed  his  doom.  Those  who  knew  Judge 
Harris  have  not  forgotten  the  large  mould  of  his  mind  and  the  correspond- 
ingly magnificent  port  of  the  man.  The  bearing  of  the  Judge  that  day 
seemed  the  very  embodiment  of  the  majesty  and  impartiality  of  the  law, 
but  coupled  with  this  there  was  a  deep  compassion  for  the  miserable  being 
before  him.  As  he  addressed  the  convicted  man  tears  were  seen  trickling 
down  his  cheeks,  his  voice  trembled  and  broke,  he  could  not  go  on.  The 
solemn  hush  of  that  court-room  was  like  the  silence  of  the  grave  that  was 
just  opening  to  receive  the  murderer.  Justice  paused  —  but  justice  must  be 
done.  With  a  struggle  that  shook  his  whole  frame  Judge  Harris  regained 
his  self-control,  and  the  words  were  spoken  that  consigned  the  criminal  to  a 
felon's  death.  Those  words  were  awful,  because  it  was  felt  that  there  could 
be  no  recall. 

So  God's  compassion  lingers  ere  it  speaks  the  sinner's  separation  from 
him  forever ;  but  that  lingering  only  makes  more  remediless  the  sinner's 
fate.  The  justice  that  has  in  it  no  semblance  or  trace  of  human  caprice,  the 
justice  that  only  makes  manifest  to  the  universe  the  natural  relations 
between  the  purity  of  God  and  the  creature's  sin,  the  justice  that  renders  its 
desert  to  moral  evil  even  at  the  cost  of  its  own  grief,  this  is  the  justice  that 
the  sinner  has  to  fear.  The  very  absence  from  it  of  all  earthly  passion  is  its 
characteristic  mark.  And  so  we  represent  justice  as  holding  an  even  scale, 
and  as  weighing  merit  and  demerit  with  bandaged  eyes.  She  is  no  respecter 
of  persons,  and  from  her  decisions  there  is  no  appeal. 

There  is  one  other  attribute  to  which  holiness  bas  an  important,  but  a 
very  different  relation.  I  mean  the  benevolence  or  love  of  God.  Let  us 
understand  clearly  what  love  is.  It  is  the  impulse  to  self -communication, 
the  attribute  in  virtue  of  which  God  is  moved  to  give,  of  his  own  life  and 
blessedness.  Love  existed  in  God,  before  men  existed,  or  before  angels 
were  made.  " Thou  lovedst  me, "  says  Jesus,  "before  the  foundation  of 
the  world."  From  eternity  God  was  love,  because  from  eternity  there  was 
the  communication  of  all  his  fullness  to  the  Son.  In  Christ  and  through 
Christ,  God  gives  of  his  own  life  and  blessedness  to  us. 

Do  we  not  know  from  our  experience  of  earthly  love  what  this  self -giving, 
self -imparting,  self -communication  is  ?  Do  we  call  that  love,  in  which  there 
is  no  giving,  but  only  demanding,  taking,  receiving  ?  Do  we  believe  in  a 
person's  love,  who  fastens  himself  to  us  because  of  the  praise  we  give  him 
or  the  good  of  whatever  sort  he  can  get  from  us  ?  No,  there  is  no  true  love 
without  self-sacrifice,  self-devotion,  the  merging  of  my  interests  in  your 
interests,  the  giving  of  myself  to  you  that  my  life  may  fill  and  bless  your 
life.  And  this  is  God's  love  —  the  giving  of  himself  for  us  and  to  us  in 
Jesus  Christ.  "  Hereby  know  we  love,  because  he  laid  down  his  life  for 
us."  When  the  Son  of  God  gives  up  all  for  us  upon  the  cross  of  shame, 
when  he  gives  himself  to  us  by  entering  our  hearts  and  uniting  himself 
indissolubly  with  us,  then  and  then  only  we  see  what  is  the  nature  and 
essence  of  love. 

We  see  at  once  that  love  cannot  be  resolved  into  holiness.     Self-imparta- 

titfti  is  very  different  from  self-affirmation.    The  attribute  which  moves  God 

to  pour  out  is  not  identical  with  the  attribute  which  impels  him  to  maintain. 

SeK-communicating  grace  is  not  the  same  with  self -preserving  purity.    Nor 

13 


194  THE   HOLINESS   OF   GOD. 

on  the  other  hand  can  we  resolve  holiness  into  love.  The  two  ideas  are  a& 
distinct  as  the  idea  of  integrity  on  the  one  hand  and  of  generosity  on  the 
other. 

One  may  call  holiness  God's  self-love,  if  he  will,  but  this  gives  only  a 
superficial  and  verbal  unity.  Self-love  is  not  love  at  all,  for  there  is  in  it  no 
element  of  self -surrender.  We  cannot  turn  holiness  into  love,  then,  merely 
by  giving  it  a  name  into  which  the  word  "love"  enters  as  a  component 
part.  In  truth,  holiness  is  wrongly  described  as  "  self-love,"  even  when 
this  term  is  taken  in  its  proper  sense.  Self-love  is  the  desire  for  one's  own 
interest  and  happiness.  But  God's  holiness  is  something  infinitely  nobler 
than  this.  The  utilitarian  element  is  wholly  wanting  from  it.  God  wills 
and  maintains  his  own  moral  excellence  not  because  of  the  good  which  will 
flow  to  him  thereby,  but  simply  because  that  moral  excellence  is  in  itself 
the  thing  of  supreme  worth.  As  no  man  is  truly  virtuous  who  loves  virtue 
for  what  he  can  make  by  it,  so  God  has  no  ulterior  motive  in  being  holy, 
and  for  this  reason  holiness  can  never  be  defined  as  God's  self-love,  or  the 
desire  for  his  own  interest  and  happiness. 

If  holiness,  then,  is  not  even  God's  self-love,  much  less  is  it  God's  love  to 
the  universe.  It  is  not  a  form  of  benevolence  toward  his  creatures,  a  mani- 
festation of  desire  for  their  good.  It  has  an  independent  basis  in  the  nature 
of  God,  and  so  exists  before  and  apart  from  creation.  Yet  no  error  in 
modern  thinking  is  more  prevalent  or  more  pernicious  in  its  results  than 
this  one,  of  making  holiness  to  be  a  mere  exercise  of  love. 

See  how  far-reaching  the  consequences  of  this  error  are  !  Holiness  in 
God  ceases  to  be  valuable  for  what  it  is  in  itself  —  it  becomes  valuable  only 
as  a  means  to  an  end.  Happiness  is  the  only  good  and  the  only  end.  If 
the  happiness  of  the  universe  required  it,  God  might  cease  to  be  holy  ;  he 
would  be  bound  to  be  unholy,  if  greater  good  might  come  thereby.  Law 
is  only  an  expedient  for  the  attainment  of  happiness,  and  may  be  done  away 
when  it  fails  of  securing  its  end.  Punishment  is  only  a  means  of  reforming 
the  offender,  or  of  deterring  others  from  following  his  example.  Sin  can  be 
pardoned  without  atonement,  and  the  incorrigible  transgressor  may  be  loosed 
so  soon  as  punishment  ceases  to  be  of  benefit.  And  so  the  foundations  of 
every  important  doctrine  of  Christianity  are  swept  away.  Law,  sin,  atone- 
ment, retribution  —  all  these  defenses  of  the  faith  are  untenable,  when  once 
the  Eedan,  the  citadel  of  God's  holiness,  is  surrendered  to  the  foe. 

How  completely  opposed  to  right  reason  is  this  view  that  holiness  is  a 
form  of  benevolence,  a  means  of  securing  happiness  !  If  this  were  so, 
supreme  regard  for  happiness  would  be  the  very  essence  of  all  virtue.  But 
we  know  that  to  serve  God  for  the  mere  sake  of  reward  to  ourselves,  or  of 
happiness  to  others,  is  not  to  serve  him  at  all.  Holiness  is  binding  upon  us 
entirely  apart  from  its  useful  results.  God  is  displeased  with  unholiness, 
entirely  apart  from  the  effects  of  misery  which  follow  in  its  train.  His  law, 
like  the  sun  in  the  heavens,  declares  and  reflects  his  glory.  God  must  pun- 
ish the  violators  of  that  law,  whether  the  punished  are  benefited  thereby  or 
not.  Sin  is  intrinsically  ill-deserving,  and  must  be  punished  on  that  account 
—  not  because  punishment  will  work  good  to  the  universe  ;  indeed,  no  pun- 
ishment can  be  of  benefit  to  the  universe  that  is  not  just  and  necessary  in 
itself. 


THE   HOLINESS    OF   GOD.  195 

Justice  moreover  is  something  invariable  ;  it  comes  equally  to  all.  It 
cannot  be  the  same  as  love,  for  love  varies  with  the  moral  worth  of  the  object 
and  with  the  sovereign  pleasure  of  the  bestower.  It  is  the  very  nature  of 
love  to  choose  out  the  object  of  its  affection.  Men  choose  the  ends  to  which 
they  will  devote  their  charities  and  we  call  them  benevolent,  and  God  dis- 
penses his  bounty  as  he  will.  He  gives  to  one  and  withholds  from  another. 
Poverty  and  riches,  ignorance  and  intellect,  follow  no  law  of  merit.  But 
God  does  not  dispense  justice  thus.  That  is  something  which  every  man 
may  claim  from  him.  Surely  this  justice  that  varies  not,  is  not  a  mere  name 
for  love,  that  has  its  endless  gradations  and  that  declares  its  freedom  in  the 
infinite  variety  of  gifts  and  conditions  which  it  distributes  among  mankind. 

But  let  us  turn  to  Scripture  wholly.  Why  does  the  Psalmist  pray  that 
God  will  chasten  him  not  in  anger  ?  Because  chastening  in  anger  is  differ- 
ent from  chastening  in  love,  and  the  fatherly  chastening  of  the  Lord  is  the 
opposite  of  being  condemned  with  the  world.  God  hates,  abhors  and 
destroys  the  wicked ;  hatred,  abhorrence  and  destruction  are  not  love  nor 
forms  of  love.  Many  times  in  Scripture  is  chastening  referred  to  love  : 
"Whom  the  Lord  loveth,  he  chasteneth."  But  nowhere  in  the  whole  range 
of  God's  word  is  punishment  referred  to  love  ;  many  times  it  is  referred  to 
holiness.  In  the  book  of  Revelation,  when  the  great  whore  is  judged,  the 
company  of  heaven  cry  :  "  True  and  righteous  are  thy  judgments  !  "  When 
the  wicked  are  destroyed,  the  saints  say  with  one  voice  :  "Who  shall  not 
fear  thee,  for  thou  only  art  holy  !  " 

Not  from  love  to  the  universe  does  God  punish.  "  I  do  not  this  for  your 
sakes,"  he  says,  "but  for  my  holy  name's  sake."  The  fires  that  fell  from 
heaven  upon  Sodom  and  Gomorrha  were  not  acts  of  mercy  to  soften  hard 
hearts  and  bring  sinners  to  repentance.  They  were  manifestations  of  self- 
vindicating  holiness,  visiting  indignation  and  wrath,  tribulation  and  anguish 
upon  persistent  wickedness,  cutting  short  the  day  of  grace,  removing  for- 
ever the  chance  of  reformation,  and  ushering  the  enemies  of  God  not  into  a 
world  of  new  opportunities  and  privileges,  but  into  a  world  of  retribution 
compared  with  which,  as  Jesus  himself  intimates,  the  fire  and  brimstone  of 
the  earthly  destruction  were  far  more  tolerable.  God  is  love  indeed,  but 
God  is  light  also ;  and  because  he  is  moral  light,  in  whom  is  no  darkness  at 
all  of  impurity  or  sin,  to  all  iniquity  he  is  a  consuming  fire. 

Holiness  and  love  both  exist  in  God.  We  have  seen  what  holiness  is,  and 
how  it  differs  from  love.  Let  us  ask  last  of  all,  which  of  these  is  to  be 
regarded  as  the  primary  and  fundamental  attribute  of  the  divine  nature  ? 
We  have  but  two  sources  of  information  here,  our  own  moral  constitution 
and  the  word  of  God.  From  our  own  nature  we  may  learn  something  of 
the  nature  of  him  in  whose  image  we  are  made.  Let  us  recall  that  great 
discovery  of  Bishop  Butler:  "the  supremacy  of  conscience  in  the  moral 
constitution  of  man."  To  conscience  every  other  impulse  and  affection, 
voluntarily  or  involuntarily,  has  to  bow.  Happiness  and  righteousness 
stand  on  two  very  different  planes,  and  righteousness  is  evermore  the  higher. 
The  money  in  my  hands  may  be  needed  to  help  a  family  in  distress ;  yet,  if 
it  is  my  only  means  of  paying  an  honest  debt,  even  to  a  man  who  needs  it 
not,  I  am  bound  to  pay  my  debt,  though  the  family  starve.  Be  just  before 
you  are  generous,  conscience  whispers  always. 


196  THE   HOLINESS   OF   GOD. 

Now  that  which  is  highest  in  us  is  highest  also  in  God.  As  we  may  be 
kind,  but  must  be  righteous,  so  God,  in  whose  image  we  are  made,  may  be 
merciful,  but  must  be  holy.  Mercy  is  optional  with  him.  He  was  not 
under  compulsion  to  provide  a  redemption  for  sinners.  Salvation  is  a  matter 
of  grace,  not  of  debt.  He  can  apply  the  salvation  he  has  wrought  out,  to 
whomsoever  he  will.  "  I  will  have  mercy  on  whom  I  will  have  mercy,"  is 
his  word.  Love  is  an  attribute  which,  like  omnipotence,  God  may  exercise 
or  not  exercise,  as  he  will.  But  with  holiness  it  is  not  so.  Holiness  must 
be  exercised  everywhere.  We  thank  God  for  his  mercy— for  this  is  the  free 
act  of  his  grace.  But  we  never  thank  him  for  speaking  the  truth  —  for  this 
he  must  do  from  the  necessity  of  his  own  nature.  Justice  must  be  done 
always  ;  otherwise  God  would  be  unjust ;  shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth 
do  right  ?  But  who  of  all  this  world  of  sinners  could  complain  if  God  should 
pardon  others,  but  not  pardon  him  ?  Can  we  doubt  then  whether  love  or 
holiness  is  the  more  fundamental  in  the  divine  nature  ? 

But  look  once  more  to  Scripture  and  the  light  is  clearer  still.  See  there 
the  actual  dealings  of  God.  See  how  holiness  conditions  and  limits  the 
exercise  of  every  other  attribute.  See  how  redeeming  love,  when  it  would 
save  mankind,  can  do  this  only  by  itself  submitting  to  the  rod  of  justice  and 
suffering  in  our  stead, — violated  holiness  requiring  expiation  for  sin,  while 
love  submissively  meets  and  answers  its  requisitions.  See  how  the  eternal 
punishment  of  the  wicked  reveals  the  holiness  of  God,  even  when  love  can 
hope  for  no  relief  or  benefit  to  the  transgressor, —  the  demand  of  holiness 
for  self- vindication  overbearing  the  pleading  of  love  for  the  sufferers. 

Does  the  word  of  God  teach  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  everlasting 
death  ?  Does  God  not  only  pity  the  sinner,  but  abhor  and  repel  him  ?  Does 
he  press  into  the  conscience  with  his  condemning  sentence,  frown  upon  the 
wrong-doer  with  an  angry  eye,  drive  the  wicked  from  him  with  a  flaming 
sword,  prophesy  eternal  wrath  in  the  world  to  come  ?  Does  love  hide  her 
head  from  the  finally  impenitent,  and  the  mercy  of  the  Lamb  change  to  the 
wrath  of  the  Lamb  ?  Then  there  must  be  a  principle  of  God's  nature,  not 
only  independent  of  love,  but  superior  to  love.  Even  so  it  is.  The  mighty 
will  that  constitutes  the  stay  and  life  of  the  universe  is  directed  toward  one 
thing  —  the  maintenance,  revelation  and  diffusion  of  holiness.  Not  the 
holiness  of  the  happy,  but  the  happiness  of  the  holy  ;  peace  to  the  pure,  but 
to  the  impure  everlasting  destruction  from  the  presence  of  the  Lord  —  this 
is  the  plan  011  which  the  universe  is  built. 

What  has  been  said  throws,  in  my  judgment,  a  new  and  valuable  light 
upon  the  great  question  of  future  punishment.  The  common  view  that  holi- 
ness is  a  form  of  love,  or  is  under  bonds  to  love,  can  justify  the  penalties  of 
the  world  to  come,  only  from  considerations  of  utility, — to  use  the  words  of 
Mr.  Beecher  :  "  I  believe  that  punishment  exists  both  here  and  hereafter, 
but  it  will  not  continue  after  it  ceases  to  do  good.  With  a  God  who  could 
give  pain  for  pain's  sake,  this  world  would  go  out  like  a  candle."  So  the 
Universalist  holds  that  "the  punishment  of  the  wicked,  however  severe  and 
terrible  it  may  be,  is  but  a  means  to  a  beneficent  end  ;  not  revengful,  but 
remedial ;  not  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the  good  of  those  who  suffer  its  inflic- 
tion. "  *  And  some,  who  can  see  no  good  to  be  reaped  from  punishment  by 


*  Art.  "Universalism,"  in  Johnson's  Universal  Cyclopaedia. 


THE    HOLINESS   OF    GOD.  197 

the  lost  themselves,  declare  that  punishment  is  for  the  good  of  the  universe. 
The  security  of  free  creatures  is  to  be  attained  through  a  gratitude  for  deliv- 
erance, "  kept  alive  by  a  constant  example  of  some  who  are  justly  suffering 
the  vengeance  of  eternal  fire."  So  says  Dr.  Joel  Parker.* 

Let  us  ask  these  writers  also  :  What  beneficial  effect  can  these  sufferings 
have  upon  the  universe,  unless  they  are  just  in  themselves  ?  And  if  just  in 
themselves,  then  the  reason  for  their  continuance  lies  not  in  any  benefit  to 
the  universe,  or  to  the  sufferers,  that  may  accrue  therefrom.  ' '  If  the  Univer- 
salists'  position  were  true, " —  I  quote  here  from  a  late  English  Review,  t  — '  *  we 
should  expect  to  find  some  manifestations  of  love  and  pity  and  sympathy  in 
the  infliction  of  the  dreadful  punishments  of  the  future.  We  look  in  vain  for 
this,  however.  We  read  of  God's  anger,  of  his  judgments,  of  his  fury,  of 
his  taking  vengeance,  but  we  get  no  hint,  in  any  passage  which  describes 
the  sufferings  of  the  next  world,  that  they  are  designed  to  work  the  redemp- 
tion and  recovery  of  the  soul.  If  the  punishments  of  the  wicked  were  chas- 
tisements, we  should  expect  to  see  some  bright  outlook  in  the  Bible-picture 
of  the  place  of  doom.  A  gleam  of  light,  one  might  suppose,  would  make 
its  way  from  the  celestial  city  to  this  dark  abode.  The  sufferers  would  catch 
some  sweet  refrain  of  heavenly  music,  which  would  be  a  promise  and 
prophecy  of  a  far-off  but  coming  glory.  But  there  is  a  finality  about  the 
Scripture-statements  of  the  condition  of  the  lost  which  is  simply  terrible." 

The  reason  for  punishment  lies  in  the  holiness  of  God.  That  holiness 
reveals  itself  in  the  moral  constitution  of  the  universe.  It  makes  itself  felt 
in  conscience,  imperfectly  here,  fully  hereafter.  The  wrong  merits  punish- 
ment. The  right  binds,  not  because  it  is  the  expedient,  but  because  it  is 
the  very  nature  of  God.  "  But  the  great  ethical  significance  of  this  word 
right  will  not  be  known," — I  quote  again  from  Dr.  Patton, — "  its  imperative 
claims,  its  sovereign  behests,  its  holy  and  imperious  sway  over  the  moral 
creation  will  not  be  understood,  until  we  witness,  during  the  lapse  of  the 
judgment-hours,  the  terrible  retribution  which  measures  the  ill-desert  of 
wrong."  Is  this  a  doctrine  of  "pain  for  pain's  sake ? "  Ah,  no  !  God  has 
no  pleasure  in  the  death  of  him  that  dieth.  It  is  a  doctrine  of  pain  for  holi- 
ness' sake  ;  the  necessary  suffering  of  the  transgressor  who  spurns  God's 
love  ;  the  inevitable  reaction  against  itself  of  a  human  nature  that  was  made 
for  purity,  but  is  now  lost  to  purity  ;  the  involuntary  vindication,  on  the  part 
of  the  sinner,  of  the  great  truth  that  in  the  nature  of  God  the  two  infinites 
love  and  holiness  are  not  commensurate,  but  that  holiness  is  evermore 
supreme. 

Triumphant  holiness,  submissive  love, — are  these  then  in  conflict  with 
each  other  ?  Is  there  duality,  instead  of  harmony,  in  the  nature  of  God  ?  Ah, 
there  would  be,  but  for  one  fact  —  the  fact  of  the  cross.  The  first  and  worst 
tendency  of  sin  is  its  tendency  to  bring  discord  into  the  being  of  God,  by 
setting  holiness  at  war  with  love,  and  love  at  war  with  holiness.  And  since 
both  these  attributes  are  exercised  toward  sinners  of  the  human  race,  the 
otherwise  inevitable  antagonism  between  them  is  removed  only  by  the  aton- 
ing death  of  the  God-man.  Their  opposing  claims  do  not  impair  the  divine 
blessedness,  because  the  reconciliation  exists  in  the  eternal  counsels  of  God : 


*  Lectures  on  Universalism. 

i  Art.  by  F.  L.  Patton,  in  Brit,  and  For.  Evang.  Rev.,  Jan.  1878,  p.  137. 


198  THE   HOLINESS   OF   GOD. 

Christ  is  "the  Lamb  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the  world."  In  him  and 
in  his  cross,  long  before  the  Savior  came,  "mercy  and  truth  met  together, 
righteousness  and  peace  kissed  each  other."  Even  Calvary,  with  its  bleed- 
ing love  on  the  part  of  the  Son,  and  the  darkness  and  horror  of  that  forsak- 
ing on  the  part  of  the  Father,  could  not  have  accomplished  in  those  few 
hours  the  redemption  of  the  world,  if  it  had  not  been  the  drawing-back  of 
the  veil  that  had  hid  an  eternal  fact  in  the  nature  of  God,  in  other  words,  if 
it  had  not  been  a  revelation  of  God  himself.  In  the  cross,  we  see  the  majesty 
of  holiness  at  one  with  the  self-abnegation  of  infinite  love.  That  God  might 
still  be  just,  while  pardoning  the  transgressor,  the  Judge  gave  himself  to 
death  for  us.  He  bore  the  wrath  of  violated  holiness,  that  we  might  be  saved 
from  wrath  through  him. 

And  yet,  lat  us  not  imagine  that  love  fails  to  have  proper  recognition,  when 
we  make  holiness  supreme.  It  is  only  in  the  light  of  this  holiness  of  God 
that  we  can  properly  estimate  God's  love  to  sinners.  When  we  think  of 
what  holiness  is,  it  would  indeed  at  first  sight  seem  to  exclude  love.  The 
most  impossible  of  all  things  would  seem  to  be,  that  this  God,  whose  holi- 
ness is  the  fundamental  and  controlling  attribute  of  his  being,  should  love 
tho^e  who  have  broken  the  bonds  of  his  authority  and  have  polluted  them- 
selves with  moral  evil.  Sin  is  an  abomination  to  him.  His  purity  loathes 
it ;  his  judicial  sentence  condemns  it ;  his  anger  burns  against  it.  And  yet, 
wonder  of  wonders  !  —  he  loves  the  sinner  and  cannot  see  him  perish.  The 
complex  nature  of  God  is  strangely  capable  at  once  of  these  two  mighty 
emotions  —  hatred  of  the  sin  and  love  for  the  sinner ;  or,  to  put  it  more  accu- 
rately, love  for  the  sinner,  as  he  is  a  creature  with  infinite  capacities  of  joy 
or  sorrow,  of  purity  or  wickedness,  but  simultaneous  hatred  for  that  same 
sinner,  as  he  is  an  enemy  to  holiness  and  to  God. 

Except  as  we  scale  the  heights  of  God's  holiness,  we  shall  never  fathom 
the  depths  of  God's  love.  Only  as  we  see  the  inaccessible  whiteness  of  that 
celestial  purity  that  rises  like  Alpine  summits  far- withdrawn,  can  we  begin 
to  appreciate  the  love  that  stooped  to  inconceivable  abasement,  that  it  might 
lift  us  out  of  the  blackness  and  hell  of  our  depravity  and  guilt.  Against  this 
solemn  back-ground  of  holiness  and  judicial  indignation,  the  yearning  pity 
and  the  melting  tenderness  of  the  Godhead  seem  inexpressibly  sweet  and 
fair.  The  Old  Testament  must  come  before  the  New,  the  Law  before  the 
Gospel,  John  the  Baptist  before  Christ,  or  all  these  last  lose  their  dignity 
and  significance.  And  what  the  preaching  and  the  teaching  of  our  day  needs 
most  of  all  is  a  profound  conviction  of  that  holiness  of  God  which  will  by  no 
means  clear  the  guilty,  and  which  charges  guilt  upon  every  impure  act,  dis- 
position or  state  of  human  soul. 

A  great  teacher,  as  he  gave  his  last  counsels  to  a  class  of  young  men  in 
course  of  training  for  the  active  work  of  life,  said  to  them  these  words  : 
"  Would  that  upon  the  naked  palpitating  heart  of  each  one  of  you  might  be 
laid  one  red-hot  coal  of  God  Almighty's  wrath  !  "  And  thus  I  would  say, 
also,  if  I  could  ouly  know  that  love  would  follow,  and  would  quench  that  coal 
with  one  precious  drop  of  the  red  blood  of  Christ.  Nay,  will  love  ever  follow 
and  heal  and  deliver,  if  the  sense  of  wrath  has  not  gone  before  ?  No  man 
in  his  sins,  indeed,  can  ever  enter  into  the  blaze  of  God's  holiness,  and  live. 
Yet  some  sight  of  it,  such  as  the  Spirit  gives,  is  the  indispensable  condition 


THE   HOLINESS    OF   GOD.  199 

of  a  lofty  Christian  life, — yes,  is  an  indispensable  condition  of  salvation. 
From  the  sight  of  holiness  we  need  to  be  led  on  to  the  sight  of  love,  or  the 
end  will  be  only  remorse  and  despair.  Yet  still  it  is  true  that  there  can  be 
no  more  salutary  discipline  and  preparation,  either  as  respects  the  learning 
of  doctrine  or  the  doing  of  duty,  than  those  which  are  derived  from  a  heart- 
searching,  awe-inspiring  apprehension  of  the  divine  holiness  ;  for  it  is  the 
law,  in  which  that  holiness  is  revealed,  that  is  the  appointed  school-master, 
to  lead  us  to  Christ. 

I  would  fain  close  this  sermon  with  an  appeal  to  every  hearer  who  is  not 
jet  a  Christian,  and  to  every  Christian  whose  conceptions  of  God's  purity 
have  hitherto  been  faint  and  dull,  that  he  will  seek  a  new  knowledge  of  this 
attribute  of  God.  May  God  himself,  by  his  Holy  Spirit,  be  our  teacher,  that 
we  may  see  how  great  and  just  a  God  he  is  with  whom  we  have  to  deal;  how 
impossible  it  is  without  holiness  for  any  man  to  see  the  Lord;  how  deep  is 
the  blackness  of  our  sin  against  the  whiteness  of  his  purity;  how  needful  it 
was  that  the  Son  of  God  should  die  to  save  us  from  it;  how  instant  and  imme- 
diate is  the  necessity  of  repentance  and  renewal;  how  certain  is  the  doom  of 
the  unrepenting  transgressor;  and  how  fearful  a  thing  it  is  to  fall  into  the 
hands  of  the  living  God.  Why  should  I  not  address  directly  any  hearer 
who  is  yet  unsaved,  and  say  to  him  :  My  friend,  if  you  are  ever  saved,  either 
God  must  change,  or  you  must.  He  must  either  cease  to  be  God  by  giving 
up  his  holiness,  or  you  must  cease  your  rebellion  and  become  pure.  Do  you 
think  that  he  will  change  ?  Ah  !  he  changes  not.  Make  sure  then  that  you 
change  your  place  and  character  and  life  ;  for  you  must  change,  or  die  ! 

For  my  part  I  give  in  my  allegiance  gladly  to  this  holiness  of  God.  I 
know  that  I  must  bend  to  the  mighty  Will  that  moves  and  controls  all  things, 
whether  I  will  or  no.  I  had  rather  be  the  molten  iron  that  runs  freely  into 
the  mould  prepared  by  the  great  Designer,  than  be  the  cold  iron  that  must 
be  hammered  into  shape.  I  know  that  the  whole  universe  must  bow  to  that 
holy  will  at  last.  I  would  not  be  among  the  spirits  that  bow  in  hell.  But 
this  is  not  my  reason  for  giving  in  my  allegiance  to  holiness.  I  bow  to  it 
because  it  is  the  highest,  the  fairest,  the  grandest  thing  of  all.  I  bow  to  it 
because  it  is  the  only  worthy  object  of  homage  and  love  and  service  in  the 
universe.  To  be  like  God,  to  be  pure  as  God  is  pure,  to  be  partaker  of  his 
holiness, — this,  to  a  created  being,  is  the  summit  of  all  honor  and  ambition. 
Will  you  not  choose  this  end  with  me  ?  Will  you  not  recognize  this  supreme 
fact  of  the  universe,  and  give  in  your  allegiance  to  the  holiness  of  God  ? 

On  the  day  after  the  first  gun  was  fired  at  Fort  Sumter,  the  citizens  of 
Chicago  gathered  in  the  vast  auditorium  in  which  the  National  Convention 
had  nominated  Abraham  Lincoln,  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  gov- 
ernment and  to  the  Constitution.  It  was  said  that  twenty  thousand  men 
stood  under  that  single  roof.  They  were  of  all  classes  and  all  parties,  but  it 
.seemed  to  me  that  the  spirit  of  God  had  made  them  one.  A  Justice  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  stood  forth  and  held  aloft  a  Bible,  and 
called  upon  every  man  in  that  vast  multitude  to  hold  up  his  right  hand  and 
swear.  With  a  voice  that  reached  the  remotest  corners  of  the  great  enclosure, 
he  repeated  the  first  words  of  the  oath  :  "We  do  solemnly  swear  !  "  And 
like  the  sounding  of  the  sea,  or  the  breaking 'of  thunder  from  the  sky,  all 
that  multitudinous  host  repeated  after  him:  "We  do  solemnly  swear!" 


200  THE   HOLINESS   OF   GOD. 

"  To  support  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  !  "  And  still  they  fol- 
lowed :  "  To  support  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  !  "  And  so  the 
oath  proceeded  till  the  solemn  close  :  "So  help  us,  God  ! "  For  many  a, 
man,  the  taking  of  that  oath  meant  the  giving  up  of  property  and  life  ;  but  it 
was  taken  with  an  intense  and  exultant  enthusiasm,  for  the  cause  of  the 
country  was  felt  to  be  the  cause  of  God.  If  there  were  traitors  there  that 
day,  they  made  no  sign.  Rebellion  hid  itself  in  fear. 

There  shall  be  a  greater  gathering  soon.  The  universe  shall  assemble  to 
recognize  the  right  of  holiness  to  reign.  I  hear  the  multitude  that  no  man 
can  number  ciy,  as  the  voice  of  many  waters  and  as  the  voice  of  mighty 
thunderings,  saying  :  "Alleluia,  for  the  Lord  God  Omnipotent  reigneth  !  " 
Will  you  be  among  those  who  give  in  their  allegiance  to  God's  holiness, 
on  that  great  day  ?  or  will  you  be  among  those  whose  impenitence  and 
rebellion  is  punished  by  exclusion  from  the  presence  of  God  and  from  the 
society  of  the  holy  ?  I  pray  you,  avoid  that  fate,  if  you  are  still  unreconciled 
to  God,  by  making  your  peace  with  him  without  delay.  Join  yourself  to 
Christ  by  submission  and  trust,  and  that  God  whose  purity  now  seems  only 
to  repel  and  menace  will  seem  "glorious  in  holiness, "  and  this  attribute 
of  his  will  become  the  object  of  your  deepest  homage,  the  pledge  of  your 
defense  from  evil,  and  the  model  for  a  strenuous  character  and  an  unspotted 
life! 


XV. 

THE  TWO  NATURES  OF  CHRIST.* 


It  is  the  question  of  the  ages.  Propounded  eighteen  centuries  ago,  it  has 
been  a  living  question  ever  since,  and  it  was  never  agitated  so  much  as  now. 
Every  year  the  press  brings  forth  its  new  life  of  Christ.  The  term  "  Chris- 
tology  "  is  a  coinage  of  our  own  generation,  and  it  indicates  that  the  study 
of  Christ's  person  has  become  a  science  by  itself.  The  New  Testament  of 
our  Lord  and  Savior  Jesus  Christ  wins  more  readers  to-day  than  any  other 
book  in  the  world.  The  character  of  Christ  is  the  standard  of  all  excellence, 
even  by  the  confession  of  those  who  are  enemies  to  his  gospel ;  and  he  him- 
self declares  that  by  our  attitude  toward  him  we  shall  be  judged.  The 
question  "  What  think  ye  of  the  Christ?  "  is  asked  of  each  one  of  us  to-night  ; 
it  will  be  asked  of  us  when  we  stand  at  last  before  God  ;  and  the  answer  will 
determine  our  eternal  destiny.  I  am  glad  that  the  Scriptures  enable  us  to 
answer  it  aright.  They  point  us  to  the  two  natures  of  our  Lord  which  united 
constitute  him  the  ladder  from  earth  to  heaven.  On  the  one  hand,  he  is  the 
Son  of  Man  ;  on  the  other  hand,  he  is  the  Son  of  God.  It  is  my  purpose, 
first,  to  show  what  these  phrases  mean ;  and  then,  secondly,  to  draw  from 
them  certain  important  practical  lessons. 

Observe  then  that  Christ  is  Son  of  Man.  This  can  mean  nothing  less  than 
that  Christ  is  true  man.  It  means  much  more  besides,  but  let  us  first  grasp 
and  insist  upon  this.  Christ  is  man.  The  ancient  docetic  view  which  held 
so  strongly  to  his  divinity  that  it  left  no  room  for  his  humanity  —  the  view 
that  in  the  incarnation  Deity  passed  through  the  body  of  the  Virgin  as  water 
through  a  reed,  taking  up  into  itself  nothing  of  the  human  nature  through 
which  it  passed  —  this  was  all  an  ignoring  and  a  contradiction  of  Scripture. 
When  the  New  Testament  assures  us  that  Jesus  Christ  was  the  Son  of  David 
and  of  the  stock  of  Israel,  when  it  describes  him  as  sitting  weary  upon 
Jacob's  well,  as  sleeping  upon  the  rower's  cushion,  as  suffering  upon  the 
cross,  and  as  breathing  out  his  soul  in  death,  there  is  one  thing  which  we 
cannot  mistake  and  that  is  that  this  Son  of  Man  is  man.  And  that  not 
simply  as  respects  the  reality  of  his  human  body.  He  had  a  human  mind 
also,  and  that  mind  was  subject  to  the  ordinary  laws  of  human  development. 
He  grew  in  wisdom,  as  well  as  in  stature  and  in  favor  with  God  and  man.  In 
his  mother's  arms  he  was  not  the  omniscient  babe  that  some  have  supposed. 
In  his  later  years  he  suffered,  being  tempted,  as  he  could  not  have  suffered,, 
if  all  things  had  been  open  to  his  gaze.  Even  to  the  last,  it  would  seem 
that  he  was  ignorant  of  the  day  of  the  end,  for  "of  that  day,"  he  tells  us, 
"knoweth  no  man,  neither  the  angels  of  God,  neither  the  Son,  but  the 


*  Preached  in  Sage  Chapel,  Cornell  University,  May  25, 1884,  as  a  sermon  on  the  text,. 
Mat.  22 :  42-  "What  think  ye  of  the  Christ?   Whose  son  is  he?  " 

201 


THE   TWO    NATURES    OF   CHRIST. 

Father."  Not  till  his  twelfth  year,  at  his  interview  with  the  doctors  in  the 
temple,  does  he  apparently  become  fully  conscious  that  he  is  the  Sent  of 
God,  the  Son  of  God ;  and  even  then  he  must  learn  obedience  to  parents, 
and  prepare  for  his  public  ministry  by  the  gradual  growth  of  mind  and 
heart  and  will,  amid  the  humble  duties  of  son,  brother,  citizen,  and  member 
of  the  Jewish  Synagogue. 

There  are  two  pictures  by  modern  artists,  the  one  of  which  illustrates  the 
false,  and  the  other  the  true  view  of  Jesus'  human  development.  The  first 
is  by  Overbeck,  the  celebrated  German  painter.  It  represents  the  child 
Jesus  at  play  in  Joseph's  work-shop.  Child  as  he  is,  his  great  future  sacri- 
fice looms  up  before  him  continually,  and  even  in  his  play  he  is  fashioning 
sticks  and  blocks  into  the  shape  of  a  cross,  and  so  is  rehearsing  in  his  infancy 
the  tragedy  of  Calvary.  I  see  no  indication  in  Scripture  that  this  concep- 
tion is  true,  or  that  the  great  future  experiences  of  our  Lord  were  ever  thus 
early  anticipated.  The  second  picture  is  by  Holman  Hunt,  the  Englishman. 
It  is  entitled  "  The  Shadow  of  the  Cross. "  It  also  represents  the  carpenter's 
shop  at  Nazareth.  At  the  close  of  a  weary  day,  when  the  level  rays  of  the 
setting  sun  are  streaming  through  the  door,  Jesus,  the  carpenter,  turns  from 
his  toil  and  stretches  out  his  arms  in  sheer  fatigue.  The  shadow  of  those 
outstretched  arms,  and  of  that  relaxed  and  tired  form,  is  thrown  upon  the 
opposite  wall.  There  the  long  upright  saw,  and  the  smaller  tools  ranged 
transversely,  make  the  rude  semblance  of  a  cross,  and  the  shadow  of  the 
Savior  falls  upon  it.  At  one  side,  Mary,  the  mother  of  Jesus,  weary  of  the 
long  delay  in  the  manifestation  of  her  Son,  has  been  trying  to  revive  her 
faith  in  those  old  promises  that  had  accompanied  his  birth,  by  opening  the 
casket  in  which  had  been  kept  the  gold,  frankincense  and  myrrh,  which  the 
wise  men  from  the  east  had  brought.  The  sudden  stopping  of  Jesus'  work 
startles  the  mother,  and  turning  to  look  at  the  Savior,  her  eye  falls  upon 
that  prophetic  cross  upon  the  wall  and  the  shadowy  form  of  her  Son  stretched 
upon  it,  and  the  sword  pierces  her  own  heart  also.  But  Jesus  does  not  see 
the  cross  ;  his  face  is  turned  from  it.  His  is  still  a  countenance  of  youthful 
energy, —  weariness  and  sadness,  if  you  please,  but  still,  not  yet  of  anguish  ; 
his  hour  is  not  yet  come.  Holman  Hunt's  picture  is  truer  to  the  gospel  nar- 
rative than  Overbeck's.  Instead  of  fashioning  crosses,  Jesus  was  far  more 
probably,  as  Justin  Martyr,  the  old  church  Father,  tells  us,  making  ploughs 
and  yokes,  and  so  by  hard  manual  toil  supporting  the  widowed  mother 
whom  Joseph's  death  had  left  dependent  upon  his  care.  Jesus  walked  by 
faith,  not  by  sight.  His  knowledge  was  a  growing  knowledge.  His  prayers 
were  real  prayers  —  full  of  strong  crying  and  tears.  He  was  made  perfect 
through  suffering.  And  all  this  testifies  that  he  was  one  of  us  —  a  veritable 
man  like  ourselves. 

But  was  there  nothing  peculiar  about  the  humanity  of  Jesus  ?  Ah  yes, 
he  was  not  only  man  —  he  was  the  ideal  man.  When  he  is  called  Son  of 
man,  it  is  intimated  that  he  is  man  in  the  highest  possible  sense,  the  central, 
typical  man,  in  whom  is  realized  the  perfect  idea  of  humanity  as  it  existed 
in  the  mind  of  God.  By  this  I  do  not  mean  that  in  all  respects  this  glory 
belonged  to  him  in  the  days  of  his  flesh.  Those  were  days  of  humiliation. 
I  do  not  know  that  the  man  Christ  Jesus  was  surpassingly  beautiful  in  his 
physical  form.  At  first  sight,  it  might  seem  strange  that  we  have  no  authen- 


THE   TWO    NATURES    OF   CHRIST.  203 

tic  description  of  Jesus'  person.  Whether  he  was  great  or  small  of  stature, 
we  know  not.  The  passage  in  Josephus  with  respect  to  his  appearance  is 
unquestionably  spurious,  and  the  portrait  said  to  have  been  presented  to 
King  Abgarus  does  not  date  back  further  than  to  the  seventh  century.  Was 
our  Lord  exceptionally  noble,  or  exceptionally  mean,  in  person  ?  We  cannot 
say  with  certainty.  Scripture  has  been  cited  to  sustain  each  hypothesis.  In 
the  synagogue  of  Nazareth,  the  "gracious  words  that  proceeded  out  of  his 
mouth  "  would  almost  seem  to  betoken  the  noble  presence  and  winning  man- 
ner of  the  natural  orator ;  while,  on  his  way  to  Jerusalem  to  suffer,  there  was 
a  majesty  of  mien  which  so  deeply  impressed  the  disciples  that  they  were 
amazed  and  afraid.  But  then  we  read  in  the  prophets,  that  "  his  visage  is 
more  marred  than  any  man  ;  "  "he  hath  no  form  nor  comeliness,  and  when 
we  shall  see  him,  there  is  no  beauty  that  we  shoujd  desire  him."  So  the 
Byzantine  painters  conceived  that  they  had  full  warrant  for  representing 
Christ  as  emaciated,  and  aged  before  his  time, — did  not  the  people  say  to  this 
young  man  :  "  Thou  art  not  yet  fifty  years  old  ?  "  But  on  the  other  hand, 
the  Italian  painters  represented  him  as  the  model  of  all  manly  beauty, — did 
not  the  Psalmist  say  :  "Thou  art  fairer  than  the  children  of  men?  "  Per- 
haps the  truth  is  midway  between  the  two.  Christ  joined  himself  to  our 
average  humanity ;  so  far  as  personal  advantages  were  concerned,  taking 
that  which  is  neither  exceptionally  mean  nor  exceptionally  noble.  But  just 
as  there  are  persons,  undistinguished  from  the  rest,  who  in  times  of  sorrow 
seem  positively  ugly,  but  through  whose  plain  features  at  other  times  of 
spiritual  exaltation  the  rapt  soul  seems  to  shine  so  gloriously  that  the  poor 
earthly  investiture  is  transfigured,  and  you  wonder  that  you  ever  thought 
of  them  as  other  than  beautiful,  so  it  may  be  that  the  Son  of  man,  in  his 
common,  every-day,  working  garb  of  humanity,  appeared  only  as  the  man  of 
sorrows,  while  to  little  children  there  was  a  smile  that  drew  them  to  his 
arms,  to  earnest  seekers  of  salvation  he  was  full  of  grace  and  truth,  and  to 
his  trusted  followers  upon  the  mountain-top  there  was  the  flashing  forth  of 
a  supernatural  majesty  and  glory.  So  he  teaches  us  that  mere  physical 
endowments  are  not  the  noblest,  but  that  if  we  seek  first  the  kingdom  of 
God  even  these  things  shall  be  added  to  us,  as  "the  head  that  once  was 
covered  with  thorns,  is  crowned  with  glory  now." 

Of  what  temperament  was  Jesus  ?  Mercurial  or  saturnine,  lymphatic  or 
phlegmatic,  nervous  or  equable,  sanguine  or  calm  ?  Who  does  not  perceive, 
the  moment  the  question  is  asked,  that  none  of  these  temperaments  pre- 
dominated in  him  ?  The  story  of  his  life  gives  us  illustrations  of  the  best 
features  of  them  all.  He  can  be  swift  and  direct  as  the  thunderbolt  against 
hypocrisy  ;  he  can  be  deep  and  calm  as  the  summer  sea,  when  he  comforts 
his  disciples.  Who  ever  thinks  of  Christ  as  a  Jew  ?  There  was  no  Jewish 
grasping  or  bigotry  in  him.  All  the  free  spirit  and  aesthetic  insight  of  the 
Greek,  all  the  Roman  reverence  for  law,  all  the  Hebrew  worship  of  holiness, 
all  the  love  that  breaks  down  the  barriers  of  the  nations  and  makes  all  races 
one  —  all  these  were  in  Christ.  What  woman,  though  she  were  the  tenderest 
and  most  delicate  of  all,  ever  thought  that  Jesus  would  be  more  able  to 
sympathize  with  her  if  he  were  woman  instead  of  man  ?  Chaucer  wrote  long 
ago:  "Christ  was  a  maid,  though  shapen  as  a  man."  All  the  spiritual 
excellences  of  both  the  sexes  were  in  him, — he  possessed  the  feminine  as  well 


204  THE  TWO   KATURES   OF   CHRIST. 

as  the  masculine  virtues.  Indeed,  without  gentleness  and  sympathy  no  high 
manhood  is  possible.  True  manhood  is  something  more  than  mere  mascu- 
linity. Plato  says  that  each  human  being  is  but  a  moiety  of  the  perfect 
creature,  wandering  through  the  wide  and  barren  earth  to  find  its  other  half. 
Shakspeare  echoes  the  thought  when  he  declares  that : 

"  He  is  the  half  part  of  a  blessed  man, 
Left  to  be  finished  by  such  as  she  ; 
And  she  a  fair  divided  excellence, 
Whose  fullness  of  perfection  lies  in  him." 

And  so  Tennyson  says : 

"  Yet  in  long-  years  liker  must  they  grow  ; 
The  man  be  more  of  woman,  she  of  man ; 
He  gain  in  sweetness  and  in  moral  light, 
Nor  lose  the  wrestling-  thews  that  throw  the  world." 

And  the  same  poet  addresses  Christ  and  says  : 

"  Thou  seemest  human  and  divine, 

The  highest,  holiest  manhood,  thou ; 
Our  wills  are  ours,  we  know  not  how ; 
Our  wills  are  ours  to  make  them  thine." 

Have  we  ever  reflected  that  all  the  qualities  which  attract  our  love  in  men,, 
aye,  eve.n  in  the  dearest  object  of  our  earthly  affection,  exist  in  Christ  in 
infinitely  greater  degree  and  abundance  ?  All  true  and  noble  souls,  whether 
regenerate  or  unregenerate,  are  but  faint  reflections  of  this  glory  of  him  who 
is  original  and  only  light  of  the  world.  All  the  excellencies  of  character  that 
appear  in  John,  Paul,  Augustine,  Luther  ;  the  intellectual  acumen,  the 
emotional  fervor,  the  power  of  conscience,  the  energy  of  will,  that  make 
great  thinkers,  great  friends,  great  reformers,  great  men,  are  only  scattered 
rays,  which  find  their  focus  in  the  humanity  of  Christ.  He  is  no  still  Thomas 
a  Kempis  —  seraphic  in  devotion,  but  holding  himself  aloft  from  his  age  and 
making  little  impression  on  it ;  he  is  no  fiery  John  Knox  —  stern  and  hard  in 
all  his  indignant  righteousness  ;  but  he  has  all  the  good  in  both  of  these, 
with  none  of  their  defects,  —  aye,  all  the  good  of  a  thousand  others  like  them 
melted  into  one.  He  includes  in  himself  all  objects  and  reasons  for  affection 
and  worship,  so  that  love  him  as  we  may  we  never  can  love  too  much,  but 
must  ever  come  infinitely  short  of  his  desert.  He  includes  in  himself  all 
the  possible  perfections  of  humanity  —  all  the  perfections  needful  to  make 
him  our  eternal  model  —  all  the  perfections  which  finite  humanity  is  pro- 
gressively to  realize  through  the  ages  that  are  to  come. 

I  have  said  that  Christ  is  man,  and  that  he  is  the  ideal  man.  But  I  must 
lead  you  further.  Christ  is  the  life-giving  man.  He  not  only  has  human- 
ity, and  perfect  humanity,  but  he  gives  it  to  others.  He  is  not  simply  the 
bright,  consummate  flower  of  the  race,  the  noblest  fruit  from  this  human 
stem,  but  he  is  a  new  beginning  and  fountain-head  of  humanity,  the  second 
Adam,  in  whom  the  race  that  had  been  despoiled  of  its  inheritance  in  the 
first  Adam  finds  its  true  source  of  spiritual  life.  So  absolutely  new  is  this 
beginning,  this  inauguration  of  a  fresh  and  pure  humanity  within  the  bounds 
of  the  old  race,  that  skeptics  have  denied  the  possibility  of  it,  and  have  called 
it  an  effect  without  a  cause.  But  we  are  persuaded  that  the  same  God  who 
created  humanity  at  the  first  was  perfectly  capable  of  recreating  it,  when  it 
had  apostatized  and  rebelled.  God  is  a  sufficient  cause.  We  do  not  need 


THE   TWO    NATURES    OF   CHRIST.  205 

to  explain  Christ  by  his  natural  antecedents.  We  grant  that  the  absence  of 
narrow  individuality,  the  ideal  universal  manhood  which  we  find  in  Christ, 
could  never  have  been  secured  by  merely  natural  laws  of  propagation .  Much 
less,  without  taking  into  account  a  recreating  act  of  God,  could  we  explain 
the  existence  of  man  without  sin.  Here  is  one,  holy,  harmless,  undefiled, 
separated  from  sinners ;  one  who  never  prays  for  forgiveness,  but  who  imparts 
it  to  others ;  one  who  challenges  his  bitterest  enemies  to  convince  him  of  the 
least  sin ;  one  who  alone  of  all  mankind  can  say  :  "The  prince  of  the  world 
cometh ;  and  he  hath  nothing  in  me  " —  nothing  of  evil  desire  or  tendency 
on  which  his  subtlest  temptations  can  lay  hold. 

Now  the  very  idea  of  such  a  man  as  this  surpasses  all  human  powers  of 
invention,  for  men  invent  characters  like  their  own.  The  source  of  it  can 
only  be  in  a  real  life  once  lived  here  upon  the  earth  ;  and  if  that  life  once 
was  lived,  it  must  have  come  from  God.  Corrupted  human  nature  cannot 
produce  that  which  is  uncorrupt.  ' '  That  which  is  born  of  the  flesh  is  flesh. " 
"  Had  Christ  been  only  human  nature,"  says  Julius  Muller,  "he  could  not 
have  been  without  sin  ;  but  life  can  draw  even  out  of  the  putrescent  clod 
materials  for  its  own  living. "  The  new  science  recognizes  more  than  one 
method  of  propagation  even  in  the  same  species ;  and  while  the  supernatural 
conception  of  Christ  is  a  mystery  to  us,  it  is  a  mystery  that  well  nigh  explains 
every  other  mystery.  The  only  explanation  of  such  a  humanity  as  Christ's 
is  that  it  came  from  God  by  a  new  impulse  of  that  power  which  created  man 
at  the  beginning.  And  so  Christ  becomes  not  only  the  embodiment  of  all 
that  is  noble  in  the  old  humanity,  but  also  the  fountain-head  and  beginning 
<  >f  a  new  humanity  —  a  new  source  of  life  for  the  race.  Here  is  a  new  vine, 
whose  roots  are  in  heaven,  not  on  earth,  a  vine  into  which  the  degenerate, 
half-withered  branches  of  the  old  humanity  may  be  grafted,  so  that  they 
may  have  life  divine.  "  The  first  Adam  was  made  a  living  soul ;  this  last 
Adam  a  life-giving  Spirit."  A  new  race  takes  its  origin  from  Christ,  as  the 
old  race  took  its  start  from  Adam.  "  He  shall  see  his  seed," — he  shall  be 
the  centre  and  source  of  a  new  humanity.  The  relation  of  the  Christian  to 
Christ  supersedes  all  other  relationships,  so  that  "he  that  loveth  father  or 
mother  more  than  me  " —  that  is,  values  more  highly  his  natural  ancestry 
than  he  values  his  new  spiritual  descent  and  relationship, — "is  not  worthy 
of  me."  Christ's  human  nature  is  a  human  nature  that  is  germinal  and 
capable  of  self -communication,  and  it  constitutes  him  the  spiritual  head  and 
beginning  of  a  new  and  holy  race.  O,  thou  wonderful  Savior,  who  hast  not 
only  life  in  thyself  but  the  power  of  an  endless  life,  that  thou  mightest  be  the 
first  born  among  many  brethren,  the  founder  of  a  new  city  and  kingdom  of 
God,  help  us  to  see  how  great  a  thing  is  that  humanity  which  thou  hast 
taken  to  thyself,  and  the  glorious  possibilities  of  which  thou  hast  undertaken 
to  set  forth  before  the  universe  ! 

Thus  we  have  seen  that  the  phrase  "Son  of  man "  intimates  that  Jesus  is 
man,  possessed  of  all  the  powers  of  a  normal  and  developed  humanity  ;  that 
he  is  the  ideal  man,  furnishing  in  himself  the  pattern  which  humanity  is 
progressively  to  realize  ;  and  that  he  is  the  self -propagating  man,  who  in  the 
power  of  the  Spirit  raises  up  for  himself  a  new  race  which  shall  answer  to 
the  idea  of  humanity  as  it  first  existed  in  the  mind  of  God.  But  there  is 
more  than  this  in  the  phrase  "Son  of  man."  That  phrase  intimates  also 


206  THE  TWO   NATURES   OF   CHRIST. 

that  he  is  more  than  man.  Suppose  I  were  to  go  about  proclaiming  myself 
"Son  of  man."  Who  does  not  see  that  it  would  be  mere  impertinence,, 
unless  I  claimed  to  be  something  more.  "  Son  of  man  ?  But  what  of  that  ? 
Cannot  every  human  being  call  himself  the  same  ?  "  When  one  takes  the 
title  "Son  of  man"  for  his  characteristic  designation,  as  Jesus  did,  he 
implies  that  there  is  something  strange  in  his  being  Son  of  man  ;  that  thia 
is  not  his  original  condition  and  dignity  ;  that  it  is  condescension  on  his  part 
to  be  Son  of  man.  In  short,  when  Christ  calls  himself  Son  of  man,  it 
implies  that  he  has  come  from  a  higher  level  of  being  to  inhabit  this  low 
earth  of  ours.  And  so,  when  we  are  asked  "What  think  ye  of  the  Christ ? 
whose  son  is  he  ?  "  we  must  answer,  not  simply,  He  is  Son  of  man,  but 
also,  He  is  Son  of  God. 

Jesus  himself  was  conscious  of  this  divine  Sonship.  Looking  back  into 
the  depths  of  eternity  past  he  could  say  :  "  Before  Abraham  was,  I  am ;" 
"  O,  Father,  glorify  thou  me  with  thine  own  self,  with  the  glory  which  I  had 
with  thee  before  the  world  was."  Even  here  in  his  earthly  life  he  is  not 
confined  to  earth;  he  can  speak  of  "the  Son  of  man  which  is  in  heaven," 
and  can  say,  " I  and  my  Father  are  one."  He  exercised  divine  powers  and 
prerogatives,  when  he  said  to  the  raging  sea,  "  Peace,  be  still "  ;  and  to  the 
troubled  soul,  "  Thy  sins  be  forgiven  thee. "  John  saw  the  evidence  of  Deity 
when  Jesus  showed  that  he  "knew  what  was  in  man. "  Thomas  saw  the  evi- 
dence of  Deity  when  the  resurrection-body  of  Christ  passed  through  the 
solid  walls  of  that  upper  chamber  and  appeared  in  the  midst  of  the  disciples 
when  the  doors  were  shut.  At  the  beginning  of  Christ's  ministry,  Nathanael 
could  say:  "Thou  art  the  Son  of  God,  the  King  of  Israel."  When  that 
ministry  was  half  finished,  Peter  could  say  :  "  Thou  art  the  Christ,  the  Son 
of  the  living  God."  And  after  its  close  the  beloved  disciple  could  write  : 
'  'And  the  Word  became  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us,  and  we  beheld  his  glory, 
glory  as  of  the  only  begotten  from  the  Father,  full  of  grace  and  truth." 

These  testimonies  that  Christ  is  the  Son  of  God  are  drawn  from  the  Scrip- 
tures. But  there  is  proof  nearer  at  hand,  in  the  experience  of  every  Christian. 
Every  soul  redeemed  from  sin  recognizes  Christ  as  an  absolutely  perfect 
Savior,  perfectly  revealing  the  Godhead,  and  worthy  of  unlimited  worship 
and  adoration, —  that  is,  recognizes  Christ  as  Deity.  But  Christian  experi- 
ence also  recognizes  that  through  Christ  it  has  introduction  and  reconcilia- 
tion to  God  as  one  distinct  from  the  Son,  one  who  was  at  enmity  with  it  on 
account  of  its  sin,  but  is  now  reconciled  by  Jesus'  death.  In  other  words, 
while  recognizing  Jesus  as  God,  we  are  also  compelled  to  recognize  a 
distinction  between  the  Father,  and  the  Son  through  whom  we  come  to  the 
Father.  So  in  like  manner,  when  our  eyes  are  first  opened  to  see  Christ  as 
a  Savior,  we  are  compelled  to  recognize  the  work  of  a  divine  Spirit  in  us, 
who  has  taken  of  the  things  of  Christ  and  has  shown  them  to  us,  and  thi& 
divine  Spirit  we  necessarily  distinguish  both  from  the  Father  and  from  the 
Son.  Thus  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  only  a  transcript  of 
Christian  experience  ;  and  the  hymns  and  prayers  of  the  church  addressed 
in  all  ages  to  the  Holy  Spirit  and  to  Christ,  equally  with  the  Father,  are 
witness  that  this  doctrine  is  the  truth  of  God.  Although  this  experience 
cannot  be  regarded  as  an  independent  witness  to  Jesus'  claims,  since  it  onlv 
tests  the  trnth  already  made  known  in  the  Bible,  still  the  irresistible  impulse 


THE   TWO    NATURES   OF   CHRIST.  207 

of  every  person  whom  Christ  has  saved  to  lift  his  Redeemer  to  the  highest 
place,  and  to  bow  before  him  in  the  lowliest  worship,  is  strong  evidence  that 
only  that  interpretation  of  Scripture  can  be  true  which  recognizes  Christ's 
absolute  Godhead. 

There  is  one  other  proof  that  Christ  is  the  Son  of  God.  It  is  found  in 
Christian  history.  The  essential  difference  between  ancient  and  modern 
civilization  lies  in  the  changed  view  of  the  relation  of  the  individual  to  the 
state.  In  classic  times  the  individual  was  held  to  exist  for  the  sake  of  the 
state.  In  modern  times  the  state  exists  for  the  sake  of  the  individual. 
Then  the  individual  had  no  freedom  and  no  rights  —  he  was  but  an  append- 
age and  servitor  in  the  train  of  the  conquering  state.  Now  the  state  finds 
its  highest  glory  in  protecting  the  rights,  and  in  securing  the  development, 
of  the  least  and  lowest  of  its  corporate  members.  The  dignity  of  woman, 
and  the  sacredness  of  human  life,  are  evidences  of  a  new  spirit  animating 
our  modern  civilization — a  spirit  utterly  unknown  to  the  most  cultivated 
nations  of  antiquity.  What  has  wrought  the  change  ?  Nothing  but  the 
death  of  the  Son  of  God.  When  it  was  seen  that  the  smallest  child  and  the 
lowest  slave  had  a  soul  of  such  worth  that  Christ  left  his  throne  and  gave 
up  his  life  to  save  it,  the  world's  estimate  of  values  changed,  and  modern 
history  began.  And  so  history  itself  is  a  testimony  to  the  Deity  of  Christ ; 
for  unless  Christ  had  been  felt  to  be  infinite  and  divine,  this  change  from 
the  old  to  the  new  never  could  have  been  wrought.  Is  it  possible  that  this 
most  beneficent  change  in  history  has  been  the  result  of  belief  in  a  lie? 
Oh,  no  !  Christ  is  the  centre  of  history.  Without  him  history  has  no  order, 
and  no  philosophy  of  history  is  possible.  The  scattered  events  of  the  world's 
life-time  have  no  meaning,  until  they  are  looked  at  in  their  relation  to  Jesus 
Christ  and  his  kingdom.  Just  as  the  heavens  were  a  maze  and  tangle  till 
the  Ptolemaic  system  was  exchanged  for  one  in  which  the  sun  and  not  the 
earth  was  the  centre,  so  human  history  is  an  inextricable  labyrinth  until 
Christ,  the  Sun  of  righteousness,  is  recognized  as  the  centre  around  which  all 
persons  and  events  revolve.  Heathen  and  Jewish  history  respectively  were 
but  the  negative  and  positive  preparations  for  his  coming.  The  modern 
world,  so  far  as  it  has  in  it  the  elements  of  truth  and  righteousness,  is  but 
the  outgrowth  of  the  principles  which  he  introduced  in  his  incarnation,  his 
doctrine,  and  his  death.  Nations  grow  in  power,  according  as  they  accept 
his  law  ;  and  more  and  more  it  is  demonstrated  that  the  kingdoms  that  will 
not  serve  him  shall  perish.  For  to  the  Son  it  has  been  said  :  "  Thy  throne, 
O  God,  is  forever  and  ever." 

So  we  have  before  us  a  wonderful  twofold  being,  not  only  Son  of  man, 
but  also  Son  of  God.  And  now,  among  the  lessons  of  the  theme,  let  us  con- 
sider, first,  our  need  of  Christ's  humanity.  We  need  a  Savior  that  is  truly 
man,  one  who  will  bring  down  God  to  our  human  understanding,  one  who 
will  give  us  a  brother's  sympathy  and  example,  one  who  has  trod  the  same 
paths  of  suffering  which  we  have  to  tread,  one  who  has  been  tempted  in  all 
points  like  as  we  are,  yet  without  sin.  It  is  not  enough  for  us  to  have  a 
divine  Redeemer.  It  is  not  enough  for  us  to  have  a  Redeemer  whose  human- 
ity is  merely  nominal.  There  was  an  old  patristic  notion  that  Christ's  human- 
ity, in  union  with  his  deity,  was  like  a  drop  of  honey  mingled  with  the  ocean  ; 
but  it  was  rightly  judged  heretical,  for  it  was  as  much  as  to  say  that  the  hu- 


208  THE  TWO   NATURES   OF   CHRIST. 

inanity  of  Christ  is  so  swallowed  up  in  his  deity  as  to  be  altogether  lost.  We 
need  to  maintain  the  unchanged  and  perfect  humanity  of  our  Lord,  as  much 
as  we  do  the  unchanged  and  perfect  divinity.  The  ages  when  the  church 
has  lost  sight  of  the  humanity  have  been  ages  of  the  greatest  declension  in 
doctrine  and  practice.  One  of  the  greatest  pictures  in  the  world,  Michael 
Angelo's  tremendous  fresco  of  the  Last  Judgment,  in  the  Sistine  Chapel  at 
Borne,  is  an  illustration  of  that  declension.  How  well  I  remember  the  day 
when  its  awful  granduer  first  rose  before  me  !  On  the  left,  I  seem  still  to 
see  the  dead  rising  from  their  graves  and  making  their  way  to  meet  the 
Judge.  Righteous  and  wicked  alike  come  before  him.  The  martyrs  come, 
bringing  the  instruments  of  their  martyrdom,  as  evidences  of  their  love  for 
their  Lord.  There  is  St.  Sebastian,  with  the  arrows  with  which  he  was 
pierced  ;  there  is  St.  Catherine  with  the  wheel  on  which  the  body  was  broken. 
Heavenly  messengers  bear  aloft  Christ's  crown  of  thorns,  the  nails  that 
were  driven  through  his  hands  and  feet,  the  pillar  to  which  he  was  chained 
when  they  scourged  him,  the  cross  upon  which  he  hung  during  those 
long  hours  of  agony, —  all  these  as  pledges  of  salvation  for  the  saints,  but 
as  swift  witnesses  against  the  wicked.  The  wicked  come  despairing  before 
their  Judge ;  and,  as  they  receive  their  doom,  they  pass  downward  and  are 
caught  by  fiends  and  devils.  And  who  is  the  Judge  ?  A  wrathful  Jupiter, 
with  no  trace  of  human  compassion  upon  his  brow,  but  grasping  thunder- 
bolts and  hurling  them  against  his  foes.  So  Michael  Angelo  pictured  Christ ! 
But  the  most  striking  and  fearful  feature  of  the  picture  is  the  presence  of 
the  Virgin  Mary,  at  her  Son's  right  hand,  and  the  turning  of  her  head 
away  from  the  condemned.  That  the  merciful  mother  of  our  Lord  should 
refuse  to  interfere  in  their  behalf,  is  the  last  element  in  the  cup  of  the 
misery  of  the  wicked.  See  what  resulted  from  forgetting  the  humanity  of 
Jesus  !  Men  must  have  a  compassionate  and  tender  being,  to  intercede  for 
them.  So  they  elevated  the  Virgin  to  the  place  of  Christ,  and  made  her  the 
only  advocate  for  sinners.  To  call  Christ  only  God,  is  as  pernicious  an 
error  as  to  call  him  only  man.  When  men  ignore  the  merciful  and  faithful 
High-priest,  who  can  be  touched  with  the  feeling  of  our  infirmities,  they 
fall  into  the  worship  of  Mary  and  the  invocation  of  the  saints.  When  men 
deny  the  living  human  Christ,  who  is  with  us  alway  unto  the  end  of  the 
world,  they  must  have  some  substitute,  and  they  find  it —  oh,  how  poor 
and  mean  !  —  in  the  "  real  presence  "  of  the  wafer  and  the  mass. 

We  need  Christ's  humanity  —  that  is  the  first  lesson.  But  there  is  a 
second.  It  is  this  :  We  need  Christ's  divinity  also.  For  only  as  Christ  is 
divine,  can  he  make  an  infinite  atonement  for  us.  There  is  a  debt  to  be 
paid,  which  we  can  never  pay  ourselves, — a  reparation  to  be  made,  which  we 
can  never  render.  Every  soul  convinced  of  sin,  feels  that  none  but  an  infi- 
nite Bedeemer  can  ever  save  it.  God  must  suffer,  if  man  is  to  go  free.  He 
could  not  suffer,  if  he  were  only  God.  He  can  suffer,  because  he  is  not  only 
God,  but  also  man.  Just  as  my  soul  could  never  suffer  the  pains  of  fire,  if  it 
were  only  soul,  but  can  suffer  those  pains  in  union  with  the  body ;  so  the 
otherwise  impassible  God  can  suffer  mortal  pangs,  through  his  union  with 
humanity,  which  he  neve*  could  suffer,  if  he  had  not  joined  himself  to  our 
nature.  There  is  such  a  union  with  humanity — a  union  so  close  that  Deity 
itself  is  brought  under  the  curse  and  penalty  of  the  law.  Shall  we  say 


THE   TWO    NATURES    OF   CHRIST.  309 

with  John  of  Damascus,  that,  as  the  man  who  fells  a  tree  does  no  harm  to 
the  subeams  that  illuminate  it,  so  the  blows  that  struck  Christ's  humanity 
caused  no  pain  to  his  Deity  ?  On  the  contrary,  it  was  the  very  greatness  of 
his  Deity  that  made  his  agony  ineffable.  Because  Christ  was  God,  did  he 
pass  unscorched  through  the  fires  of  Gethsemane  and  Calvary  ?  Ah,  rather 
say,  because  Christ  was  God,  he  underwent  a  suffering  which  was  abso- 
lutely infinite.  In  that  infinite  suffering,  we  see  the  cup  of  God's  just 
indignation  drunk  to  the  very  dregs  ;  the  otherwise  unappeasable  demands 
of  violated  conscience  satisfied.  Christ's  flesh  is  meat  indeed,  and  Christ's 
blood  is  drink  indeed  !  Because  Christ  is  God,  his  atonement  is  sufficient. 
Because  he  is  God,  the  union  which  he  effects  with  God  is  complete.  If 
he  were  only  man  or  angel,  he  would  still  be  finite ;  the  gulf  between 
him  and  God  would  still  be  infinite  ;  he  never  could  bring  us  nearer  to  God 
than  he  was  himself.  But  since  he  is  God,  he  is  able  to  bring  us  to  the 
very  holy  of  holies,  to  the  very  heart  of  God,  to  living  union  with  the 
Father  of  our  spirits  ;  nay,  in  him  we  become  partakers  of  the  divine  nature, 
one  spirit  with  the  Lord  —  we  dwelling  in  God,  and  God  dwelling  in  us  ;  an 
indissoluble  and  eternal  fellowship  with  the  Father  and  with  the  Son  and 
with  the  Holy  Ghost.  We  need  his  humanity, —  but  ah,  what  should  we 
do  without  his  Deity  ?  A  human  Savior  alone  can  never  reconcile  nor 
re-unite  me  to  God.  But  a  divine  Savior  can. 

"  Jesus,  my  God !    I  know  his  name, 

His  name  is  all  my  trust ; 
Nor  will  he  put  my  soul  to  shame, 
Nor  let  my  hope  be  lost." 

Yes,  he  has  both  —  the  human  sympathy  and  the  divine  power  —  and  he 
lias  them  now.  And  here  is  the  third  lesson  :  We  need  this  humanity  and 
this  deity  perfectly  and  eternally  united  in  the  one  person  of  our  Lord.  And 
so  it  is.  Christ  did  not  take  human  nature,  as  some  of  those  Indian  gods  are 
fabled  to  have  done.  The  Hindoo  avatars  were  only  tempory  unions  of 
drity  with  humanity,  and  after  that  humanity  had  been  drawn  for  a  little 
time  into  the  the  brightness  of  the  godhead,  it  was  cast  aside,  as  a  worn  out 
garment,  and  Buddha  returned  alone  to  his  heaven.  How  different  is  the 
union  of  humanity  with  Deity  in  Christ !  Forever  stands  our  humanity  in 
heaven.  It  has  ascended  the  throne  of  the  universe.  It  has  entered  into 
the  partnership  of  the  Trinity.  It  is  the  pledge  and  earnest  of  our  glor- 
ification. We  too  shall  reign  with  Christ;  we  shall  judge  angels;  "round 
about  his  throne,"  in  the  striking  language  of  the  Bevised  Version,  "are 
four  and  twenty  thrones,"  on  which  the  representatives  of  the  redeemed 
shall  sit ;  and  all  things  shall  be  ours,  because  we  are  Christ's,  and  Christ  is 
God's.  Let  us  not  lose  the  blessing  of  this  great  truth,  that  Christ  has  taken 
our  whole  humanity  with  him,  and  that  there  in  heaven  he  still  has  the 
pierced  hands  and  feet  that  were  nailed  to  the  bitter  cross  for  us.  There  he 
has  a  human  soul,  now  capable  of  divine  love  and  intervention  in  our  behalf. 
There  he  has  a  human  body,  of  wonderful  beauty  and  of  wonderful  powers, 
the  model  and  the  pledge  of  our  resurrection-body.  Everything  that  took 
place  in  Christ  shall  take  place  in  us.  He  wrought  nothing  for  himself 
alone,  but  all  for  the  race  of  which  he  became  a  part.  "For  he  that  sancti- 
fieth,  and  that  they  are  sanctified  are  all  of  one,"  — of  one  body,  I  think  the 
14 


210  THE   TWO   NATURES   OF   CHRIST. 

meaning  is,  —  "for  which  cause  he  is  not  ashamed  to  call  them  brethren."" 
"  Therefore  our  citizenship  is  in  heaven ;  from  whence  also  we  wait  for  a, 
Savior,  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  who  shall  fashion  anew  the  body  of  our 
humiliation,  that  it  may  be  conformed  to  the  body  of  his  glory,  according 
to  the  working  whereby  he  is  able  even  to  subject  all  things  unto  himself. "" 
We  need  his  humanity  ;  we  need  his  Deity  ;  we  need  this  humanity  aud 
this  Deity  united  in  one  person.  But  there  is  a  last  lesson  :  We  need  to 
recognize  this  humanity  and  this  Deity,  and  to  recognize  them  now.  When 
a  beggar  girl  is  taken  by  a  king  to  be  his  bride,  she  does  well  to  reflect,  not 
only  upon  the  greatness  of  his  love,  but  also  upon  the  return  of  love  she 
owes  to  him.  How  infinite  the  debt  we  owe  to  Christ !  How  infinite  the 
honor  of  serving  him  !  To  be  the  servant  of  such  a  Lord  —  this  is  to  be 
higher  than  the  kings  of  the  earth  !  No  human  being  ever  reaches  so  high 
a  place  as  when  he  prostrates  himself  absolutely  at  the  feet  of  Jesus,  and  lays 
there  all  that  he  is  and  all  that  he  has  forever.  It  is  a  mark  of  Paul's  prog- 
ress in  Christian  experience  that  in  his  later  epistles  he  ceases  to  call  him- 
self "apostle  of  Jesus  Christ,"  and  designates  himself  simply  as  "  Christ's 
servant."  In  his  earlier  letters,  it  is  "Paul,  apostle  of  Jesus  Christ ; "  in  the 
later,  it  is  :  "Paul,  a  servant  a  bond-servant,  a  slave  —  of  Jesus  Christ."  So 
he  followed  Christ's  own  example,  who  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but 
to  minister  ;  not  to  be  served,  but  to  serve.  Let  us  all  consecrate  ourselves 
to  the  same  blessed  service.  When  every  Christian  shall  be  in  reality  what 
the  Pope  of  Borne  in  one  of  his  titles  professes  to  be — "a  servant  of  servants  "" 
for  Jesus'  sake  —  then  the  world  shall  recognize  the  glory  of  him  who  is  Son 
of  man  and  Son  of  God. 

"  Oh,  not  to  fill  the  mouth  of  fame 

My  longing-  heart  is  stirred ; 
Oh,  give  me  a  diviner  name, 
Call  me  thy  servant,  Lord ! 

4i  Sweet  title  that  delighteth  me, 

Name  earnestly  implored ; 

Oh,  what  can  reach  the  dignity 

Of  thy  true  servant,  Lord ! 

"No  longer  would  my  soul  be  known 

As  self-sustained  aud  free ; 
Oh,  not  my  own,  oh,  not  my  own  — 
Lord,  I  belong  to  thee ! " 

Serve  Christ,  and  he  will  reveal  himself  to  you.  The  path  of  service  is  the 
path  of  knowledge.  You  shall  see  this  Son  of  man  and  Son  of  God,  when 
you  once  begin  to  obey  him.  For  he  himself  has  said  :  "  He  that  hath  my 
commandments  and  keepeth  them,  he  it  is  that  loveth  me,  *  *  *  and  I 
will  love  him  and  will  manifest  myself  to  him."  A  few  years  ago  in  one  of 
our  eastern  cities  there  lived  a  physician  of  eminence,  whose  practice  among 
the  sick  and  the  suffering  had  given  him  a  large  experience  of  the  miseries 
of  the  world.  He  was  one  of  those  who  are  sometimes  said  constitutionally 
to  be  doubters,  and  his  doubts  turned  upon  the  person  and  the  work  of 
Christ.  He  could  see  the  beauty  of  Christ's  character,  but  the  possibility 
of  Deity  being  united  with  humanity  in  him  he  could  not  see.  He  could  see 
the  attractiveness  of  the  Christian  scheme  —  Christ  putting  his  own  mighty 
shoulders  under  all  our  load  of  sin  and  penalty,  and  bearing  the  burden  that 


THE   TWO    NATURES    OF    CHRIST.  211 

we  might  go  free  —  but  the  possibility  of  this  he  could  not  understand. 
And  so  he  went  on,  the  opportunities  for  religious  service  in  his  profession 
putting  his  conscience  under  a  heavier  and  heavier  load  of  obligation,  but 
his  speculative  doubts  growing  thicker  and  thicker,  until  it  sometimes 
seemed  to  him  as  if  all  the  lights  of  heaven  had  gone  out.  One  day  he  met 
an  evangelical  minister  in  whom  he  had  confidence,  and  with  the  first  word 
the  trouble  of  his  soul  was  made  known.  "  I  have  had  the  greatest  trial  of 
my  life  this  morning."  "How  so?"  replied  his  friend.  "Why,  I  have 
just  been  to  the  bedside  of  a  poor  woman  who  has  but  a  few  hours  to  live, 
and  as  I  was  standing  there  it  suddenly  flashed  upon  my  mind  that  her  soul 
was  in  worse  case  than  her  body  —  she  seemed  the  very  image  of  conscious 
guilt  and  despair.  And,  do  you  know  ?  it  seemed  to  me  at  that  moment  that, 
if  I  believed  as  you  do  in  Christ,  it  would  have  been  a  great  privilege  to 
kneel  down  by  her  bedside  and  to  commend  the  poor  woman  to  his  mercy." 
"Oh,  my  friend!"  said  the  minister,  "God  has  put  that  into  your  heart. 
Follow  that  impulse.  We  will  not  stop  to  settle  the  question  who  and  what 
Christ  is.  You  know  that  somewhere  in  the  universe  Christ  lives  —  his  life 
did  not  go  out  in  darkness  like  an  extinguished  taper.  And  he  is  true  —  he 
said  that  he  would  hear  men's  prayers,  whenever  they  called  upon  him.  And 
he  is  more  able  now,  than  he  was  when  he  heard  the  poor  blind  beggar's  cry. 
Go  back  to  that  bedside,  and  God  go  with  you  ! "  And  the  resolve  was  taken. 
The  physician  went  once  more  into  that  sick  room,  and  there  for  the  first  time 
in  all  his  life  he  knelt  in  prayer  to  Jesus.  He  prayed  Christ  to  teach  that 
poor  woman's  soul  the  way  to  God.  But  as  he  prayed,  Christ  taught  his 
soul  the  way  to  God.  The  one  act  of  recognizing  and  obeying  Christ  was 
the  door  through  which  Christ  himself  entered  into  his  heart,  and  in  the 
consciousness  that  Christ  had  forgiven  his  sins  and  saved  his  soul  he  could 
doubt  no  longer  about  Christ's  divinity,  but  he  fell  at  Christ's  feet  like  Thomas, 
crying  "  My  Lord  and  my  God  !  " 

Oh,  friend  to  whom  I  speak  !  I  pray  you  to  recognize  Christ  now  !  This 
particular  message  from  God  will  never  come  to  you  —  the  preacher  you  may 
never  see  —  again. 

44  We  twain  have  met  like  ships  upon  the  sea  — 
Who  hold  an  hour's  converse  —  so  short,  so  sweet ; 
One  little  hour,  and  then  away  they  speed, 
On  lonely  paths,  through  mist  and  cloud  and  foam, 
To  meet  no  more." 

Ah  !  I  mistake,  we  shall  meet,  not  many  months  and  years  from  now, — 
shall  meet  before  the  throne  of  that  once  crucified,  now  crowned  and 
sceptred  Savior,  once  known  only  in  his  character  as  Son  of  man,  then 
known  chiefly  in  his  character  as  Son  of  God.  Be  thankful  that  it  is  yet 
one  of  the  days  of  the  Son  of  man.  Listen  to  me,  while  I  urge  you  to  rec- 
ognize him  now  as  Son  of  God.  Now  you  may  think  that  you  do  not  need 
him ;  but  then  you  will  see  that  you  have  no  other  need.  Now,  death  and 
eternity  may  seem  far  away ;  but  then,  they  will  be  the  overmastering  facts 
of  your  experience.  When  I  was  a  mere  child  I  remember  riding  from  the 
city  of  my  residence  toward  the  great  lake  that  skirts  our  State  upon  the 
north.  I  remember  the  first  distant  momentary  glimpse  of  its  far  line  of 
blue,  and  the  feeling  of  mystery  and  awe  which  that  glimpse  inspired  within 


212  THE   TWO   NATURES   OF   CHRIST. 

me.  From  the  summit  of  the  last  hill-top  as  we  pressed  onward,  I  remember 
the  yet  more  solemn  feeling  with  which  I  looked  upon  the  great  waters  that 
stretched  away  before  me,  now  so  deep  and  cold,  so  fathomless  and  illimit- 
able. But  when  we  came  down  to  the  water's  edge  and  I  was  led  out  into 
the  rolling  waves,  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  but  the  sea — the  solid  shore 
had  vanished.  I  was  overwhelmed  and  lost,  but  for  my  father's  voice  lifted 
up  to  encourage,  and  my  father's  hand  stretched  out  to  hold  me  up.  So  as 
we  go  in  the  journey  of  life,  as  youth  grows  into  manhood  and  manhood 
into  age,  death  and  eternity  assume  larger  and  larger  significance.  The 
first  distant  glimpse  of  them  may  overawe  the  soul,  but  the  final  stepping 
down  into  the  flood  is  a  unique  experience  —  it  cannot  be  anticipated.  But 
to  him  who  has  recognized  Christ  as  Son  of  man  and  Son  of  God,  death  has 
no  terrors ;  for  Christ  himself  has  said  :  ' '  When  thou  passest  through  the 
waters,  I  will  be  with  thee,  and  through  the  rivers,  they  shall  not  overflow 
thee."  Death  may  be  mighty,  but  Christ  is  the  Conqueror  of  death,  and  his 
pierced  right  hand  can  help  us  through  the  flood  and  open  to  us  the  gates 
of  Paradise  upon  the  other  side.  And  therefore,  in  life,  in  death,  on  earth, 
in  heaven,  this  Christ,  Son  of  God  and  Son  of  man,  is  the  only  hope  of  me,  a 
sinner ;  and  to  you,  my  fellow-sinner,  bound  with  me  to  his  judgment  seat, 
I  commend  this  Christ  as  the  one  and  only  Savior,  and  pray  you  in  his  stead 
that  you  accept  him  and  be  saved .  ' '  What  think  ye  of  the  Christ  ?  Whose 
son  is  he ? "  God  grant  that  every  one  of  us  may  reply  :  "He  is  the  Son  of 
man  and  Son  of  God,  my  Redeemer  and  my  King  ! 

"  Happy,  if  with  my  latest  breath 

I  may  but  gasp  his  name ; 
Preach  him  to  all,  and  cry  in  death  : 
•  Behold,  behold  the  Lamb ! '  " 


XVI. 

THE  NECESSITY  OF  THE  ATONEMENT.' 


In  these  words  of  our  Lord,  which  I  read  from  the  Revised  Version,  we 
find  plainly  asserted  the  necessity  of  his  atonement.  They  are  still  better 
translated  in  the  Bible  Union  Version  which  reads  :  "Was  it  not  necessary 
that  the  Christ  should  suffer  these  things  ?  "  Why  was  it  needful  that 
Christ  should  suffer  ?  In  order  that  prophecy  might  be  fulfilled  ?  Yes, — 
but  why  were  Christ's  sufferings  matters  of  prophecy  ?  It  must  be  because 
they  were  included  in  the  purpose  of  God  —  the  purpose  of  God  to  redeem 
the  world.  Why  could  not  the  world  be  redeemed  withoiit  the  sufferings 
of  Christ?  There -are  two  answers  to  be  given  to  this  question.  First, 
because  there  is  an  ethical  principle  in  God's  nature  which  demands  that 
sin  shall  be  punished.  The  holiness  of  God  requires  satisfaction  for  sin, 
and  Christ's  penal  sufferings  furnish  that  satisfaction.  Secondly,  because 
Christ  stands  in  such  a  relation  to  humanity  that  what  God's  holiness 
demands,  Christ  is  under  obligation  to  pay,  longs  to  pay,  inevitably  does 
pay,  and  pays  so  fully,  in  virtue  of  his  twofold  nature,  that  every  claim  of 
justice  is  satisfied  and  the  sinner  who  accepts  what  he  has  done  in  his  behalf 
is  saved. 

With  regard  to  the  first  of  these  aspects  of  the  atonement  —  its  necessity  as 
regards  God  —  so  much  is  said  in  Scripture  that  little  room  is  left  for  doubt 
or  ambiguity.  In  his  sacrifice,  Christ  offers  himself  through  the  eternal  Spirit 
without  spot  to  God.  He  is  set  forth  in  his  blood  as  a  propitiatory  sacrifice, 
so  that  God  may  be  just  and  yet  justify  him  that  believes.  Without  the 
shedding  of  blood  there  is  no  remission,  but  the  blood  of  Jesus  cleanseth 
from  all  sin,  for  he  is  the  propitiation  for  our  sins  and  not  for  ours  only  but 
for  the  sins  of  the  whole  world.  These  passages  declare  that  the  righteous- 
ness of  God  demands  an  atonement  if  sinners  are  to  be  saved. 

It  is  to  the  second  and  more  difficult  aspect  of  the  atonement  —  its  neces- 
sity as  regards  Christ  himself  —  that  I  wish  to  direct  special  attention. 
Many  who  can  see  how  God  can  justly  demand  satisfaction,  cannot  see  how 
Christ  can  justly  make  it.  The  suffering  of  the  innocent  in  place  of  the 
guilty  seems  to  them  manifestly  unjust.  They  recognize  no  obligation  on 
the  part  of  Christ  to  suffer.  I  am  persuaded  that  light  can  be  thrown  upon 
this  particular  point  in  the  great  doctrine.  We  shall  understand  the  neces- 
sity of  Christ's  sufferings,  when  we  consider  what  Christ  was,  and  what  were 
his  relations  to  the  race. 

What  were  the  results  to  Christ  of  his  union  with  humanity  ?  I  shall 
mention  three.  The  first  was  obligation  to  suffer  for  men ;  since,  being  one 


*  A  sermon  upon  the  text,  Luke  24  :  26— "Behoved  it  not  the  Christ  to  suffer  these 
things?" 

213 


214  THE   NECESSITY   OF  THE   ATONEMENT. 

with  the  race,  he  had  a  share  in  the  responsibility  of  the  race  to  the  law  and 
the  justice  of  God — a  responsibility  not  destroyed  by  his  purification  in  the 
womb  of  the  Virgin.  There  is  an  organic  unity  of  the  race.  All  that  there 
is  of  humanity  has  descended  from  one  common  stock.  In  our  first  parents 
that  humanity  fell  from  holiness  and  incurred  the  great  displeasure  of  God, 
and  each  member  of  the  race  since  that  time  has  been  born  into  the  state 
into  which  our  first  parents  fell.  The  universal  prevalence  of  perverse 
affections,  and  the  universal  reign  of  death,  are  evidences  that  the  whole  race 
is  under  the  curse.  What  were  the  two  main  consequences  of  sin  to  Adam? 
They  were  first,  depravity,  and  secondly,  guilt.  First  the  corruption  of  his 
own  nature ;  and  secondly,  obligation  to  endure  the  penal  wrath  of  God. 
What  are  the  two  consequences  to  us  of  Adam's  sin  ?  Precisely  the  same  : 
first,  depravity ;  secondly,  guilt.  We  are  born  depraved,  or  with  natures 
continually  tending  to  sin  ;  we  are  born  guilty,  or  under  God's  displeasure 
and  justly  bound  to  suffer.  And  so  because  of  this  race-unity  and  race- 
responsibility  we  bear  a  thousand  ills  not  due  to  our  individual  and  conscious 
transgressions,  and  even  infants,  who  have  never  in  their  own  persons  vio- 
lated a  single  command  of  God,  do  notwithstanding  suffer  and  die. 

Now  if  Christ  had  been  born  into  the  world  like  other  men,  he  too  would 
have  had  both  these  burdens  to  bear, —  first,  the  burden  of  depravity,  and 
secondly,  the  burden  of  guilt.  But  with  regard  to  the  first,  he  was  not  born 
into  the  world  like  other  men.  In  the  womb  of  the  Virgin,  the  human 
nature  which  he  took  was  purged  of  its  depravity  even  at  the  instant  of  his 
taking  it,  so  that  it  could  be  said  to  Mary  :  "  That  holy  thing  that  shall  be 
born  of  thee  shall  be  called  the  Son  of  God,"  and  the  author  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  could  speak  of  Christ  as  "holy,  harmless,  undefiled,  sepa- 
rated from  sinners."  With  regard  to  the  second  consequence  of  sin,  how- 
ever, Christ  was  born  into  the  world  like  other  men.  The  purging  away  of 
all  depravity  did  not  take  away  guilt,  in  the  sense  of  just  exposure  to  the 
penalties  of  violated  law.  Although  Christ's  nature  was  purified,  his 
obligation  to  suffer  yet  remained.  All  the  sorrows  of  his  earthly  life,  and 
all  the  pains  of  death  which  he  endured,  were  evidences  that  justice  still 
held  him  to  answer  for  the  common  sin  of  the  race. 

The  justice  of  Christ's  sufferings  has  been  illustrated  by  the  obligation  of 
the  silent  partner  of  a  business  firm  to  pay  debts  which  he  did  not  personally 
contract ;  or  by  the  obligation  of  the  husband  to  pay  the  debts  of  his  wife  ; 
or  by  the  obligation  of  a  purchasing  country  to  assume  the  debts  of  the 
province  which  it  purchases.  There  have  been  men  who  have  spent  the 
strength  of  a  life-time  in  clearing  off  the  indebtedness  of  an  insolvent  father 
long  since  deceased.  They  recognized  an  organic  unity  of  the  family  which 
made  their  father's  liabilities  their  own.  So  Christ  recognized  the  organic 
unity  of  the  race,  and  saw  that,  having  become  one  of  the  sinning  race,  he 
had  involved  himself  in  all  its  liabilities,  even  to  the  suffering  of  death,  the 
great  penalty  of  sin.  He  might  have  declined  to  join  himself  to  humanity, 
and  then  he  need  not  have  suffered.  He  might  have  sundered  his  connec- 
tion with  the  race,  and  then  he  need  not  have  suffered.  But  once  born  of 
the  Virgin,  and  possessed  of  the  human  nature  that  was  under  the  curse, 
he  was  bound  to  suffer.  The  whole  mass  and  weight  of  God's  displeasure 
against  the  race  fell  on  him,  when  once  he  became  a  member  of  the  race. 


THE   NECESSITY    OF   THE    ATONEMENT.  215 

It  was  this  that  Jesus  chiefly  shrank  from  when  he  prayed  that  the  cup 
might  pass  from  him.  And  when  at  last  God's  face  was  hidden  from  the 
sufferer,  and  he  cried  in  agony  : — "My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  for- 
saken me  !  "  there  would  have  been  no  sting  in  death  if  it  had  not  been  the 
wages  of  sin,  justly  paid  to  him  who  not  only  stood  in  the  sinner's  place, 
but  who  was  made  sin  for  us  in  the  sense  of  being  guilty  of  the  original  sin 
of  the  race,  while  yet  he  was  utterly  free  from  inherited  depravity  or  personal 
transgression. 

It  has  been  common  enough  for  theologians  to  recognize  an  imputed  guilt, 
.as  furnishing  an  explanation  of  Christ's  sufferings.  The  poet  says  : 

*'  My  soul  looks  back  to  see 

The  burdens  thou  didst  bear 
When  hanging  on  the  accursed  tree, 
And  hopes  her  guilt  was  there." 

But  this  imputation  of  others'  guilt  is  very  difficult  to  reason,  even  when 
helped  out  by  John  Miller's  hypothesis  of  Christ's  federal  relation  to  the 
race.  The  doctrine  of  the  atonement  needs  something  more  than  this  to 
make  it  comprehensible.  It  needs  such  an  actual  union  of  Christ  with 
humanity  and  such  a  derivation  of  the  substance  of  his  being  by  natural 
generation  from  Adam  as  will  make  him,  not  simply  the  constructive  heir, 
but  the  natural  heir,  of  the  guilt  of  the  race.  Edward  Irving  saw  this,  and 
he  declared  therefore  that  Christ  took  human  nature  as  it  was  in  Adam,  not 
before  the  fall,  but  after  the  fall.  But  he  ignored  the  qualification  that,  in 
his  taking  it,  that  human  nature  was  completely  purified  by  the  Holy  Spirit, 
and  so  he  taught  that  Christ's  humanity  was  depraved.  The  true  doctrine 
is  that  the  humanity  of  Christ  was  not  a  new  creation,  but  was  derived  from 
Adam  through  Mary  his  mother.  Christ,  then,  so  far  as  his  humanity  was 
concerned,  was  in  Adam  just  as  we  were,  and,  as  Adam's  descendant,  he  was 
responsible  for  Adam's  sin  like  every  other  member  of  the  race  ;  the  chief 
difference  being  that,  while  we  inherit  from  Adam  both  guilt  and  depravity, 
he  whom  the  Holy  Spirit  purified,  inherited  not  the  depravity  but  only  the 
guilt. 

The  first  effect  upon  Christ  of  his  union  with  humanity,  then,  was  that  it 
put  him  under  obligation  to  suffer  for  the  sins  of  men.  But  there  was  a 
second  effect  —  it  was  the  longing  to  suffer  which  perfect  love  to  God  must 
feel,  in  view  of  the  demands  upon  the  race  of  that  holiness  of  God  which  he 
loved  more  than  he  loved  the  race  itself  ;  which  perfect  love  to  man  must 
feel,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  bearing  the  penalty  of  man's  sin  was  the  only 
way  to  save  him.  I  have  spoken  of  Christ's  shrinking  from  suffering  and 
death  because  it  was  the  penalty  of  sin.  But  this  is  perfectly  consistent 
with  an  intense  longing  to  pay  that  penalty,  as  it  was  the  demand  of  infinite 
righteousness.  That  righteousness  he  loved,  more  than  he  loved  the  whole 
universe  besides.  That  righteousness  he  saw  to  be  the  only  worthy  object 
of  adoration  for  the  universe — the  only  security  for  the  peace  of  the  universe. 
He  understood  the  requisitions  of  righteousness,  as  only  one  who  was  per- 
fectly pure  could  understand  them.  And  when  that  righteousness  presented 
its  demands  to  him  as  a  member  of  the  condemned  and  guilty  race,  there 
was  that  in  him  which  moved  him  to  respond  :  "  Let  that  righteousness  be 
exalted,  though  I  die  !  " 


216  THE    NECESSITY    OF   THE   ATONEMENT. 

Think  how  urgent  the  demand  of  conscience  sometimes  is,  even  in  the 
case  of  sinful  men,  and  you  will  get  some  idea  of  the  yearning  of  Christ's 
pure  heart  to  offer  his  great  sacrifice.  All  great  masters  in  literature  have 
recognized  it.  The  inextinguishable  thirst  for  reparation  constitutes  the 
very  essence  of  tragedy.  Marguerite  in  Goethe's  Faust,  fainting  in  the  great 
Cathedral  under  the  solemn  reverberations  of  the  "Dies  Irce;  "  Dimmes- 
dale  in  Hawthorne's  Scarlet  Letter,  putting  himself  side  by  side  with  Hester 
Prynne,  his  victim,  in  her  place  of  obloquy  ;  Bulwer's  Eugene  Aram,  coming 
forward,  though  unsuspected,  to  confess  the  murder  he  had  committed,  all 
these  are  illustrations  of  the  inner  impulse  that  moves  even  a  sinful  soul  to 
satisfy  the  claims  of  justice  upon  it. 

Nor  are  these  cases  confined  to  the  pages  of  romance.  That  was  an 
unusual  and  exciting  scene  in  a  Plattsburg  court-room,  near  the  close  of  a 
trial  for  murder.  The  murderer  was  a  life-convict  who  had  struck  down  a 
fellow-convict  with  an  axe.  The  jury,  after  being  out  two  hours,  came  in  to 
ask  the  judge  to  explain  the  difference  between  murder  in  the  first,  and  murder 
in  the  second,  degree.  Suddenly  the  prisoner  arose  and  said  :  "This  was  not 
murder  in  second  degree.  It  was  a  deliberate  and  premeditated  murder.  I 
know  that  I  have  done  wrong,  that  I  ought  to  confess  the  truth,  and  that  I 
ought  to  be  hanged. "  This  left  the  jury  nothing  to  do  but  to  render  their  ver- 
dict, and  the  judge  sentenced  the  murderer  to  be  hanged,  as  he  deserved  to  be. 
The  other  case  of  Earl,  the  wife-murderer,  is  still  fresh  in  public  recollection. 
Earl  thanked  the  jury  that  had  convicted  him,  declared  the  verdict  just, 
begged  that  no  one  would  interfere  to  stay  the  course  of  justice,  said  that 
the  greatest  blessing  that  could  be  conferred  upon  him  would  be  to  let  him 
suffer  the  penalty  of  his  crime.  Now,  if  wicked  men  can  be  moved  with 
such  desire  to  suffer,  how  much  more  must  he  desire  to  suffer  whose  sym- 
pathy with  the  righteousness  of  God  was  perfect  and  complete.  For  man's 
sake  Christ  longed  to  suffer,  because  only  through  his  suffering  could  man 
be  saved.  But  chiefly  for  God's  sake  Christ  longed  to  suffer,  for  only 
through  his  suffering  could  God's  righteousness  be  vindicated.  Hence  we 
see  him  pressing  forward  to  the  cross  with  such  majestic  determination  that 
the  disciples  were  amazed  and  afraid.  Hence  we  hear  him  saying — "With 
desire  have  I  desired  to  drink  this  cup ; "  "I  have  a  baptism  to  be  baptized 
with,  and  how  am  I  straitened  till  it  is  accomplished."  Here  is  the  truth  in 
Campbell's  theory  of  the  Atonement.  Christ  is  the  great  Penitent  before  God 
—  making  confession  of  the  sin  of  the  race,  which  others  of  that  race  could 
neither  see  nor  feel.  But, the  view  which  I  present  is  a  larger  and  completer 
one  than  that  of  Campbell,  in  that  it  makes  this  confession  and  reparation 
obligatory  upon  Christ,  as  Campbell's  view  does  not,  and  recognizes  the 
penal  nature  of  Christ's  sufferings,  which  Campbell's  view  denies. 

There  is  but  one  point  further.  I  have  shown  that  Christ's  sufferings 
were  necessary,  first,  because  he  was  under  obligation  to  suffer ;  and  sec- 
ondly, because  his  love  to  God  and  man  made  him  long  to  discharge  this 
obligation.  Now,  thirdly,  I  would  show,  that,  being  such  as  he  was,  he 
could  not  help  suffering  —  in  other  words,  the  obligatory  and  the  desired 
were  also  the  inevitable.  Since  he  was  a  being  of  perfect  purity,  contact 
with  the  sin  of  the  race,  of  which  he  was  a  member,  necessarily  involved  an 
actual  suffering  of  an  intenser  kind  than  we  can  conceive.  There  are 


THE   NECESSITY    OF   THE    ATONEMENT. 

moments  in  our  own  experience  when  the  wickedness  of  some  past  misdeed 
is  revealed  to  us  in  a  light  so  appalling,  that  we  get  some  conception  of  what 
hell  must  be  to  the  everlastingly  condemned.  There  are  moments  when 
our  unbelief  and  ingratitude  seem  abhorrent  and  shocking  beyond  descrip- 
tion. There  are  times  when  the  sin  of  others  to  whom  we  are  closely  bound, 
their  disregard  of  Christ  and  his  claims,  their  grieving  of  his  Spirit,  affect 
us  so  deeply  that  the  remorse  which  they  ought  to  feel  seems  to  take  posses- 
sion of  us.  So  the  parents  feel,  whose  daughter  has  gone  astray, —  they 
identify  themselves  with  her,  feel  her  shame  as  if  it  were  their  own,  cannot 
absolve  themselves  from  the  feeling  of  responsibility.  And  there  are  men 
whose  hearts  are  so  large  and  deep,  that  they  feel  thus  for  the  sin  and  misery 
of  the  world.  They  look  upon  the  bonds  of  their  brethren,  and  feel  bound 
with  them,  as  Moses  identified  himself  with  his  suffering  people  in  Egypt. 
And  this  suffering  in  and  with  the  sins  of  men,  which  Dr.  Bushnell  empha- 
sized so  strongly,  though  it  is  not,  as  he  thought,  the  principal  element,  is 
notwithstanding  an  indispensable  element,  in  the  atonement  of  Christ. 

In  the  last  illness  of  John  Woolman,  one  of  the  early  members  of  the 
Society  of  Friends,  he  gave  utterance  to  the  following  words.  They  are  in 
the  form  of  an  address  to  God  :  "  O  Lord,  my  God,  the  amazing  horrors  of 
darkness  were  gathered  about  me  and  covered  me  all  over,  and  I  saw  no  way 
to  go  forth  ;  I  felt  the  depth  and  extent  of  the  misery  of  my  fellow  creatures 
separated  from  the  divine  harmony,  and  it  was  greater  than  I  could  bear, 
and  I  was  crushed  down  under  it ;  I  lifted  up  my  hand,  I  stretched  out  my 
arm,  but  there  was  none  to  help  me  ;  I  looked  round  about  and  was  amazed. 
In  the  depths  of  misery,  O  Lord,  I  remembered  that  thou  art  omnipotent, 
that  I  had  called  thee  Father,  and  I  felt  that  I  loved  thee,  and  I  was  made 
quiet  in  thy  will,  and  I  waited  for  deliverance  from  thee ;  thou  hadst  pity 
upon  me  when  no  man  could  help  me.  I  saw  that  meekness  under  suffering 
was  showed  to  me  in  the  most  affecting  example  of  thy  Son,  and  thou  wast 
teaching  me  to  follow  him,  and  I  said  :  '  Thy  will,  O  Father,  be  done.'  "  He 
had  vision  of  a  "  dull,  gloomy  mass  "  darkening  half  the  heavens,  and  which 
he  was  told  was  "human  beings,  in  as  great  misery  as  they  could  be  and  live  ; 
and  he  was  mixed  with  them,  and  henceforth  he  might  not  consider  himself 
a  distinct  and  separate  being." 

Sin  is  self -isolating,  and  its  watchword  is  :  "Am  I  my  brother's  keeper?" 
But  love  and  righteousness  have  in  them  the  instinct  of  human  unity. 
Nothing  human  is  foreign  to  the  man  who  lives  in  God.  We  do  not  know 
how  completely  a  perfectly  holy  being,  possessed  of  superhuman  knowl- 
edge and  love,  may  have  felt  even  the  pangs  of  remorse  for  the  condition  of 
that  humanity  of  which  he  was  the  central  conscience  and  heart.  Such  a 
holy  being  was  Christ.  In  him  all  the  nerves  and  sensibilities  of  humanity 
met.  He  was  the  only  healthy  member  of  the  race.  He  could  feel  the  con- 
dition of  humanity,  when  no  other  member  of  the  race  could  feel  it.  When 
a  man  has  been  exposed  to  intense  cold  and  his  limbs  are  frozen,  he  feels  no 
pain,  but  rather  the  disposition  to  sleep,  even  though  he  knows  this  sleep 
will  be  the  sleep  of  death.  But  bring  the  man  to  the  fire,  thaw  the  frozen 
limbs,  and  the  first  return  of  circulation  is  accompanied  by  exquisite  pain. 
Pain  is  the  very  sign  of  life.  So  Christ  was  the  only  sensitive  and  healthy 
member  of  a  benumbed  and  stupefied  humanity.  His  soul  felt  all  the  pangs. 


"218  THE    NECESSITY    OF   THE   ATONEMENT. 

of  shame  and  suffering  which  rightfully  belonged  to  sinners,  but  which  they 
could  not  feel,  just  by  reason  of  the  depth  and  depravity  of  their  sin. 
Because  Christ  was  pure,  therefore  he  must  suffer.  Not  because  of  what 
he  was  in  himself,  but  because  of  what  the  race  was  to  which  he  had  united 
himself,  "it  must  needs  be  that  Christ  should  suffer."  As  he  was  God,  he 
could  be  the  proper  substitute  for  others  ;  as  he  was  man,  the  penalty  due 
to  human  guilt  belonged  to  him  to  bear. 

I  have  already  alluded  to  the  great  proof -text  which  Paul  gives  us ;  let 
me  a  little  more  fully  elucidate  it.  In  the  Second  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians, the  fifth  chapter  and  the  twenty-first  verse,  we  read:  "Him  who 
knew  no  sin,  he  made  to  be  sin  on  our  behalf ;  that  we  might  become  the 
righteousness  of  God  in  him."  The  two  members  of  the  sentence  stand  in 
contrast  to  each  other ;  the  evident  meaning  of  the  one  may  teach  us  some- 
thing with  regard  to  the  meaning  of  the  other.  * '  Righteousness  "  here  cannot 
mean  subjective  purity,  for  then  "made  to  be  sin"  would  mean  that  God 
made  Christ  to  be  subjectively  depraved.  As  Christ  was  not  made  unholy, 
the  meaning  cannot  be  that  we  are  made  holy  persons  in  him.  Our  "becom- 
ing the  righteousness  of  God  in  him  "  can  only  mean  that  we  became  justi- 
fied persons  in  Christ.  Correspondingly,  Christ's  "being  made  sin"  must 
mean  that  he  is  made  to  be  a  condemned  person  "on  our  behalf."  When 
the  text  speaks  of  "him  who  knew  no  sin,"  it  declares  that  Christ  was  not 
personally  a  sinner — this  was  the  necessary  prerequisite  of  his  work  of  atone- 
ment. When  the  text  says  he  was  ' '  made  to  be  sin  on  our  behalf, "  it  declares 
also  that  he  was  made  a  sinner,  in  the^  sense  that  the  penalty  of  sin  fell  upon 
him. 

But  not  simply  penalty  —  the  text  declares  that  guilt  was  his  also.  For, 
justification  is  not  simply  the  remisson  of  actual  punishment,  but  is  also 
the  deliverance  from  the  obligation  to  suffer  punishment,  and  as  "righteous- 
ness "  means  "persons  delivered  from  the  guilt  as  well  as  the  penalty  of  sin," 
so  the  contrasted  term  "sin"  in  the  text  means  "a  person  not  only  actually 
punished,  but  also  under  obligation  to  suffer  punishment";  in  other  words, 
•Christ  is  "made  sin,"  not  only  in  the  sense  of  being  put  under  penalty, 
but  also  in  the  sense  of  being  put  under  guilt. 

How  was  this  guilt  put  upon  Christ  ?  The  same  text  intimates  the  answer. 
It  was  by  Christ's  becoming  one  with  our  race.  As  Adam's  sin  is  ours  only 
because  we  are  actually  one  with  Adam,  and  as  Christ's  righteousness  is 
imputed  to  us  only  as  we  are  actually  united  to  Christ,  so  our  sin  is  impu- 
ted to  Christ  only  as  Christ  becomes  actually  one  with  the  race.  He  was 
"made  sin,"  by  being  made  one  with  the  sinners;  he  took  our  guilt  by 
taking  our  nature.  He  "who  knew  no  sin"  came  to  be  "sin  for  us,"  by 
being  born  of  a  sinful  stock ;  by  inheritance  the  common  guilt  of  the  race 
became  his.  Guilt  was  not  simply  imputed  to  Christ ;  it  was  imparted  also. 
As  we  become  justified  persons  by  taking  part  in  his  new  and  redeemed 
nature,  so  he  was  made  guilty  for  us  by  taking  our  condemned  nature  in 
the  womb  of  the  Virgin.  Thus,  having  our  guilt,  he  can  atone  ;  by  virtue 
of  his  divine  nature,  he  can  exhaust  the  penalty  of  sin  and  be  our  substitute ; 
becoming  justified  himself,  he  can  make  all  believers  partakers  of  his  justi- 
fication. 

In  this  doctrine  of  the  atonement,  I  see  the  only  vindication  of  the  justice 


THE    NECESSITY    OF   THE   ATONEMENT.  219 

of  God.  On  any  theory  of  mere  human  martyrdom,  on  any  theory  of  mere 
human  sympathy,  God  would  seem  to  be  unjust.  That  the  holiest  man  of 
all  the  ages  should  have  been  the  greatest  sufferer,  impugns  God's  justice, 
and  fills  me  with  terror  and  despair.  But  if  Christ  stood  in  the  place  of 
sinners,  and  bore  the  guilt  of  the  race  to  which  he  had  united  himself,  then 
in  his  suffering  I  see  the  greatest  possible  proof  of  the  divine  righteousness 
—  righteousness  that  will  maintain  itself  even  at  the  cost  of  the  suffering  and 
death  of  the  Son  of  God.  Yes,  in  the  cross  I  see  the  glory  of  God's  right- 
eousness —  the  Judge  himself  coming  down  from  his  judicial  tribunal  and 
taking  the  sinner's  place,  rather  than  that  one  jot  or  tittle  of  the  law  should 
fail.  If  God  so  honored  his  own  righteousness,  how  ought  we  to  honor  it ! 
In  this  doctrine  of  the  atonement  I  see  the  only  way  of  escape  for  the 
sinner.  I  once  tried  to  tell  a  convicted  sinner  about  Christ's  power  to  re- 
new his  heart.  But  he  replied  :  "  That  is  not  what  I  want  —  there  is  first 
a  debt  that  I  must  pay.  I  must  make  up  for  my  past  sins."  That  is  the 
utterance  of  the  unsophisticated  heart,  when  God's  Spirit  enlightens  it.  It 
must  have  atonement,  before  renewal.  It  must  see  some  reparation  made, 
before  it  can  begin  the  work  of  reformation.  It  was  a  great  delight  to  me  to 
tell  that  man  that  his  debts  had  been  paid  by  Christ ;  that  the  reparation 
had  been  made  upon  the  cross ;  and  that  now,  ' '  nothing,  either  great  or  small, 
remained  for  him  to  do,"  but  only  to  take  what  Christ  had  done  for  him. 
Yes,  it  was  needful  for  Christ  to  suffer,  if  any  sinner  was  ever  to  be  saved. 
But  now  Christ  has  suffered  once  for  all.  "He  was  wounded  for  our 
transgressions,  he  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities.  The  chastisement  of  our 
peace  was  upon  him,"  and,  thank  God!  "by  his  stripes  we  are  healed." 
The  worst  of  sinners,  who  believes  in  Jesus,  can  say  in  the  language  of  Top- 
lady's  hymn  : — 

"  From  whence  this  fear  and  unbelief? 
Hast  thou,  O  Father,  put  to  grief 

Thy  spotless  Son  for  me? 
And  will  the  righteous  Judge  of  men 
Condemn  me  for  that  debt  of  sin 

Which,  Lord,  was  laid  on  thee? 

"  If  thou  hast  my  discharge  procured, 
And  freely  in  my  room  endured 

The  whole  of  wrath  divine, 
Payment  God  cannot  twice  demand 
First  at  my  bleeding  Surety's  hand. 

And  then  again  at  mine. 

"  Complete  atonement  thou  hast  made. 
And  to  the  utmost  farthing  paid 

Whate'er  thy  people  owed  ; 
How  then  can  wrath  on  me  take  place, 
If  sheltered  in  thy  righteousness 

And  sprinkled  with  thy  blood  ? 

"Turn  then,  my  soul,  unto  thy  rest 
The  merits  of  thy  great  High  Priest 

Speak  peace  and  liberty ; 
Trust  in  his  efficacious  blood  ; 
Nor  fear  thy  banishment  from  God, 

Since  Jesus  died  for  thee  " ! 


XVII. 

THE  BELIEVER'S  UNION  WITH  CHRIST.* 


It  is  strange  that  a  doctrine  which  Dr.  J.  W.  Alexander  called  "  the  centra? 
truth  of  all  theology  and  of  all  religion  "  should  receive  so  little  of  formal 
recognition  either  in  dogmatic  treatises  or  in  ordinary  religious  experience. 
In  Dr.  A.  A.  Hodge's  Outlines  of  Theology  a  brief  chapter  is  devoted  to  it, 
to  which  I  am  greatly  indebted,  and  to  which  I  refer  the  reader.  The  major- 
ity of  printed  systems  of  doctrine,  however,  contain  no  chapter  or  section 
with  the  title  of  the  present  article  at  its  head ;  and  the  majority  of  Christians 
much  more  frequently  think  of  Christ  as  a  Savior  outside  of  them,  than  as 
a  Savior  who  dwells  within.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  compara- 
tive neglect  with  which  this  truth  of  the  believer's  union  with  his  Lord  is 
visited,  is  a  reaction  from  the  exaggerations  of  a  false  mysticism.  It  is  no 
less  true  that  there  is  crying  need  of  rescuing  the  doctrine  from  neglect.  I 
attempt  the  present  brief  and  fragmentary  treatment  of  a  vast  and  sublime 
theme,  from  no  conceit  of  my  ability  to  compass  it,  but  from  a  profound 
conviction  that,  ignored  though  it  so  commonly  is,  it  is  the  most  important 
of  topics,  not  only  for  these  times,  but  for  all  times. 

Doctrines  which  reason  can  neither  discover  nor  prove,  need  large  support 
from  the  Bible.  It  is  a  mark  of  divine  wisdom  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Trin- 
ity, for  example,  is  so  interwoven  with  the  whole  fabric  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, that  the  rejection  of  the  former  is  the  virtual  rejection  of  the  latter. 
The  doctrine  of  Union  with  Christ,  in  like  manner,  is  taught  so  variously 
and  abundantly,  that  to  deny  it  is  to  deny  inspiration  itself.  There  is  figu- 
rative teaching,  and  there  are  direct  statements.  The  union  of  the  believer 
with  his  Savior  is  illustrated  from  the  union  of  a  building  and  its  founda- 
tion,—  each  living  stone  in  the  Christian  temple  is  kept  in  proper  relation  to 
every  other,  and  made  to  do  its  part  in  furnishing  a  habitation  for  God, 
only  by  being  built  upon  and  permanently  connected  with  Christ,  the  chief 
corner-stone.  It  is  illustrated  by  the  indissoluble  bond  that  connects  hus- 
band and  wife,  and  makes  them  legally  and  organically  one.  The  vine  and  its 
branches  are  used  to  convey  some  proper  idea  of  it, — as  God's  natural  life  is 
in  the  vine,  that  it  may  give  life  .to  its  natural  branches,  so  God's  spiritual 
life  is  in  the  vine  Christ,  that  he  may  give  life  to  his  spiritual  branches.  The 
members  of  the  human  body  are  united  to  the  head,  as  the  source  of  their 
activity  and  the  power  that  controls  their  movements, —  so  all  believers  are 
members  of  an  invisible  body,  whose  animating  and  directing  head  is  Christ. 
The  whole  race  is  one  with  the  first  man  Adam,  in  whom  it  fell  and  from 
whom  it  has  derived  a  corrupted  and  guilty  nature, —  so  the  whole  race  of 


*  Printed  in  the  Examiner,  June  12,  1879. 

220 


believers  constitute  a  new  and  restored  humanity  whose  justified  and  puri- 
fied nature  is  derived  from  Christ,  the  second  Adam,  the  atoning  Savior. 

But  lest  we  should  regard  these  striking  analogies  as  mere  orientalisms  of 
speech,  to  be  interpreted  only  as  high-flown  metaphors,  the  New  Testament 
asserts  in  the  most  direct  and  prosaic  manner  the  fact  of  this  union.  The 
believer  is  said  to  be  "in  Christ,"  as  the  element  or  atmosphere  which  sur- 
rounds him  with  its  perpetual  presence,  and  which  constitutes  his  vital 
breath;  in  fact,  the  phrase  "in  Christ,"  always  meaning  "in  union  with 
Christ,"  is  the  very  key  to  Paul's  Epistles  and  to  the  whole  Scripture  of  the 
new  dispensation.  Christ  is  also  said  to  be  in  the  believer,  and  so  to  live  his 
life  within  the  believer,  that  the  latter  can  point  to  this  as  the  dominating  fact 
of  his  experience, —  it  is  not  so  much  he  that  lives,  as  it  is  Christ  that  lives 
in  him.  The  Father  and  the  Son  dwell  in  the  believer,  for  where  the  Son 
is,  there  always  the  Father  must  be  also.  The  believer  has  life  by  partak- 
ing of  Christ,  in  a  way  that  may  not  inappropriately  be  compared  with  Christ's 
having  life  by  partaking  of  the  Father.  All  believers  are  one  in  Christ,  to 
whom  they  are  severally  and  collectively  united,  as  Christ  himself  is  one 
with  God.  So  close  and  complete  is  this  union,  that  by  it  the  believer  is 
made  partaker  of  the  divine  nature,  and  becomes  one  spirit  with  the  Lord. 
And  yet  these  are  but  a  few  of  the  statements  of  this  great  fact,  with  which 
the  New  Testament  abounds. 

It  should  not  surprise  us,  if  we  find  it  far  more  difficult  to  give  a  scientific 
definition  of  this  union,  than  to  determine  the  fact  of  its  existence.  It  is  a 
fact  of  lif e  with  which  we  have  to  deal ;  and  the  secret  of  life,  even  in  its 
lowest  forms,  no  philospher  has  ever  yet  discovered.  The  tiniest  crocus 
that  lifts  its  head  in  the  spring-time  witnesses  to  two  facts  :  first,  that  of  its 
relative  independence  as  an  individual  organism ;  and  secondly,  that  of  its 
ultimate  dependence  upon  a  life  and  power  higher  than  its  own.  So  every 
human  soul  has  its  proper  powers  of  intellect,  affection  and  will, —  yet  it 
lives,  moves  and  has  its  being  in  God.  Starting  out  from  the  truth  of  the 
divine  omnipresence,  it  might  seem  as  if  God's  indwelling  in  the  granite 
boulder  was  the  last  limit  of  his  union  with  the  finite.  But  we  see  the  divine 
intelligence  and  goodness  drawing  nearer  to  us  by  successive  stages  in  vege- 
table life,  in  the  animal  creation,  and  in  the  moral  nature  of  man.  And  yet 
there  are  two  stages  beyond  all  these  :  first,  in  Christ's  union  with  the  believ- 
er, and  secondly,  in  God's  union  with  Christ.  If  this  union  of  Christ  with 
the  believer  be  only  one  of  several  approximations  of  God  to  his  finite  crea- 
tion, the  fact  that  it  is,  equally  with  the  others,  not  wholly  comprehensible 
to  reason,  should  not  blind  us  either  to  its  truth  or  to  its  importance. 

Facts  with  regard  to  life,  we  must  often  define  by  negatives.  And  so  it 
is  here.  We  guard  the  truth  from  misconception,  and  cut  off  the  claims  of 
errorists  of  many  schools,  when  we  declare  that  this  union  with  Christ  of 
which  the  Scriptures  speak,  is  not  a  merely  natural  union,  like  that  of  God 
with  all  human  spirits,  as  is  generally  maintained  by  rationalists;  nor  a 
merely  moral  union,  as  Socinians  and  Arminians  declare ;  nor  a  union  which 
destroys  the  distinct  personality  and  subsistence  of  either  Christ  or  the 
human  spirit,  as  many  of  the  Mystics  have  believed ;  nor  a  union  mediated 
and  conditioned  by  the  sacraments  of  the  church  —  as  is  held  by  Eomanists, 
Lutherans,  and  High  Church  Episcopalians.  But  we  do  not  deal  in  nega- 


223  THE  BELIEVER'S  UNION  WITH  CHRIST. 

tives  alone.  We  may  put  our  doctrine  into  positive  statement  also.  The 
Scripture  teaches  that,  by  faith,  there  is  constituted  a  union  of  the  soul  with 
Christ  different  in  kind  from  God's  natural  and  providential  concurrence 
with  all  spirits,  as  well  as  from  all  unions  of  mere  association  or  sympathy, 
moral  likeness  or  moral  influence  —  a  union  of  life,  in  which  the  human 
spirit,  while  then  most  truly  possessing  its  own  individuality  and  personal 
distinctness,  is  interpenetrated  and  energized  by  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  is  made 
inscrutably  and  indissolubly  one  with  him,  and  so  becomes  a  member  and 
partaker  of  that  new,  regenerated,  believing,  and  justified  humanity  of  which 
he  is  the  head. 

Still  a  few  words  of  explanation  are  possible  and  requisite.  The  union  is 
an  organic  one.  By  it  we  are  constituted  members  of  Christ's  spiritual  body, 
partakers  of  his  purified  and  glorified  human  nature.  As  every  portion  of 
a  true  organism  is  reciprocally  means  and  end,  so,  while  Christ  the  head 
lives  for  the  members,  the  members  also  live  for  Christ  the  head.  It  is  a 
vital  union,  in  distinction  from  any  union  of  mere  juxtaposition  or  of  exter- 
nal influence.  Christ  does  not  work  upon  us  from  without,  as  one  separated 
from  us,  but  from  within,  as  the  very  heart  from  which  the  life-blood  of  our 
spirits  flows.  He  is  the  source,  not  simply  of  motives  and  of  moral  suasion, 
but  of  vital  energy  and  spiritual  strength.  Such  a  union,  not  of  natural 
but  of  spiritual  life,  cannot  be  mediated  by  sacraments,  since  sacraments 
presuppose  it  as  already  existing.  Only  faith  receives  and  retains  Christ ; 
and  faith  is  the  act  of  the  soul  grasping  what  is  purely  invisible  and  super- 
sensible, not  the  act  of  the  body  submitting  to  baptism  or  partaking  of  the 
Supper.  Once  formed,  the  union  is  indissoluble.  Since  there  is  now  an 
unchangeable  and  divine  element  in  us,  our  salvation  depends  no  longer 
upon  our  unstable  wills,  but  upon  Him,  who  has  said  that  none  shall  pluck 
us  out  of  his  hand.  By  temporary  declension  from  duty  or  by  our  causeless 
unbelief,  we  may  banish  Christ  to  the  barest  and  most  remote  room  of  the 
soul's  house,  but  he  does  not  suffer  us  wholly  to  exclude  him,  and  when  we 
are  willing  to  unbar  the  doors,  he  is  still  there,  ready  to  fill  the  whole  man- 
sion with  his  light  and  love.  This  union  is  inscrutable,  indeed,  but  it  is  not 
mystical,  in  the  sense  of  being  unintelligible  to  the  Christian  or  beyond  the 
reach  of  his  experience.  If  we  call  it  mystical  at  all,  it  should  be  only 
because,  in  the  intimacy  of  its  communion  and  the  transforming  power  of 
its  influence,  it  surpasses  any  other  union  of  souls  that  we  know,  and  so  can- 
not be  fully  described  or  understood  by  earthly  analogies. 

Such  is  the  nature  of  union  with  Christ, — such,  I  mean,  is  the  nature  of 
every  believer's  union  with  Christ.  For,  whether  he  knows  it  or  not,  every 
Christian  has  entered  into  just  such  a  partnership  as  this.  It  is  this  and 
this  only  which  constitutes  him  a  Christian,  and  which  makes  possible  a. 
Christian  church.  We  may,  indeed,  be  thus  united  to  Christ,  without  being 
fully  conscious  of  the  real  nature  of  our  relation  to  him.  We  may  actually 
possess  the  kernel  while  as  yet  we  have  paid  regard  only  to  the  shell, —  we 
may  seem  to  ourselves  to  be  united  to  Christ  only  by  an  external  bond, 
while  after  all  it  is  an  inward  and  spiritual  bond  that  makes  us  his.  God 
often  reveals  to  the  Christian  the  mystery  of  the  gospel,  which  is  Christ  in 
him  the  hope  of  glory,  at  the  very  time  that  he  is  seeking  only  some  nearer 
access  to  a  Redeemer  outside  of  him.  Trying  to  find  a  union  of  cooperation 


THE  BELIEVER'S  UNION  WITH  CHRIST.  223 

or  of  sympathy,  he  is  amazed  to  learn  that  there  is  already  established  a 
union  with  Christ  more  glorious  and  blessed,  namely,  a  union  of  life  ;  and 
so,  like  the  miners  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  while  he  is  looking  only  for 
silver,  he  finds  gold.  Christ  and  the  believer  have  the  same  life.  They  are 
not  separate  persons  linked  together  by  some  temporary  bond  of  friendship 
—  they  are  united  by  a  tie  as  close  and  indissoluble  as  if  the  same  blood  ran 
in  their  veins.  Yet  the  Christian  may  never  have  suspected  how  intimate  a- 
union  he  has  with  his  Savior,  and  the  first  understanding  of  this  truth  may 
be  the  gateway  through  which  he  passes  into  a  holier  and  happier  stage  of 
the  Christian  life. 

Theology  finds  its  focus  in  this  truth  of  union  with  Christ ;  and  from  it,, 
as  from  a  central  mount  of  observation,  the  true  meaning  and  relations  of 
all  other  doctrines  may  be  best  discerned.  The  nature  of  our  relation  to 
Adam,  in  whom  the  old  humanity  as  an  organic  unit  fell,  can  be  understood 
only  in  the  light  of  our  relation  to  Christ,  in  whom  the  new  humanity,  in  its 
principle  and  germ,  atoned  for  sin  and  wrought  out  a  perfect  righteousness. 
The  atonement  itself,  in  the  aspect  of  it  which  is  most  difficult  to  reason, 
the  just  suffering  for  others  of  one  who  was  personally  innocent,  has  more 
light  reflected  upon  it  from  this  doctrine  of  our  union  with  Christ  than  from 
any  other.  There  is  a  race-responsibility  which  belongs  to  every  descend- 
ant of  Adam,  and  this  race-responsibility  is  distinguishable  from  personal 
responsibility.  Christ's  corporate  union  with  humanity  involved  him  in 
that  race-responsibility,  and  so,  though  he  was  personally  pure,  law  could 
lay  her  penalties  upon  the  head  of  our  Redeemer.  Christ  took  our  guilt 
when  he  took  our  nature  ;  he  has  delivered  us  from  the  curse  of  the  law  by 
being  made  a  curse  for  us. 

But  atonement  is  not  enough.  The  atonement  makes  full  satisfaction  to 
divine  justice  and  removes  all  external  obstacles  to  man's  return  to  God. 
But  an  internal  obstacle  still  remains  —  the  evil  affections  and  will,  and  the 
consequent  guilt,  of  the  individual  soul.  This  last  obstacle  Christ  removes, 
in  the  case  of  all  his  people,  by  uniting  himself  to  them  in  a  closer  and  more 
perfect  manner  than  that  in  which  he  is  united  to  humanity  at  large.  As 
Christ's  union  with  the  race  secures  the  objective  reconciliation  of  the  race 
to  God,  so  Christ's  union  with  believers  secures  the  subjective  reconciliation 
of  believers  to  God.  As  Christ's  union  with  us  involves  atonement,  so  our 
union  with  Christ  involves  justification.  The  believer  is  entitled  to  take  for 
his  own  all  that  Christ  is  and  all  that  Christ  has  done,  and  this  because  he 
has  within  him  that  new  life  of  humanity  which  suffered  in  Christ's  death  and 
rose  from  the  grave  in  Christ's  resurrection, —  in  other  words,  because  he  is 
virtually  one  person  with  his  Redeemer.  And  so  Luther  declares:  "By 
faith  thou  art  so  glued  to  Christ  that  of  thee  and  him  there  becomes  as  it 
were  one  person,  so  that  with  confidence  thou  canst  say  :  '  I  am  Christ  — 
that  is,  Christ's  righteousness,  victory,  etc.,  are  mine  ; '  and  Christ  in  turn 
can  say:  'lam  that  sinner  —  that  is,  his  sins,  his  death,  etc.,  are  mine, 
because  he  clings  to  me  and  I  to  him,  for  we  have  been  joined  together 
through  faith  into  one  flesh  and  bone.'  ' 

It  will  be  perceived  at  once  that  this  connection  of  atonement  and  of 
justification  with  the  doctrine  under  consideration,  relieves  both  of  them 
from  the  charge  of  being  mechanical  and  arbitrary  procedures.  To  say  that 


224  THE  BELIEVER'S  UNION  WITH  CHRIST. 

my  sin  is  imputed  to  Christ  while  yet  there  is  no  tie  of  life  uniting  Christ  to 
me,  or  to  say  that  Christ's  righteousness  is  imputed  to  me  while  yet  there  is 
no  actual  union  between  my  soul  and  Christ,  is  as  absurd  and  unscrip- 
tural  as  to  say  that  Adam's  sin  is  imputed  to  me  while  yet  there  is  no  natural 
connection  between  me  and  Adam.  The  Bible  gives  us  a  more  intelligible 
theology  ;  it  not  only  declares  that  in  Adam,  that  is,  in  union  with  Adam, 
all  die,  but  it  declares  that  all  who  are  justified  are  justified  in  Christ  Jesus, 
that  is,  in  union  with  him.  As  Adam's  sin  is  imputed  to  us,  not  because 
Adam  is  in  us,  but  because  we  were  in  Adam,  so  Christ's  righteousness  is 
imputed  to  us,  not  because  Christ  is  in  us,  but  because  we  are  in  Christ, 
that  is,  joined  by  faith  to  one  whose  righteousness  and  life  are  infinitely 
greater  than  our  power  to  appropriate  or  contain.  In  this  sense  we  may 
indeed  say  that  we  are  justified  through  a  Christ  outside  of  us,  as  we  are 
sanctified  through  a  Christ  within  us.  In  the  words  of  Jonathan  Edwards  : 
"The  justification  of  the  believer  is  no  other  than  his  being  admitted  to 
communion  in,  or  participation  of,  this  head  and  surety  of  all  believers. " 
And  so  we  see  what  true  religion  is.  It  is  not  a  moral  life ;  it  is  not  a 
determination  to  be  religious  ;  it  is  not  faith,  if  by  faith  we  mean  an  external 
trust  that  somehow  Christ  will  save  us  ;  it  is  nothing  less  than  the  life  of 
the  soul  in  God  through  Christ  his  Son.  Eegeneration  is  the  act  by  which 
God  brings  the  dead  soul  into  union  with  Christ.  And  faith  is  the  soul's 
laying  hold  of  this  Christ  as  the  only  source  of  life,  and  so,  its  only  source 
of  pardon  and  salvation. 

But  it  is  in  the  realm  of  practical  life  that  we  seek  the  ultimate  fruit  of 
this  doctrine,  and  by  this  fruit  also  we  must  test  it.  It  will  stand  the  test. 
No  truth  of  the  Christian  scheme  has  in  it  more  of  power  to  cheer  or  to 
purify.  Such  union  as  this  involves  the  most  sacred  fellowship, —  not  only 
the  Eedeemer's  fellowship  with  us,  so  that  he  is  touched  by  our  infirmities 
and  afflicted  in  our  affliction,  but  our  fellowship  with  the  Eedeemer  in  his 
whole  experience  on  earth,  and  in  all  that  was  gained  by  it  for  mankind. 
Only  upon  this  principle  of  union  with  Christ,  can  we  explain  how  the 
Christian  instinctively  applies  to  himself  the  prophecies  and  promises  which 
were  uttered  originally  and  primarily  with  reference  to  Christ :  "Thou  wilt 
not  leave  my  soul  in  hell,  neither  wilt  thou  suffer  thy  holy  one  to  see  cor- 
ruption. "  The  Christian  seems  to  himself  to  be  reproducing  Christ's  life  in 
miniature  and  living  it  over  again.  He  knows  the  power  of  Christ's  resur- 
rection, and  the  fellowship  of  his  sufferings,  being  made  conformable  to  his 
death.  And  with  this  fellowship  there  is  something  better  still  —  the  trans- 
forming, assimilating  power  of  Christ's  life  ;  first,  for  the  soul,  giving  to  it 
the  self-sacrificing  mind  of  the  Redeemer  here,  and  perfect  likeness  to  his 
purity  hereafter ;  and  secondly,  for  the  body,  sanctifying  it,  in  the  present, 
to  be  the  temple  and  dwelling  of  the  Lord,  and  in  the  future,  raising  it  up 
in  the  likeness  of  the  body  of  Christ's  glory.  This  is  the  work  of  Christ, 
now  that  he  has  ascended  and  taken  to  himself  his  power,  namely,  to  give 
his  life  more  and  more  fully  to  the  church,  until  it  shall  grow  up  in  all 
things  into  him,  the  head,  and  shall  fitly  express  his  glory  to  the  world. 

To  those  who  know  that  they  are  united  to  Christ  there  must  be  assurance 
of  salvation,  for  in  virtue  of  their  union  with  him,  they  know  that  his  power, 
righteousness  and  love  are  engaged  on  their  behalf.  There  must  be  courage  to 


THE  BELIEVER'S  UNION  WITH  CHRIST.  225 

do  or  suffer  for  the  Redeemer's  sake, —  with  Paul  they  may  say  :  "I  can  do 
all  things  through  Christ  who  strengtheneth  me."  With  this  consciousness 
of  our  relation  to  our  Lord,  we  shall  be  delivered  not  only  from  indolence 
and  fear,  but  also  from  that  half-fanatical  and  impatient  earnestness,  that 
false  fervor  and  restless  activity,  which  are  sometimes  mistaken  for  true  zeal. 
There  will  be  patience,  when  we  once  know  Christ,  and  rest  ourselves  and 
our  desires  in  those  unwearied  hands  that  move  on  silently  but  surely  the 
wheels  of  victory  and  progress  throughout  the  world.  And  what  better 
argument  and  encouragement  has  believing  prayer  than  this,  that  we  are 
one  with  him  whose  kingdom  and  reign  on  earth  are  the  very  aim  and  goal 
of  history,  and  the  intercession  of  whose  Spirit  within  our  souls  is  the 
unfailing  sign  and  accompaniment  of  a  prevailing  intercession  before  God's 
throne  on  high  ?  And  so  the  loftiest  and  most  fruitf ul  religious  experience 
will  be  that  which  most  perfectly  realizes  the  oneness  of  our  life  with  the 
life  of  the  almighty  and  omnipresent  Savior  ;  which,  without  any  pantheistic 
confounding  of  our  personality  with  his,  and  without  any  self-deceiving 
notion  of  our  sinless  perfection,  has  yet  the  blessed  assurance  of  the  con- 
stant inward  presence  of  Jesus  and  of  his  unchangeable  love  ;  which  in  all 
humility  acknowledges  itself  so  helpless  and  so  dependent  on  him,  that 
severed  from  him  it  can  do  absolutely  nothing  and  must  utterly  perish,  and 
which  in  that  conviction  gives  up  every  effort  of  its  own,  opening  the  heart 
to  receive  Christ's  life,  and  striving  to  make  every  act  and  word  and  desire 
the  expression  of  that  life  within.  To  such  an  experience  every  Christian 
may  aspire  —  for  it  he  should  pray.  Let  him  thus  lose  himself,  and  he  shall 
find  his  true  self  renewed  and  restored  by  the  indwelling  might  of  Christ's 
Spirit ;  he  shall  not  only  trust,  but  know,  that  he  abides  in  Christ,  and  Christ 
in  him.  So  shall  his  religion  be  one  not  of  outward  compulsion  but  of  inward 
power.  So  shall  life  lose  its  harshness,  its  anxiety,  its  fear,  since  for  him  to 
live  will  be  Christ,  and  to  die  will  be  gain. 

A  single  word  remains  to  be  said  with  regard  to  the  wider  effects  upon 
the  world  which  may  be  expected  to  follow  the  full  recognition  of  this  doc- 
trine by  the  church.  All  sin  consists  in  the  sundering  of  man's  life  from 
God,  and  most  systems  of  falsehood  in  religion  are  attempts  to  save  man 
without  merging  his  life  in  God's  life  once  more.  Sacramental  and  external 
Christianity  conceives  of  man  as  a  mere  tangent  to  the  circle  of  the  divine 
nature,  touching  it  and  touched  by  it  only  at  a  single  point.  The  only 
religion  that  can  save  mankind  is  the  religion  that  fills  the  whole  heart  and 
the  whole  life  with  God  ;  and  that  aims  to  interpenetrate  universal  humanity 
with  that  same  living  Christ  who  has  already  made  himself  one  with  the 
believer.  Humanity  is  a  dead  and  shattered  vine,  plucked  up  from  its  roots 
in  God,  and  fit  only  for  the  fires.  But  in  Christ,  God  has  planted  a  new 
vine,  a  vine  full  of  his  own  divine  life,  a  vine  into  which  it  is  his  purpose 
one  by  one  to  graft  these  dead  and  withered  branches,  so  that  they  may 
once  more  have  the  life  of  God  flowing  through  them  and  may  bear  the 
fruits  of  heaven.  It  is  a  supernatural,  not  a  natural,  process.  But  the  things 
that  are  impossible  with  men  are  possible  with  God,  and  the  process  shall 
not  cease  until  he  has  gathered  together  in  one  all  things  in  Christ,  and  in 
him  has  perfectly  redeemed  and  glorified  the  humanity  for  which  and  to 
which  Christ  has  given  his  life. 
15 


XVIII. 

THE  BAPTISM  OF  JESUS.* 


I  desire  to  invite  attention  to  what  may  seem  a  somewhat  new,  but  what 
I  trust  will  be  esteemed  an  entirely  legitimate,  defense  of  a  fundamental 
article  of  our  denominational  faith.  I  propose  to  approach  the  subject  of 
baptism  and  its  symbolism  from  a  single  side,  and  that,  not  the  dogmatic  or 
polemic,  but  rather  the  historical.  There  was  such  a  baptism  as  the  baptism 
of  John  ;  and  Christ  himself,  the  embodiment  of  Christianity  and  the  pattern 
for  the  church,  was  baptized  by  John  in  the  Jordan.  I  am  persuaded  that 
the  proper  understanding  of  that  baptism  of  Jesus  will  throw  a  new  and 
valuable  light  upon  the  meaning  of  baptism  in  the  case  of  Christ's  followers. 
Let  us  first,  then,  try  to  put  ourselves  back  in  those  far-off  times,  and  figure 
to  ourselves  how  the  baptism  of  Jesus  came  about  in  the  natural  order  of 
his  life,  and  expressed  the  meaning  of  that  life.  We  shall  find  doctrinal 
and  practical  lessons  all  along,  but  at  the  end  we  may  stand  aside,  as  it  were,, 
and  look  at  the  great  truths  which,  like  separate  colored  rays,  converge  and 
meet  and  blend  in  that  scene  upon  the  banks  of  the  Jordan. 

Let  us  put  ourselves  back,  I  say,  —  back  into  the  times  preceding  the 
ministry  of  John  the  Baptist,  when  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  was  just  pre- 
paring to  break  in  upon  the  world.  The  thirty  peaceful  years  of  Jesus' 
early  life  were  past.  The  vast  work,  which  at  the  first  had  appeared  dim 
and  distant  as  a  form  in  the  mist,  had  drawn  nearer  and  nearer,  and  had 
now  assumed  the  hard  outline  and  definite  proportions  of  tremendous  and 
inevitable  fact.  What  prophets  had  foretold,  what  his  own  being  demanded, 
that  must  be.  Connected  in  every  fibre  of  his  being  with  the  common  nature 
of  mankind,  he  saw  that  he  must  suffer,  the  just  for  the  unjust.  It  could 
not  be  that  human  nature  should  fail  of  enduring  the  settled  and  necessary 
penalty  of  its  sin.  And  he  not  only  had  a  human  nature,  but  in  him  human 
nature  was  organically  united  as  it  never  had  been  before  except  in  Adam. 
If  the  members  suffered,  should  not  also  the  head  ? 

When  he  was  but  twelve  years  of  age,  the  consciousness  of  this  divine 
commission  had  dawned  upon  him.  Sitting  as  an  humble  questioner  before 
the  doctors  of  the  law,  the  conviction  had  become  overmastering  :  "  I  am  he 
—  the  teacher  and  prophet  promised  long  ago,  the  fulfillment  of  this  spirit- 
ual law  which  the  doctors  cannot  comprehend,  the  suffering  Messiah  against 
whom  their  pride  rebels ;  I  am  he  —  the  Sent  of  God,  the  Son  of  God. " 
And  the  eighteen  years  that  followed  had  made  this  conviction  part  and 
parcel  of  his  very  being.  Growing  with  his  growth  and  strengthening  with 


*  Originally  prepared  as  a  sermon  upon  the  text,  Mat.  3 : 15  —  "  Thus  it  becometh  us  to 
fulfill  all  righteousness,"  and  preached  before  the  Cincinnati  Baptist  Union ;  printed  in 
the  Examiner,  February  12,  and  February  19,  1880. 

226 


THE    BAPTISM    OF   JESUS.  227 

his  strength,  it  had  taken  up  into  itself  all  the  energies  of  his  soul,  conscious 
or  unconscious,  until  his  life  and  his  work  were  identical,  and  he  could  say  : 
"  Lo  !  I  come  to  do  thy  will,  O  God  !  " 

Can  we  imagine  that  such  years  as  these  were  free  from  agitations  and 
anxieties  ?  Can  we  imagine  that  the  looming-up  before  him  of  so  grand  and 
yet  so  terrible  a  destiny  was  accompanied  by  no  struggle  and  no  temptation  ? 
We  know  little,  it  is  true,  of  those  early  years.  But  we  know  that  Jesus 
was  very  man  as  well  as  very  God,  and  tried  in  all  points  like  ourselves. 
Peaceful  years  these  doubtless  were  when  compared  with  the  conflict  and 
agony  to  come,  but  only  peaceful  as  years  of  preparation  for  that  conflict 
and  agony  —  peaceful  as  the  quiet  stationing  of  batteries  and  filing  by  of 
troops  on  the  morning  of  some  day  whose  sun  is  to  set  in  blood  —  peaceful 
as  Niagara  above  the  cataract,  whose  smooth  waters,  possessed  with  an  irre- 
sistible gravitation,  break  at  length  into  rapids  as  they  go,  as  if  in  conscious 
preparation  for  that  final  moment  when,  agitated  to  their  utmost  depths  and 
with  one  consent  of  majestic  self-abandonment,  they  hurl  themselves  into  the 
chasm  below. 

But  now  at  last  even  such  peaceful  days  as  these  were  over.  A  voice 
sounded  out  like  a  trumpet-call  from  the  mid  region  near  the  Jordan,  sum- 
moning the  nation  to  repentance,  and  proclaiming  the  speedy  approach  of 
the  Messiah.  It  was  the  voice  of  John  the  Baptist,  the  last  and  greatest  of 
the  prophets,  the  new  Elijah,  in  his  shaggy  herdsman's  dress  of  camel's  hair, 
the  appointed  herald  and  forerunner  of  the  Kingdom.  If  the  whole  land 
had  been  a  whispering-gallery,  the  news  could  not  have  gone  on  swifter 
wings.  The  all-penetrating  power  of  Luther's  theses  in  Germany  was  not 
more  wonderful.  It  roused  whatever  there  was  left  of  patriotic  and  religious 
feeling  in  Judaea  and  Jerusalem.  Sunk  as  they  were  in  formalism  and 
worldliness,  thousands  upon  thousands  flocked  from  city  and  country,  and 
were  baptized  in  Jordan,  confessing  their  sins.  The  voice  pierced  even  to  the 
distant  valleys  of  Galilee,  and  the  villages  around  Nazareth  poured  forth  their 
recruits  to  John's  army  of  penitents.  For  nine  whole  months  the  work  went 
on  ;  spring,  summer,  autumn  went  by,  and  winter  came  at  last ;  the  wave  of 
excitement  had  swept  over  all  Palestine  ;  the  whole  land  was  in  a  fever  of 
expectation  ;  every  eye  was  looking  for  the  appearance  of  that  grander  Per- 
sonage, the  latchet  of  whose  shoes  John  was  not  worthy  to  unloose. 

And  where  was  Jesus  ?  In  the  carpenter's  shop  of  Nazareth,  calm,  silent, 
unrecognized,  yet  nourishing  a  world  of  mighty  thoughts,  feeling  within 
him  a  thousand  forward-moving  impulses,  yet  waiting  in  patience  and  self- 
restraint  the  time  appointed  by  the  Father.  Strong  as  were  the  inward 
impulses  that  urged  him  forward  to  his  work,  he  could  not  move  from  his 
place  till  John's  preparatory  ministry  had  accomplished  its  purpose.  And 
so,  while  Nazareth  was  full  of  rumors,  and  scores  departed  every  week  for 
the  Jordan,  the  household  of  Mary  remained  undisturbed.  Only  Jesus 
recognized  in  John's  work  the  sign  that  his  time  was  at  hand. 

There  came  a  day,  however,  when,  just  as  calmly  as  he  had  performed  his 
humble  duties  of  son,  brother  and  citizen,  he  left  these  duties  forever,  left 
the  home  of  his  childhood  and  the  carpenter's  bench  at  which  he  had  worked 
so  many  years,  to  enter  upon  the  labor  and  struggle  and  suffering  that 
belonged  to  him  as  the  world's  Eedeemer.  It  would  be  matter  of  intense 


THE    BAPTISM    OF    JESUS. 

interest  if  we  could  follow  each  separate  step  of  bis  journey  as  he  made  his 
way,  humble  and  unnoticed  among  the  crowd  of  pilgrims,  "  to  Jordan,  unto 
John. "  But  we  are  left  to  conjecture  here.  Whether  he  held  himself  aloof 
from  the  multitude  and  proceeded  in  silence,  or  mingled  in  the  talk  and 
wayside  worship  of  his  townsmen,  we  do  not  know.  But  we  do  know  that 
it  was  with  solemn  mind  he  went.  The  crisis  of  his  life  was  just  before  him. 
He  was  to  break  all  the  ties  that  bound  him  to  the  past.  He  was  to  give 
himself  to  the  greatest  work  man  ever  had  to  do.  He  was  to  receive  his 
final  anointing  as  Prophet,  Priest  and  King.  Not  in  the  might  and  glory 
of  his  divinity,  but  as  a  lowly  and  agitated  son  of  man,  seeking  divine  grace 
to  help  in  time  of  need,  did  Jesus  come  to  John  to  be  baptized  of  him. 

And  here  is  the  first  great  meaning  of  his  baptism.  It  was  essentially  a 
self -consecration.  He  came  to  commit  himself  to  the  vast  work  that  was 
before  him.  He  felt  just  as  you  or  I  feel  on  the  eve  of  some  great  enterprise 
that  is  to  task  to  the  utmost  our  fortitude  and  patience  and  virtue.  He  felt 
the  weakness  of  mere  human  nature,  and  the  need  of  strengthening  it  by 
solemnly  and  publicly  pledging  himself  before  God  and  angels  and  men. 
So  —  if  we  may  compare  great  things  with  small  —  so  Gustavus  Adolphus 
felt,  when,  on  leaving  Sweden  to  fight  for  Protestantism  in  Germany,  he 
assembled  the  States-General,  committed  his  infant  daughter  and  successor 
to  their  care,  and  before  all  the  magnates  of  his  kingdom  vowed  to  deliver 
Germany  or  die.  So  the  disciple  of  Christ  only  follows  in  the  footsteps  of 
his  Savior,  when  he  strengthens  his  resolves  and  commits  himself  to  the 
service  of  his  Master  by  publicly  and  solemnly  expressing  his  allegiance  and 
devotion  in  his  baptism.  For  there  was  a  human  side  to  every  action  of 
Jesus'  life.  Here,  when  he  came  to  meet  his  destiny,  and  give  himself  to 
that  mighty  work  whose  distant  prospect  had  been  at  once  so  fearful  and  so 
grand,  we  cannot  doubt  that  there  was  all  the  natural  shrinking  and  anxiety, 
all  the  overwhelming  burden  of  responsibility,  that  could  rest  upon  the  heart 
of  any  son  of  man.  And  we  lose  sight  of  a  most  important  feature  of  Jesus' 
baptism  if  we  fail  to  see  that  it  was  a  solemn  inauguration  of  his  public 
ministry,  in  which  he  strengthened  his  soul  by  publicly  consecrating  him- 
self to  the  unmeasured  toils  and  trials  which  that  ministry  in  its  very  nature 
involved. 

But  this  was  only  the  first  element  in  its  meaning.  It  was  also  a  symbol 
of  his  death.  The  consecration  was  a  definite  consecration  —  a  consecration 
to  death, —  and  this  was  the  second  thing  expressed  in  his  baptism.  What 
baptism  meant  to  Jesus,  he  himself  intimated  nearly  three  years  after  this, 
and  about  four  months  before  his  death.  He  had  been  speaking  of  the 
power  of  the  gospel  when  his  work  should  be  completed  and  the  full  glory 
of  it  should  dawn  upon  the  world.  To  his  imagination,  the  mighty  effects 
of  it  could  only  be  compared  to  those  of  fire  and  flame,  seizing  upon  human 
nature  and  purifying  it  in  every  part,  but  destroying  all  that  refused  to  be 
refined.  "I  am  come  to  send  fire  on  earth,  and  what  will  I?  Oh,  that  it 
were  already  kindled  !  "  But  even  while  he  looked  forward  with  longing  to 
that  day,  the  thought  came  to  him  that  he  himself  must  be  baptized  in  blood 
before  he  could  baptize  with  fire ;  all  the  dreadful  pains  of  the  cross  rose 
before  his  eyes ;  the  gulf  of  death  that  was  to  swallow  him  up  yawned  at  his 
feet ;  his  soul  was  the  scene  of  an  agony  and  a  conflict  such  as  fell  on  him  in 


THE    BAPTISM    OF   JESUS.  229 

the  temple  and  in  the  garden  ;  he  cried  in  distress  :  "I  have  a  baptism  to 
be  baptized  with,  and  how  am  I  straitened  till  it  be  accomplished  !  " 

Still  another  incident  in  Jesus'  life  needs  to  be  compared  with  this,  that 
we  may  see  what  idea  was  in  Jesus'  mind  when  he  spoke  of  a  future  baptism. 
You  recollect  the  request  of  the  ambitious  sons  of  Zebedee,  who  desired  to 
sit,  the  one  on  his  right  hand  and  the  other  on  his  left,  in  his  kingdom.  It 
occurred  only  three  or  four  weeks  before  Jesus'  crucifixion.  Examine  Jesus' 
answer  to  this  request  of  James  and  John,  and  you  cannot  fail  to  see  that 
the  "  baptism  "  he  referred  to  was  his  death.  He  told  them  that  the  path- 
way to  glory  with  him  must  be  through  a  death-suffering  like  his  own. 
"  Can  ye  drink  of  the  cup  that  I  drink  of,  and  be  baptized  with  the  baptism 
that  I  am  baptized  with  ?  "  Here  the  cup  was  the  cup  of  suffering  which 
was  pressed  to  his  lips  in  Gethsemane,  when  he  cried  to  the  Father  :  "  If  it 
be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass  from  me  ;  "  and  the  baptism  was  the  baptism 
of  death  on  Calvary  and  of  the  grave  that  was  to  follow. 

But  how  could  death  present  itself  to  his  mind  as  a  baptism  ?  I  answer, 
the  being  immersed  and  overwhelmed  in  waters  is  a  frequent  metaphor  in 
all  languages  to  express  the  rush  of  successive  troubles  ;  and  to  our  Savior's 
mind  the  dreadful  sufferings  and  bitter  death  before  him  seemed  like  deep 
sind  dark  waters,  into  which  he  must  go  down  until  their  heavy  floods  swept 
over  him  and  his  life  was  drowned  beneath  the  billows.  In  the  words  of 
the  Psalmist,  Christ  could  say  :  "I  am  come  into  deep  waters  where  the 
floods  overflow  me.  All  thy  waves  and  thy  billows  have  gone  over  me. 
Then  the  waters  overwhelmed  me  ;  the  stream  went  over  my  soul ;  then  the 
proud  waters  went  over  my  soul."  The  suffering  and  death  and  burial 
which  were  before  him  presented  themselves  to  his  mind  as  a  baptism, 
because  the  very  idea  of  baptism  was  that  of  a  complete  submersion  under 
the  floods  of  waters.  So  apprehended,  there  is  an  untold  sublimity  in  the 
figure  that  flashed  upon  his  mind.  Death  was  not  poured  upon  him, —  it 
was  no  sprinkling  of  suffering  which  the  Savior  endured,  but  a  sinking  into 
the  mighty  waters  with  which  death  and  the  grave  overwhelmed  him. 

See  the  significance  of  Jesus'  baptism  in  Jordan.  It  was  no  merely  formal 
and  ritual  act  —  there  are  none  such  in  Christ's  religion  —  least  of  all  were 
there  any  in  the  life  of  Christ  himself.  All  his  words  and  deeds  were  instinct 
with  life  and  meaning.  There  was  nothing  arbitrary  in  this  transaction 
which  signalized  the  beginning  of  his  ministry  and  the  public  consecration 
of  himself  to  the  work  he  had  to  do.  No,  the  essential  feature  of  that  work 
was  his  death, —  that  was  ever  in  his  eyes  from  the  beginning  to  the  end. 
All  his  teaching  and  his  suffering  was  but  the  prelude  to  that.  The  cross, 
the  grave,  the  resurrection  —  these  were  the  crown  and  consummation  of  all, 
coloring  all  the  events  that  came  before  with  their  own  matchless  and  crim- 
son light.  And  so  the  baptism  of  Jesus  was  not  only  his  public  consecration 
of  himself  to  the  work  before  him,  but  it  expressed  the  essential  nature  of 
that  work, —  in  other  words  the  baptism  of  water  at  the  beginning  of  his 
ministry  consciously  and  designedly  prefigured  the  baptism  of  death  with 
which  that  ministry  was  to  close. 

Stjp  here  one  moment  to  mark  the  incidental  proof  which  this  fact  gives 
us  of  Jesus'  understanding,  from  the  very  commencement  of  his  public  life, 
the  meaning  and  the  end  of  that  life.  The  final  agony  and  death-struggle, 


230  THE  BAPTISM  OF  JESUS. 

when  they  came,  were  not,  as  some  skeptics  have  maintained,  unforeseen 
and  surprising  contingencies  to  him,  but  were  the  precise  events  for  whicli 
he  had  long  been  preparing,  and  to  the  accomplishment  of  which  he  had 
voluntarily  and  knowingly  devoted  himself  in  his  baptism.  With  full 
knowledge  of  what  was  to  come,  Jesus  "gave  himself  for  us."  In  the  words 
of  one  of  the  purest  of  religious  poets  : — 

"  As  at  the  first,  thine  all  pervading  look 
Saw  from  thy  Father's  bosom  to  the  abyss, 
Measuring-  in  calm  presage 
The  infinite  descent, 

"  So  to  the  end,  though  now  of  mortal  pangs 
Made  heir,  and  emptied  of  thy  glory  awhile, 
With  unaverted  eye 
Thou  meetest  all  the  storm." 

I  have  spoken  of  Jesus'  baptism,  first,  as  an  act  of  self -consecration,  and  sec- 
ondly, as  a  symbol  of  the  death  to  which  he  devoted  himself.  Let  me  speak 
of  it  now,  in  the  third  place,  as  a  proof  of  Jesus'  connection  with  humanity, 
with  its  sin  and  its  desert  of  death.  Jesus'  connection  with  human  sin,  and 
his  consecration  to  death  for  the  sins  of  the  world  —  how  clearly  that  stands 
out  in  the  baptism  !  Jesus  came  to  Jordan  to  submit  to  John's  baptism  of 
repentance.  And  what  was  John's  baptism  of  repentance  ?  Nothing  less 
than  the  total  immersion  of  the  body  in  water,  the  plunging  of  each  penitent 
beneath  the  swift-flowing  current,  in  token  that  he  who  submitted  to  it 
"  buried  himself  into  death  as  one  laden  with  guilt  and  defilement,  and  rose 
as  a  new  man  to  a  new  and  holy  life."  But  Jesus  personally,  and  in  every 
act  and  thought  of  his  life,  was  sinless ;  upon  what  possible  ground  could  he 
undergo  this  rite  which  properly  belonged  to  sinners  ?  And  here  we  come 
to  the  greatest  mystery  of  God's  grace,  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  his 
assumption  of  the  common  nature  of  us  all.  If  Jesus  had  no  connection 
with  a  sinful  and  lost  humanity,  or  if  that  connection  with  a  sinful  and  lost 
humanity  had  been  merely  a  factitious  and  forensic  one,  then  it  would  have 
been  the  grossest  breach  of  justice,  the  sheerest  insult  to  purity,  the  most 
extravagant  of  absurdities,  that  the  Lord  Jesus  should  have  submitted  to  an 
ordinance  which  was  in  itself,  in  some  sense,  a  confession  of  sin  and  a  dec- 
laration that  this  sin  deserved  nothing  less  than  death. 

I  am  persuaded  that  we  can  never  explain  the  baptism  of  our  Lord,  unless 
we  remember  that  Jesus  was  "made  sin  for  us,"  taking  our  nature  upon 
him,  with  all  its  exposures  and  liabilities,  yet  without  its  hereditary  corrup- 
tion, that  he  might  redeem  it  and  reunite  it  to  God.  But  this  one  mighty 
fact,  the  taking  upon  him  of  our  nature,  this  does  explain  it.  As  one  with 
humanity,  he  had  in  his  unconscious  childhood  submitted  to  the  rites  of  cir- 
cumcision, purification  and  redemption,  appointed  by  the  law,  and  all  of  these 
were  rites  appointed  for  sinners.  As  one  with  humanity,  he  was  yet  to  "put 
away  sin  by  the  sacrifice  of  himself. "  "  Made  in  the  likeness  of  sinful  flesh," 
he  foresaw  that  the  crowning  act  of  his  earthly  work  must  be  to  "  descend 
into  death,  laden  with  the  guilt  of  humanity,  and  as  a  glorified  conqueror 
rise  from  the  grave,  the  head  of  a  new  and  holy  race."  This  was  the  truth 
to  which  he  testified  in  his  baptism,  that  since  "without  shedding  of  blood 
there  was  no  remission,"  and  he  had  taken  to  himself  the  nature  that  had 
sinned,  he  had  taken  to  himself  death  also,  and  "it  must  needs  be  that 


THE    BAPTISM    OF    JESUS.  231 

Christ  should  suffer. "  So  Christ's  baptism  was  an  emblem  of  the  burial  of 
a  sinful  humanity  into  death,  that  it  might  rise  in  him  to  life  and  glory. 

It  is  in  the  light  of  Jesus'  participation  in  our  nature  and  consequent  con- 
nection with  human  sin,  that  Jesus'  words  :  ' '  Thus  it  becometh  us  to  fulfill 
all  righteousness,"  stand  out  in  their  full  splendor  of  meaning.  John,  you 
remember,  had  refused  to  baptize  Jesus.  Either  from  previous  acquaintance 
or  from  prophetic  insight,  John  had  recognized  him,  at  his  coming,  as  the 
holiest  being  he  had  ever  known.  It  seemed  to  him  most  unfit  that  the 
greater  should  be  baptized  by  the  less.  Baptism  belonged  only  to  such  as 
were  in  some  way  under  the  power  and  penalty  of  sin, — how  could  one  who 
was  "holy,  harmless  and  undefiled  "  testify  that  he  was  under  sin's  curse 
and  misery  ?  Ah,  how  dim  and  imperfect  even  then  were  the  Baptist's  con- 
ception of  Jesus'  work  !  Not  yet  had  he  reached  that  loftiest  summit  of  Old 
Testament  revelation  from  which  his  eyes  beheld  the  cross  and  he  could  cry  : 
"  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God,  who  taketh,  and  so  taketh  away,  the  sins  of  the 
world." 

It  was  to  remove  this  very  reluctance  of  the  Baptist,  that  Jesus  uttered 
those  memorable  words  :  "Suffer  it  to  be  so  now,  for  thus  it  becometh  us 
to  fulfill  all  righteousness."  And  what  did  he  mean  but  this,  that  only 
through  the  final  baptism  of  suffering  and  death  which  this  baptism  of  water 
foreshadowed,  could  he  "make  an  end  of  sins,"  and  "bring  in  everlasting 
righteousness  "  to  a  condemned  and  ruined  world.  It  is  that  final  baptism 
which  is  chiefly,  if  not  altogether,  in  the  Savior's  eye  when  he  says  :  "Thus 
it  becometh  us. "  The  righteousness  of  which  humanity  had  come  short  he 
was  to  fulfill  —  that  which  humanity  had  lost  he  was  to  restore.  But  he 
could  not  be  "the  Lord  our  Righteousness,"  the  head  of  a  new  race  and 
the  source  of  righteousness  for  all  mankind,  except  by  first  suffering  the 
death  due  to  the  nature  he  had  assumed,  thereby  delivering  it  from  its 
<  \uosures  and  perfecting  it  forever.  Therefore  he  came  as  the  lowest  and 
humblest  of  all  that  crowd  of  pilgrims,  came  as  one  laden  with  the  guilt  of 
humanity,  to  submit  himself  in  symbol  to  the  death  that  was  its  due.  How 
fully  John  understood  the  words  of  Jesus,  we  do  not  know, — we  only  know 
that  "  then  he  suffered  him."  Those  words  about  "  fulfilling  all  righteous- 
ness," uttered  by  one  who  was  himself  so  righteous,  overbore  his  doubts, 
and  "the  Redeemer  descended  with  his  forerunner  into  the  rapid  waters  of 
the  sacred  river,"  and  there  was  buried  in  the  likeness  of  his  coming  death, 
and  raised  again  in  the  likeness  of  his  coming  resurrection. 

The  coming  resurrection,  did  I  say  ?  Yes,  there  was  a  foreshadowing  of 
the  coming  glory,  as  well  as  of  the  coming  sorrow.  The  events  that  followed 
had  each  their  separate  meaning.  Think  with  what  profound  emotion  Jesus 
must  have  come  up  from  that  Jordan-flood.  The  die  was  cast ;  the  step  was 
taken ;  henceforth  there  was  no  possible  retreat ;  it  was  as  if  the  marks  of 
death  had  already  been  sealed  upon  hands  and  feet  and  brow.  The  past 
was  past  forever.  No  longer  the  isolated  meditative  days  of  Nazareth,  but 
a  public  life  of  continual  struggle  and  temptation,  with  the  staring  eyes  of 
the  whole  world  upon  him.  And  on  a  little  way  further  were  the  shame, 
the  agony,  the  cross",  the  grave.  How  shall  he  enter  these  shadows,  how 
shall  he  endure  these  pains,  how  shall  he  perform  this  work  ?  I  point  you 
to  the  scene  itself  for  your  answer.  See  the  Savior  going  up  that  river-bank 


232  THE   BAPTISM    OF   JESUS. 

—  see  those  uplifted  hands  —  see  the  great  soul,  unconscious  of  the  crowds 
that  gaze  upon  him,  and  only  rapt  in  one  intense  desire  for  the  comfort  and 
strength  of  God,  beseeching  even  there  the  help  and  blessing  of  his  Father 

—  aye,  even  while  his  eyes  are  lifted  to  the  hills  whence  alone  his  help  can 
come,  see  the  quick  answer  from  above  :  "  the  heavens  opened  and  the  Spirit 
of  God,"  the  Spirit  of  grace  and  power,  of  wisdom  and  comfort  and  peace, 
"descending  like  a  dove  and  lighting  upon  him  " —  never  more  to  leave  him 
till  his  work  is  done,  and  he  receives  his  crown  and  his  reward. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  Spirit  and  the  Son  are  there,  but  this  is  not  enough. 
About  this  transcendent  scene  the  lustre,  not  of  one  or  two,  but  of  all  three 
persons  of  the  blessed  Trinity  must  shine.  The  Father  also  speaks  from 
the  heavens  above  :  "  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased." 
As  the  descent  of  the  Spirit  is  the  anointing  and  qualifying  of  Messiah  for 
his  work  of  Prophet,  Priest  and  King,  so  the  voice  from  heaven  declares  the 
acceptance  of  his  consecration  to  death,  and  attests  his  commission  from 
God  as  divine  Kedeemer  of  mankind.  Jesus  not  only  went  forward  know- 
ingly to  his  final  baptism  of  death,  but  he  went  forward  in  conscious  accord 
with  God's  eternal  plan  and  as  executor  of  the  counsels  of  heaven. 

What  blessing  and  relief  came  to  that  overburdened  heart  with  this  double 
answer  to  his  prayer,  we  can  but  poorly  conceive.  What  assurance  must 
have  flooded  his  soul  —  assurance  that  in  all  the  dreary  road  before  him,  his 
humanity  should  never  be  left  to  its  own  native  weakness,  but  should  find 
in  God  a  very  present  and  almighty  help  in  time  of  trouble  !  More  than 
this,  the  descent  of  the  Spirit  was  a  pledge  of  victory  —  a  pledge  of  victory 
grander  than  ever  was  vouchsafed  to  ancient  warrior  on  the  eve  of  battle. 
It  was  God's  own  seal  set  at  the  beginning  upon  Jesus'  work  —  the  seal  of 
Him  whose  counsels  never  fail,  and  who  is  omnipotent  to  execute  his  pur- 
pose of  salvation.  These  divine  attestations,  what  do  they  signify  but  this, 
that  the  descent  into  the  grave  should  not  be  forever ;  he  should  rise  again 
triumphant  —  the  heavens  should  be  once  more  opened  to  receive  him ; 
attended  by  thousands  of  angels  and  with  ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand 
coming  forth  to  meet  him,  he  should  be  welcomed  to  a  seat  at  the  right  hand 
of  the  Majesty  on  high,  while  to  all  the  universe  God  should  say  :  "  This  is 
my  beloved  Son,  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased." 

Thus  far  I  have  endeavored  to  set  forth,  in  its  historical  connections  and 
aspects,  that  most  impressive  and  sublime  act  with  which  Jesus  inaugurated 
his  public  ministry.  I  have  described  his  baptism  as  a  self-consecration,  as 
a  consecration  to  death,  as  a  consecration  to  death  for  human  sin.  Let  me 
conclude  my  presentation  of  the  subject  by  summing  up  the  symbolic  teach- 
ing of  this  momentous  transaction,  and  so  exhibiting  what  seems  to  me  its 
great  doctrinal  and  practical  value. 

I  see  in  the  baptism  of  Jesus,  first  of  all,  a  vivid  representation  of  the  ill- 
desert  and  fearful  penalty  of  sin.  I  recollect  a  picture  of  the  Deluge  by 
Gustave  Dore",  in  which  the  rising  waters  have  submerged  all  but  the  highest 
hill-tops.  On  these,  under  an  angry  sky,  lit  up  only  by  vivid  lightnings,  are 
gathered  the  only  survivors  from  among  the  wicked.  Pale  and  frantic,  they 
fight  with  wild  beasts  and  with  one  another  for  the  topmost  place  of  safety. 
They  hold  appealing  hands  up  to  the  heavens,  but  the  heavens  are  black 
and  mutter  thunder.  They  look  down  to  the  surging  waves  beneath,  but 


THE   BAPTISM    OF   JESUS.  233 

these  gain  upon  them  every  moment,  until  conquered  and  despairing  they 
fling  themselves  upon  the  bare  rocks  and  there  await  their  dreadful  inevi- 
table doom.  A  few  moments  more,  and  the  ravenous  waters  will  engulf 
them  and  sweep  away  their  name  and  memory  forever.  That  picture  of 
Gustave  Dore*  is  a  picture  of  the  destiny  of  the  human  race,  a  picture  of 
your  destiny  and  mine,  left  to  our  sin  and  to  the  judgments  which  follow  in 
its  train. 

But  there  is  another  picture  of  the  desert  and  end  of  a  sinful  humanity, 
more  striking  still.  The  baptism  of  Jesus,  how  solemnly  that  speaks  of  the 
floods  of  divine  anger  that  must  envelope  a  guilty  race  !  What !  must  one 
who  is  purity  itself,  nay,  divinity  itself,  go  down  into  death,  merely  because 
he  has  united  himself  to  my  nature  ?  Then  my  nature  must  be  under  the 
ban  and  curse  of  death.  Must  Jesus  be  overwhelmed  with  suffering,  simply 
because  of  that  which  he  has  in  common  with  all  men  that  have  ever  breathed  ? 
Then  all  men  must  by  virtue  of  that  same  nature  be  under  the  wrath  of  God. 
Aye,  ten  thousand  times  more  than  he,  for  all  men  have  not  only  inherited 
this  nature,  but  have  wilfully  perverted  their  way  and  set  themselves  against 
the  law  of  God.  I  see,  then,  in  this  sinking  of  Jesus  beneath  the  waters  of 
the  Jordan,  the  declaration  that  all  mankind  are  doomed  to  hopeless  burial. 
If  Jesus,  personally  sinless  as  he  was,  found  that  the  taking  of  human  nature 
involved  death,  how  much  more  shall  we,  who  are  personally  guilty  and 
defiled,  find  that  "the  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall  die." 

Secondly,  Jesus'  baptism  presents  to  us  a  picture  of  human  nature  deliv- 
ered from  the  penalty  and  power  of  sin.  If  it  had  been  God's  purpose  to 
set  forth  simply  the  death  that  was  due  to  sin,  we  should  have  seen  Jesus 
drowned  beneath  the  waves  forever.  But  this  was  not  all.  God  purposed 
also  to  represent  humanity  as  coming  up  new-born  from  the  grave  where  its 
sin  and  guilt  were  buried.  I  need  not  only  to  see  an  emblem  of  the  death 
that  is  due  to  sin  —  I  need  also  to  see  that  this  death  has  been  endured  for  me. 
I  need  not  only  to  see  that  human  nature  has  borne  the  penalty  —  I  need 
also  to  see  that  human  nature  has  exhausted  the  penalty,  and  has  risen  from 
it  triumphant  and  free.  And  this  I  see  depicted  in  the  baptism  of  Jesus. 
His  sinking  beneath  the  Jordan-current  typified  a  death  actually  endured  by 
human  nature  in  him.  His  rising  from  the  stream  once  more,  and  his  recep' 
tion  of  those  attestations  from  on  high,  typified  the  resurrection  of  that 
same  human  nature,  its  deliverance  from  the  last  remains  of  sin,  and  its  new 
condition  as  redeemed  from  the  bondage  of  the  law,  filled  with  the  Spirit  of 
God,  admitted  to  the  honors  of  sonship  in  God's  family,  and'  glorified  in 
and  with  Jesus  Christ  its  Lord. 

Years  ago  I  saw  in  a  European  gallery  that  masterpiece  of  Thorwaldsen, 
the  Danish  sculptor,  Christ  and  his  Apostles.  The  eye  wandered  from  one 
to  the  other  of  those  twelve  marble  forms,  and  in  each  there  was  some  char- 
acteristic expression  that  riveted  the  attention.  There  was  the  impulsive 
boldness  in  the  very  lines  of  Peter's  face.  The  tender  melancholy  of  Thomas, 
the  artless  openness  of  Philip,  the  seraphic  ardor  of  John,  were  all  imaged 
in  the  solid  stone.  But  then  each  face  reminded  you  also  of  its  possessor's 
peculiar  weakness.  Peter's  rashness  and  instability,  Thomas's  doubting, 
were  there.  The  more  you  gazed  upon  the  statues  of  the  apostles,  the  more 
you  felt  a  lack  —  here  were  only  fragmentary  virtues,— and  with  these  virtues 


234  ^        THE   BAPTISM   OF   JESUS. 

were  defects  and  sins.  But,  standing  in  a  half  circle  as  they  were,  each  form 
by  its  attitude  or  look  or  gesture  seemed  to  point  you  to  the  centre,  as  if  all 
their  hopes  and  affections  gathered  there.  And  there  was  the  figure  of  the 
Christ,  greater  than  they  in  height,  and  far  transcending  them  in  dignity. 
In  that  one  majestic  form  all  the  good  in  them  seemed  united,  and  on  that 
calm  commanding  brow  there  was  ineffable  holiness  and  peace.  How  often, 
as  I  have  vainly  sought  through  the  ages  for  an  example  of  perfectly  eman- 
cipated humanity,  have  I  thought  of  Thorwaldsen's  Christ !  How  often,  as 
I  have  struggled  with  the  forces  of  evil  in  my  own  nature,  have  I  seen  in 
that  remembered  master-piece  of  art  the  mute  assurance  that  there  is  one 
who  has  conquered  sin  and  death  for  me,  and  who  has  lifted  human  nature 
up  into  union  with  God  and  likeness  to  God !  Towering  above  all  the  forms 
of  men  I  see  the  risen  Jesus,  and  in  him  my  nature  ransomed,  purified, 
perfected,  glorified.  And  this  sublime  fact,  this  sublime  hope  of  humanity, 
I  see  symbolically  represented  in  Jesus'  baptism.  His  rising  from  that 
watery  grave  teaches  me  that  there  is  now  a  human  nature  "  without  sin," 
and  over  which  "  death  hath  no  more  dominion  "  forever. 

But  some  are  doubtless  saying  :  ' '  How  difficult  it  is  to  believe  that  this 
external  work  of  Christ  has  anything  to  do  with  us  !  Christ's  risen  and 
glorified  humanity  —  that  is  not  ours  —  that  cannot  be  made  ours."  Yes,  I 
answer ;  yes,  it  may  be  made  ours — it  is  ours.  And  this  is  the  third  lesson 
taught  us  by  Jesus'  baptism.  That  baptism  affords  me  a  picture  also  of  the 
method  of  my  personal  salvation,  by  union  with  the  crucified  and  risen  Jesus. 
I  also  must  die  to  sin  by  having  Jesus'  death  reproduced  in  me.  I  must  rise 
to  a  new  life  by  having  Jesus'  resurrection  reproduced  in  me.  I  must  enter 
into  communion  with  the  death  and  resurrection  of  my  Lord  —  yes,  I  must 
participate  in  both.  The  putting  away  of  the  sin  and  guilt  of  humanity, 
which  was  the  essential  feature  of  Jesus'  work,  must  take  place  in  me ;  and 
this  I  must  do  by  having  my  life  incorporated  with  his  life,  so  that  his 
mighty  life  within  lifts  me  out  of  the  dominion  of  sin  and  death  into  his  own 
region  of  life  and  peace.  It  was  humanity  that  bore  the  curse  in  his  death, 
and  all  the  true  life  of  humanity  rose  from  the  dead  in  his  resurrection. 
Now  if  I  am  united  to  him  and  participate  in  this  new  humanity  of  which 
he  is  the  head,  I  may  take  for  mine  not  only  all  that  Jesus  has  done,  but  all 
that  Jesus  is.  In  other  words,  my  union  with  Christ  must  result  in  a  change 
within  me  ;  and  I  can  never  be  saved  unless  I  so  appropriate  the  death  and 
resurrection  of  the  Lord  Jesus  that  there  results  within  me  a  corresponding 
death  to  sin  and  resurrection  to  holiness. 

Let  me  illustrate  what  I  mean  by  a  curious  tract  which  I  once  saw.  It 
was  entitled  :  "  The  Seven  Togethers."  It  was  nothing  more  nor  less  than 
a  combination  and  exposition  of  seven  remarkable  passages  with  regard  to 
the  union  of  the  believer  with  Christ.  These  "  seven  togethers  "  are  seven 
links  of  a  golden  chain  that  binds  us  indissolubly  to  the  Redeemer.  They 
are  :  1st,  Crucified  together  with  Christ ;  2dly,  Quickened  together  with 
Christ ;  3dly,  raised  together  with  Christ :  4thly,  Seated  together  with 
Christ  in  heavenly  places  ;  Sthly,  sufferers  together  with  Christ ;  6thly,  Heirs 
together  with  Christ ;  7thly,  Glorified  together  with  Christ.  In  these  Scrip- 
ture phrases  is  the  whole  essence  of  the  Gospel ;  for  it  is  nothing  else  than 
union  with  a  personal  living  Christ  that  saves  us,  a  union  with  him  by  faith, 


THE    BAPTISM   OF   JESUS.  235 

such  that  what  he  has  done  in  the  past  becomes  ours,  and  we  know  in  the 
present  ' '  the  fellowship  of  his  sufferings,  and  the  power  of  his  resurrection, 
being  made  conformable  unto  his  death."  And  this  great  truth  of  salvation 
for  all,  upon  the  simple  condition  of  uniting  themselves  to  Jesus  by  faith,  I 
see  set  forth  in  the  baptism  of  Jesus.  I  see  not  Jesus  only,  going  down 
into  the  grave  and  coming  up  a  conqueror,  but  myself  also  —  yes,  and  every 
believer,  too  —  giving  to  death  the  body  of  the  sins  of  the  flesh,  and  rising 
in  him  to  life  and  glory. 

Finally,  we  should  see  in  this  transaction  a  picture  of  the  duty  of  those 
who  have  believed  in  Jesus.  To  all  such  there  comes  the  obligation  to  pro- 
fess his  name  before  men.  And  in  what  way  should  they  profess  his  name  ? 
If  what  has  been  said  is  true,  then  the  entrance  of  the  soul  into  the  com- 
munion of  Christ's  death  and  resurrection  should  be  signified  to  the  world 
by  a  baptism  like  his.  Nothing  but  the  total  immersion  of  the  body  in  water 
will  answer  the  design  of  the  ordinance,  on  the  one  hand,  because  nothing 
rise  can  symbolize  the  greatness  and  radical  nature  of  the  change  effected  in 
regeneration  —  a  change  from  spiritual  death  to  spiritual  life.  Nothing  else 
will  answer  the  design  of  the  ordinance,  on  the  other  hand,  because  nothing 
else  can  set  forth  the  fact  that  this  change  from  spiritual  death  to  spiritual 
life  is  connected  with  and  wholly  dependent  upon  the  death  and  resurrection 
of  Jesus.  We  owe  all  to  Christ's  work  for  us.  Is  it  too  much  that  we 
should  signify  this  obligation  in  the  symbol  by  which  we  declare  our  change 
to  the  world  ? 

Just  here  is  the  reason  why  we  cannot  alter  the  form  of  the  ordinance. 
We  cannot  alter  it,  because  we  cannot  take  out  of  it  its  reference  to  the  death 
and  resurrection  of  Jesus,  and  to  our  spiritual  death  and  resurrection  with 
him.  As  Jesus'  baptism  pointed  forward  to  his  death  and  resurrection,  so 
the  baptism  of  the  believer  points  backward  to  the  same.  And  wheresoever 
baptism  is  administered,  whether  by  John  the  Baptist,  or  by  the  apostles, 
or  by  the  later  ministers  of  Christ's  church,  it  points  evermore  to  that  great 
central  fact  of  the  Christian  scheme,  that  one  death  by  which  we  live,  the 
death  of  the  God-man  for  the  sins  of  the  world.  Thus  "it  becomes  us" 
also  "  to  fulfill  all  righteousness,"  first,  by  dying  to  sin  in  spirit  and  rising 
to  a  new  life  of  penitence  and  faith,  and  then  by  symbolizing  our  depend- 
ence upon  Christ's  death  and  our  consecration  to  a  life  like  his,  by  following 
in  his  footsteps  who  was  buried  by  John  beneath  the  waters  of  the  Jordan. 
The  course  which  the  Savior  took  is  the  course  for  those  who  profess  to  f ol- 
lowliim,  for  "  the  servant  is  not  above  his  master,  neither  the  disciple  above 
his  Lord." 

In  this  common  reference  to  the  death  of  Christ  we  have  the  link  which 
binds  the  two  ordinances  of  Christ's  church  together.  They  both  and  equally 
are  symbols  of  the  death  of  Christ.  In  baptism  we  show  forth  the  death  of 
Christ  as  the  procuring  cause  of  our  new  birth  into  the  kingdom  of  God. 
In  the  Lord's  Supper  we  show  forth  the  death  of  Christ  as  the  sustaining 
power  of  our  spiritual  life  after  that  life  has  once  begun.  In  the  ordinance 
of  baptism  we  honor  the  regenerating  power  of  the  death  of  Christ,  as  in  the 
Lord's  Supper  we  honor  its  sanctifying  power.  Thus  both  the  ordinances 
are  parts  of  one  whole  —  setting  before  us  Christ's  death  for  men,  in  its  two 
great  purposes  and  results.  The  two  ordinances  combined  constitute  a 


236  THE    BAPTISM    OF   JESTS. 

double  monument  to  the  historical  fact  of  Jesus'  death  for  the  sins  of  the 
world.  As  the  children  of  an  Israelitish  family,  gathered  at  the  Passover 
festival,  asked  of  the  father,  who  sat  at  the  head  of  the  board,  the  question  : 
"What  mean  ye  by  this  service?"  and  the  father  answered:  "It  is  the 
sacrifice  of  the  Lord's  Passover,"  thus  handing  down  to  the  coming  genera- 
tion the  memory  of  the  great  deliverance  which  God  had  wrought  in  old 
time  for  their  nation,  so  now  the  world  asks  and  the  church  explains  what 
she  means  by  this  double  service  of  Baptism  and  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  And 
her  answer,  according  to  the  Scriptures,  must  evermore  be  this,  that  in  these 
two  ordinances,  she  preserves  a  symbol  of  that  great  historical  fact  of  her 
own  past  deliverance  through  the  shedding  of  Christ's  blood.  To  change 
the  form  of  the  ordinance  of  baptism  is  to  break  down  a  mighty  monument 
to  the  great  central  fact  of  the  Gospel  —  to  break  down  a  monument  which 
God  himself  has  set  up,  that  it  may  witness  to  all  the  world  that  Christ  has 
died  to  save  it.  A  form  that  signifies  purification  simply,  is  not  sufficient. 
Baptism  symbolizes  purification,  indeed,  but  purification  in  a  peculiar  and 
divine  way,  namely,  through  the  death  of  Christ  and  the  entrance  of  the 
soul  into  communion  with  that  death.  The  radical  defect  of  sprinkling  or 
pouring  as  a  mode  of  administering  the  ordinance  is  this,  that  it  does  not 
point  to  Christ's  death  as  the  procuring  cause  of  our  purification.  In  bap- 
tism we  are  bound  to  show  forth  the  Lord's  death  as  the  original  source  of 
holiness  and  life  in  our  souls,  just  as  in  the  Lord's  Supper  we  are  bound  to 
show  forth  the  Lord's  death  as  the  source  of  all  nourishment  and  strength 
after  this  life  of  holiness  has  once  begun.  To  substitute  for  the  broken 
bread  and  poured-out  wine  of  the  Communion  some  form  of  administration 
which  leaves  out  all  reference  to  the  death  of  Christ,  would  be  to  destroy 
the  Lord's  Supper,  and  to  celebrate  an  ordinance  of  human  invention.  And 
in  like  manner,  to  substitute  for  Baptism  any  form  of  administration  which 
excludes  all  symbolic  reference  to  the  death  of  Christ,  is  to  destroy  that 
ordinance.  Without  immersion,  you  have  baptism  no  longer,  but  an  ordi- 
nance of  human  invention.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  we  stand  for  baptism 
in  its  integrity  —  not  because  of  the  form  itself,  but  for  the  sake  of  the 
unspeakably  important  truth  which  the  form  embodies  ;  not  for  the  sake  of 
indulging  private  preference  or  fancy,  but  that  the  church  may  witness  con- 
tinuously and  consistently,  in  her  ordinances  as  well  as  in  her  preaching,  to 
that  truth  which  constitutes  the  soul  of  her  soul  and  the  life  of  her  life. 

I  have  somewhere  read  that  the  mortar  which  cements  the  stones  of  the 
great  mosque  of  St.  Sophia,  at  Constantinople,  still  retains  the  fragrance  of 
the  musk  that  was  mingled  with  it  when  Justinian  built  the  edifice  in  the 
sixth  century  as  a  temple  of  the  Lord.  The  infidel  Turk  has  captured  and 
spoiled  it ;  the  worship  of  Christ  has  given  place  to  the  religion  of  Mohammed  ; 
the  cross  has  been  humbled,  and  the  crescent  saems  to  utter  over  it  from 
year  to  year  a  silent  and  symbolic  boast  of  growth  and  conquest ;  yet  still  a 
keen  sense  can  discern  exhaling  from  the  very  substance  of  the  structure  the 
imperishable  aroma  of  that  early  devotion  that  counted  the  costliest  perfumes 
none  too  precious  to  enrich  and  sanctify  the  house  of  God.  The  ordinance 
of  baptism  is  like  the  church  Justinian  built, —  the  fragrant  spices  of  Jesus* 
burial  are  wrought  into  its  very  structure,  and  yield  their  perfume  from  age 
to  age.  Through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  Christian  history,  its  due  adminis- 


THE    BAPTISM    OF    JESUS.  237 

tration  is  a  visible  witness  and  memorial  of  the  death  of  Christ,  a  proof  even 
to  the  senses  of  that  matchless  love  that  endured  the  agony  and  bloody 
sweat,  the  cross  and  passion,  and  that  went  down  into  the  darkness  of  the 
sepulchre  that  it  might  "open  the  kingdom  of  heaven  to  all  believers." 
Wonderful  symbol !  combining  in  one  picture  all  the  essential  truths  of  the 
Christian  scheme,  expressing  not  only  the  fact  of  death  to  sin,  and  resurrec- 
tion to  righteousness,  but  also  the  method  of  that  fact  —  through  the  union 
of  our  souls  with  a  dying  and  a  risen  Savior  !  Let  this  ordinance  in  which 
the  believer  follows  his  Master's  example  of  consecration  be  forever  sacred 
to  us.  Let  us  preserve  it  in  its  integrity,  as  the  Lord  has  delivered  it  to  us. 
Witnessing  it,  may  we  ever  find  it  an  encouragement  to  hope  and  an  incite- 
ment to  duty.  And  as  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus  answered  to  the  conse- 
cration which  he  made  on  the  banks  of  Jordan,  so  let  our  lives  witness  that 
at  our  baptism  we  truly  died  to  sin  and  rose  to  newness  of  life  ! 


XIX. 

CHRISTIAN  TRUTH  AND  ITS  KEEPERS.* 


I  have  seen  it  stated  that  the  origin  of  the  American  Baptist  Publication 
Society  was  due  to  a  circumstance  as  simple  as  that  falling  of  the  apple 
from  the  tree  which  revealed  to  Newton  the  law  of  gravitation.  The  falling 
of  a  little  tract  from  the  hat  of  the  Rev.  Samuel  Cornelius  suggested  to  Noah 
Davis  the  idea  of  a  General  Tract  Society,  that  should  fill  the  land  with  a 
trenchant  and  succinct  denominational  literature.  It  might  almost  seem 
that  Mr.  Darwin's  doctrine  of  *  *  pangenesis  "  had  found  an  illustration  here, 
and  that  this  cellule  of  an  idea  contained  the  germs  of  the  whole  subsequent 
structure  of  this  society.  I  have  no  notion,  however,  that  either  its  begin- 
nings or  its  after- work  can  be  explained  by  any  mere  law  of  natural  develop- 
ment. There  are  such  things  as  new  creations,  not  only  in  geologic  history 
but  in  the  history  of  the  church,  and  I  believe  that  the  starting  of  tints 
society  into  life  was  one  of  those  new  creations.  I  attribute  its  origin,  not 
to  Noah  Davis,  who  saw  the  tract  fall,  nor  to  Samuel  Cornelius,  from  whose 
hat  it  fell,  but  rather  to  that  all- working  Providence  which  in  every  century 
and  through  agencies  utterly  insufficient  of  themselves,  summons  new  moral 
forces  into  being  to  further  the  progress  of  his  truth.  And  if  this  be  their 
origin,  then  we  may  dismiss  our  fears  lest  these  organizations  take  from  the 
church  her  honor  or  her  responsibility.  They  are  the  appointed  servants 
and  helpers  of  the  church, — when  they  work,  it  is  the  church  that  works 
through  them, —  all  their  glory  is  the  glory  of  the  church.  My  only  fear  is 
that  we  forget  that  these  societies  hold  their  commission  from  God,  that 
they  have  been  raised  up  as  bulwarks  and  defenses  of  his  truth,  and  that  the 
demands  they  make  npon  us  are  the  demands  of  Christ  himself.  I  ask  your 
attention  to  certain  considerations  which  vindicate  the  claims  of  this  society 
for  help  in  its  great  work  of  furnishing  a  cheap  denominational  literature. 
I  maintain  that  the  work  of  propagating  our  peculiar  views  of  truth  is  cor- 
rect in  principle ;  that  we  who  hold  these  views  are  specially  ordained  to 
this  work  ;  and  that  the  methods  of  which  we  make  use  are  demanded  in 
these  times  by  a  sound  Christian  expediency. 

The  principle  upon  which  our  whole  work  is  based  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  this  :  Christ's  truth  is  an  organic  whole,  all  whose  parts  have  vital 
connections  with  each  other,  so  that  to  stand  for  any  one  part  of  the  great 
system  is  logically  to  stand  for  every  other  part, —  to  harm  any  part  is  to  do 
injury  to  the  whole.  We  all  know  something  of  the  organic  unity  of  the 
human  body.  Suppose  a  man  comes  to  me  and  asks  me  to  let  him  cut  off 
one  joint  of  my  ringer,  on  the  ground  that  it  is  a  very  small  part  of  my  body 


*  An  address  delivered  before  the  American  Baptist  Publication  Society,  at  its  annual 
meeting  in  New  York  City,  May,  1868. 

238 


CHRISTIAN"   TRUTH    AND    ITS    KEEPERS.  2391 

and  that  its  loss  will  not  be  felt, —  you  would  think  him  crazy,  and  you  would 
think  me  crazier  still  to  grant  his  request.  To  tear  one  joint  from  my  finger 
is  to  maim  the  whole  body,  and  send  horrible  pains  through  every  part. 
God's  truth  is  an  organic  whole  like  a  human  body.  Injure  it  in  any  one 
part,  however  insignificant,  and  you  injure  the  whole,  you  sap  the  life-blood, 
the  blow  is  felt  at  the  very  heart.  Just  as  the  law  of  God  is  the  expression 
of  the  will  of  the  One  Lawgiver,  and  therefore  he  who  offends  in  one  part  is 
guilty  of  all,  so  Christian  doctrine  is  a  reflection  of  the  being  and  nature  of 
the  God  of  truth,  and  he  who  denies  or  hides  any  part  of  it,  however  small, 
is,  just  so  far,  bringing  the  Sun  of  Righteousness  into  disastrous  eclipse, 
and  destroying  the  symmetry  and  power  of  God's  revelation  of  himself  to 
men. 

Now  we  believe  that  our  distinctive  denominational  tenets  are  part  and 
parcel  of  this  truth  of  God,  and  as  such  are  built  into  the  very  frame-work 
of  Christianity  so  that  they  cannot  be  torn  away  without  injury  to  the  whole 
structure.  Those  grand  principles  for  which  our  fathers  contended  even 
unto  death  —  the  sole  authority  of  the  word  of  God,  the  freedom  of  con- 
science from  all  civil  domination,  the  admission  of  none  but  baptized 
believers  to  the  membership  and  ordinances  of  the  church,  the  right  of 
every  member  of  the  church  to  a  voice  in  its  government  and  discipline, — 
these  principles  are  not  only  logically  inseparable  from  one  another,  but  are 
organically  connected  with  the  whole  body  of  revealed  truth.  Even  that 
tenet  of  our  faith,  that  nothing  is  baptism  but  the  immersion  of  the  believer 
in  water  in  the  name  of  the  Trinity,  is  linked  in  organic  unity  to  every  other 
part  of  the  Christian  scheme.  And  as  this  may  illustrate  what  I  mean  by 
the  organic  unity  of  revealed  truth,  let  me  ask  you  to  give  a  moment's 
reflection  to  the  relations  of  baptism,  first,  to  Christian  doctrine  as  a  whole 
and  then  to  the  other  ordinance  of  Christ's  house,  the  Holy  Supper. 

Baptism  is  not  a  meaningless  ceremonial  —  it  symbolizes  the  great  central 
truth  of  the  gospel  —  in  its  very  form  it  represents  a  death,  burial  and  resur- 
rection. "Whose  death,"  do  you  ask ?  The  death  of  Christ,  I  answer,  and 
the  entrance  of  the  believer  into  communion  with  that  death.  We  see  the 
death  of  Christ  set  forth  as  clearly  and  powerfully  in  Baptism  as  in  the  Holy 
Supper.  Baptism  signifies  purification  indeed,  but  purification  only  in  a 
peculiar  and  divine  way,  namely,  through  the  death  of  Christ  and  our  per- 
sonal communion  with  that  death  by  faith.  It  is  said  that  in  the  last  century, 
every  rope,  great  or  small,  that  was  used  throughout  the  British  navy,  had 
a  scarlet  thread  running  through  it  from  end  to  end ;  lost,  stolen,  sunk 
beneath  the  waves  though  it  might  be,  the  smallest  vestige  of  the  cordage 
showed  by  this  simple  thread  that  it  bore  the  King's  mark  and  was  the  pos- 
session of  the  crown.  So  there  is  a  scarlet  thread  running  through  the 
whole  circle  of  Christian  doctrine  and  practice  certifying  that  all  its  different 
parts  are  one.  It  is  the  scarlet  thread  of  the  blood  of  Jesus.  That  scarlet 
thread  runs  through  the  ordinance  of  Baptism  —  that  reference  to  Jesus' 
death  reveals  to  us  its  divine  significance  —  that  emblematic  declaration  that 
even  the  beginnings  of  spiritual  life  must  have  their  source  in  the  fountain 
of  Jesus'  blood,  vindicates  its  place  and  importance  as  an  indispensable  part 
of  Christian  doctrine  and  practice,  and  gives  it  all  its  glory  as  the  initiatory 
ordinance  of  the  Christian  church.  But  this  is  not  all.  Baptism  not  only 


240  CHRISTIAN   TRUTH   AND   ITS   KEEPERS. 

sets  forth  with  all  the  vividness  of  sign-language  the  great  central  truth  of 
the  gospel,  but  other  related  truths  find  expression  there  as  well.  That 
sacred  ordinance  is  nothing  less  indeed  than  a  pictorial  representation  of  the 
whole  substance  of  Christianity,  an  incarnation  in  symbol  of  all  the  essential 
truths  upon  which  our  salvation  hangs,  a  mirroring  forth  in  visible  form  of 
the  great  invisible  realities  of  atonement  through  Jesus'  death,  regeneration 
by  the  power  of  the  Spirit,  union  with  Christ  by  a  living  faith,  resurrection 
with  Christ  to  a  new  life  here  and  eternal  glory  hereafter.  Thus  Baptism  is 
bound  up  in  the  organic  unity  of  the  Christian  scheme.  To  defend  Christ's 
ordinance  from  abuse  and  perversion  is  not  to  preach  a  partial  and  sectarian 
gospel,  but  to  stand  for  the  whole  system  of  doctrine  which  that  ordinance 
sets  forth  and  illustrates.  To  substitute  anything  for  Baptism  which  excludes 
all  reference  to  the  death  of  Christ  is  to  falsify  the  whole  body  of  Christian 
truth  and  break  down  one  of  the  grand  safeguards  of  Christian  doctrine. 

Observe,  too,  how  this  reference  of  Baptism  unites  it  by  a  living  tie  to 
that  other  ordinance  of  Christ's  house,  the  Holy  Supper.  We  know  the 
tenacity  with  which  all  branches  of  the  Christian  church  hold  to  the  sym- 
bolism of  the  Communion.  There  is  a  so-called  Protestant  church  in  this 
city  where  the  eucharist  is  weekly  celebrated  by  the  light  of  blazing  candles, 
while  incense  and  procession  and  genuflexion  lend  their  meretricious  attrac- 
tions to  an  ordinance  which  was  meant  to  commemorate  the  Savior's  death, 
but  which  has  come  to  be  little  else  than  a  piece  of  Romish  idolatry.  Yet 
if  you  were  to  suggest  to  these  ritualistic  Christians  that  they  might  substi- 
tute for  the  broken  bread  and  poured-out  wine  of  the  communion,  some 
other  form  of  administering  the  ordinance  which  would  leave  out  all  refer- 
ence to  the  death  of  Christ,  even  they,  with  all  their  forgetfulness  of  its  real 
spirit,  would  start  back  in  horror  of  the  sacrilege,  because  in  that  sacred 
ordinance  they  see  compacted  all  the  creed,  and  hold  themselves  specially 
commissioned  to  maintain  it  inviolate  forever,  as  a  visible  witness  for  the 
central  truths  of  the  gospel.  To  celebrate  the  Holy  Supper  in  any  form 
which  obscures  to  popular  apprehension  the  mighty  sacrifice  it  was  meant  to 
commemorate,  is  to  celebrate  not  the  Holy  Supper  but  some  ordinance  of 
human  invention.  But  who  has  authorized  us  to  empty  one  ordinance  of  its 
meaning,  any  more  than  the  other  ?  Even  the  High  Churchman  can  appreciate 
the  shock  which  the  Christian  faith  would  sustain,  if  all  reference  to  the 
death  of  Christ  were  taken  out  of  the  Communion,  for  it  would  be  equivalent 
to  declaring  that  Christian  life  could  be  preserved  and  nourished  apart  from 
that  one  death  by  which  alone  we  live.  But  is  it  any  the  less  a  wrong  to  the 
whole  body  of  truth  to  assert  in  symbol  that  Christian  life  and  purity  can 
begin  in  the  soul  without  having  its  source  in  the  death  of  Christ  ?  Yet  this 
is  done  whenever  anything  is  substituted  for  baptism  which  cannot  set  forth 
a  burial  with  Christ.  The  one  ordinance  is  as  sacred  as  the  other  —  both 
are  bound  together  by  their  common  reference  to  the  death  of  Jesus.  Like 
those  twins  of  whom  old  Hippocrates  wrote,  one  life  and  breath  seems  to 
animate  both,  one  blood  pulsates  through  their  veins,  they  smile  and  weep 
together,  their  minds  are  united  in  electric  sympathies,  when  one  suffers  the 
other  suffers  with  it,  when  one  dies,  the  same  hour  witnesses  the  death  of 
the  other  also.  Let  baptism  degenerate  into  a  half-mystical,  half -magical 
rite,  void  of  all  allusion  to  the  sacrifice  on  Calvary,  and  administered  to 


CHRISTIAN   TRUTH    AND    ITS    KEEPERS.  241 

those  whose  infantile  years  preclude  all  conscious  communion  by  faith  with 
the  Savior's  death,  and  you  have  not  far  to  go  to  see  the  perversion  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  into  a  sensuous  accessory  of  ritualistic  worship  by  which  in 
some  cabalistic  way  the  communicant  is  manipulated  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  and  made  partaker  of  the  blessings  promised  only  to  the  believer. 
Regard  for  the  integrity  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  well  as  for  the  great  sum 
of  truth  of  which  these  two  ordinances  are  constituent  parts  and  appointed 
emblems,  urges  us  to  keep  the  ordinance  of  Baptism  as  it  was  first  delivered 
to  the  church,  a  living  symbol  of  the  death  of  Christ,  and  of  our  entrance 
into  communion  with  that  death  by  faith. 

But  I  am  asked,  what  peculiar  responsibility  have  we  as  Baptists,  more 
than  others,  in  upholding  and  propagating  our  distinctive  views  ?  Let  me 
reply  briefly  to  this  question  by  laying  down  a  second  principle,  of  as  great 
practical  importance  as  that  first  one  with  regard  to  the  organic  unity  of 
Christian  truth.  It  is  this  :  —  Christ  has  committed  special  truths  of  his 
great  system  to  special  keepers.  It  has  been  so  through  the  whole  history 
of  man.  Both  civilization  and  religion  have  gone  out  from  centres.  Rev- 
elation was  first  given  to  a  historic  nation,  that  from  them  it  might  be  dis- 
seminated through  the  world.  And  in  this  is  the  wisdom  of  God.  There 
were  two  possible  plans, —  one  to  give  the  knowledge  of  himself  in  discon- 
nected parts,  to  individuals  isolated  and  scattered  here  and  there  over  the 
globe,  —  the  other  to  make  the  revelation  in  a  fixed  place,  to  one  people  and 
with  historic  connection  and  unity.  Any  one  can  see  that  the  last  is  better 
than  the  first,  just  as  the  introduction  of  a  new  variety  of  wheat  could  be 
better  effected  by  planting  it  at  first  in  a  single  field,  than  by  scattering 
single  grains  of  it  here  and  there  over  the  surface  of  the  world,  and  thus 
running  the  risk  of  total  choking-out  and  extinction.  Just  as  God  has  made 
the  great  fundamental  truths  of  religion  to  go  out  from  Judaea  and  her  now 
stricken  and  desolate  race,  so  he  has  made  some  single  branches  of  his 
church  the  special  interpreters  and  defenders  of  single  portions  of  his  truth, 
and  has  laid  on  them  the  charge  of  keeping  the  light  of  those  special  truths 
burning  before  the  nations. 

I  am  not  one  of  those  who  are  in  anguish  of  spirit  over  the  multiplicity 
of  sects.  Mere  unity  of  external  organization  may  be  a  deceit  and  a  snare, 
.as  the  palmy  days  of  the  Roman  hierarchy  may  witness.  The  only  unity 
worth  striving  for  is  that  unity  in  the  truth,  which  the  Spirit  of  God,  dwel- 
ling in  all  true  believers,  is  working  out  in  the  course  of  the  church's  his- 
tory. But  that  unity  in  the  faith  to  which  we  all  shall  ultimately  come  is  to 
be  promoted  only  by  the  fidelity  of  each  body  of  Christians  to  the  truth  as 
they  apprehend  it.  God's  word  is  a  field  in  which  many  a  treasure  still  lies 
hid.  When  any  man  or  set  of  men  gets  hold  of  a  truth  that  has  been  hitherto 
neglected,  and  finds  it  full  of  power  and  life,  the  natural  tendency,  yes,  the 
providential  design,  is  that  the  new  spirit  should  take  to  itself  a  new  form, 
and  through  a  new  outward  organization,  impress  upon  the  world  its  import- 
ance and  its  claims.  Christianity  is  many-sided  ;  there  is  a  possibility  that 
another,  looking  at  Christ's  truth  from  a  different  point  of  view,  may  embrace 
within  the  circuit  of  his  vision  something  which  I  cannot  see.  God  bless 
him  in  his  efforts  to  make  it  known  to  men  !  Single  Christians  and  single 
16 


242  CHRISTIAN   TRUTH   AND   ITS   KEEPERS. 

churches  are  but  partial  illustrators  and  reflectors  of  the  mighty  truths  of 

the  Bible,— 

"  Hither,  as  to  a  fountain, 
Other  suns  repair,  and  in  their  urns 
Draw  golden  light." 

But  as  the  one  colorless  light,  falling  upon  different  objects,  loses  a  part 
of  its  rays  by  absorption,  and  only  blue,  red,  green  or  some  other  color,  is 
reflected  to  us,  so  the  one  light  of  truth,  reflected  from  different  Christian 
bodies,  loses  it  whiteness, —  a  part  of  the  truth  is  lost  in  the  transmission, 
another  part  is  made  too  prominent,  it  may  be, —  all  the  rays  of  all  the  sects 
together,  and  not  of  one  alone,  make  up  the  pure  white  light  of  Christian 
doctrine ;  and  though  we  cannot  understand  the  truths  which  many  of  these 
sects  are  striving  to  represent,  though  we  have  no  mental  chemistry  which 
can  now  combine  them,  we  may  rejoice  that  all  these  scattered  rays  shall  at 
last  be  reunited  and  form  a  circlet  of  glory  round  the  Redeemer's  brow. 

For  this  very  reason,  therefore,  that  Christ  has  given  to  us  certain  definite 
convictions  which  differ  from  the  views  of  others,  are  we  bound  to  be  faith- 
ful to  those  convictions,  and  to  contend  for  them  until  we  die, —  our  ray  of 
truth  is  a  part  at  least  of  Christ's  light, —  one  element  will  be  lacking  if  we 
hide  that  ray  or  put  it  out.  Let  it  shine  !  Let  it  shine,  and  do  its  work  for 
God,  like  the  lighthouse  on  some  rocky  coast,  lighting  the  track  of  safety 
to  thousands  of  souls  storm-tost  and  bewildered  on  the  great  ocean  of  con- 
troversy and  speculation.  The  world  needs  that  light  ;  God  has  made  us  its 
keepers  ;  from  us  it  must  go  forth,  if  it  is  to  enlighten  the  nations.  Let  us 
not  imagine  that  truth  of  itself  will  win  its  way  to  victory  and  universal 
acceptation.  Truth,  without  a  body  of  believers  to  hold  it  forth,  and  a  divine 
Spirit  to  make  that  exhibition  effectual,  is  an  abstraction  and  not  a  power. 
The  cross  that  caps  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  could  never  look  down  from  its 
lofty  height  upon  the  myriad  roofs  of  the  eternal  city,  if  it  were  not  for  those 
gigantic  piers  far  beneath,  which  Bramante  built  up  in  the  sixteenth  century 
from  the  primeval  rock.  So  there  is  no  truth  of  revelation  that  has  power 
to  hold  itself  in  mid-air  alone.  The  church  of  the  living  God  has  been  ap- 
pointed to  be  its  pillar  and  ground ;  its  very  historical  existence  as  Christian 
truth  rests  on  this,  that  there  remains  from  age  to  age  a  company  of  devoted 
souls  who  give  themselves  to  the  work  of  sustaining  and  preserving  it.  For 
this  purpose  of  upholding  a  portion  of  Christ's  truth,  long  neglected  and 
despised,  God  has  given  us  our  being  as  a  separate  Christian  organization. 
If  it  be  not  our  duty  to  use  all  lawful  means  for  the  support  and  propagation 
of  our  faith,  then  our  very  denominational  existence  is  an  impertinence,  and 
our  boasted  truth  is  only  schism  and  heresy.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
have  built  up  our  denominational  faith  upon  the  everlasting  rock  of  God's 
revealed  will,  then  to  give  up  one  inch  of  our  position  for  the  sake  of  liber- 
ality, or  worldly  repute,  or  wider  influence,  is  simply  to  give  up  Christ  and 
in  that  thing  to  deny  him.  To  every  taunting  charge  of  bigotry,  we  can 
only  answer  as  Peter  and  John  answered  of  old  :  "  Whether  it  be  right,  in 
the  sight  of  God,  to  hearken  unto  you  more  than  unto  God,  judge  ye.  For 
we  cannot  but  speak  the  things  which  we  have  seen  and  heard."  God  has 
appointed  that  those  who  believe  should  speak,  and  that  through  their 
speaking  the  truth  which  he  has  committed  to  them  should  bring  forth 


CHRISTIAN   TRUTH    AND    ITS   KEEPERS.  243 

fruit  after  its  kind,  until  the  world  shall  be  covered  with  the  waving 
harvest. 

I  have  but  one  other  thought  to  present,  and  that  is  that  Christ  requires 
us,  in  the  propagation  of  his  truth,  to  adopt  modern  measures  for  modern 
needs.  We  must  not  only  defend  the  points  which  are  most  attacked,  but 
must  defend  them  by  means  suited  to  the  emergency.  In  the  Arabian 
Nights,  there  is  a  strange  story  of  an  evil  Afrite  whom  a  king's  daughter 
sought  to  destroy.  Perceiving  her  purpose,  the  Genie  put  forth  his  magic 
power  and  changed  his  shape  into  that  of  a  roaring  lion.  But  the  princess 
possessed  equal  powers  of  enchantment.  Plucking  a  single  hair  from  her 
waving  locks,  she  turned  it  in  a  instant  into  a  glittering  sword,  and  with  the 
sword  she  cleft  her  adversary  in  twain.  But  the  lion's  head  still  had  life,  and 
ere  she  was  aware  it  had  become  a  deadly  scorpion.  Then  she  herself  became 
a  serpent  to  pursue  him.  But  he  was  a  scorpion  no  longer  ;  transformed 
into  an  eagle,  he  was  soaring  far  beyond  her  reach.  Then  she  followed  him 
in  the  shape  of  a  vulture.  Metamorphosed  into  a  fish,  he  found  himself 
chased  by  a  shark,  whose  form  was  only  the  disguise  of  his  relentless  foe. 
Reduced  at  length  to  the  last  resource  of  depair,  he  turned  into  a  flame  of 
fire,  but  his  enemy  became  a  greater  flame  and  devoured  him.  It  is  an 
illustration  of  the  protean  forms  which  error  assumes,  in  its  conflicts  with  the 
truth,  and  of  the  vigilance  and  flexibility  with  which  truth  must  adapt  her 
weapons  of  attack  to  each  of  them. 

Of  all  the  auxiliaries  of  error,  there  is  none  which  for  power  can  compare 
with  the  modern  press.  Truth  must  arm  herself  with  the  same  weapon,  if 
she  would  counteract  its  influence  and  take  possession  of  its  strongholds, 
—  like  David,  she  must  take  Goliath's  own  sword  to  behead  the  giant.  But 
why  do  I  speak  as  if  the  church  were  taking  the  weapon  of  another,  when 
she  used  the  press  ?  It  is  her  own,  by  right  divine.  The  printing  of  the 
Bible  consecrated  it  to  God  forever.  Without  it,  the  Reformation  would 
have  died  in  its  cradle.  It  is  one  of  those  diversities  of  operations  by  which 
tin-  Spirit,  in  his  sevenfold  energy,  is  renewing  the  face  of  the  world.  In  the 
religious  literature  of  the  day,  we  see  some  glimpses  of  its  power.  Who  can 
estimate  what  it  will  be  in  coming  days,  when  history  and  poetry,  science 
and  fiction,  shall  all  become  the  handmaids  of  religion,  and  each  shall  count 
it  the  highest  aim  of  her  ambition  to  receive  the  laurel  from  the  hand  of 
Christ ! 

It  is  the  part  of  a  true  Christian  expediency  to  bring  the  press  to  bear  upon 
those  peculiar  errors  which  to  our  view  mar  the  symmetry  of  modern  Christ- 
ianity, and  hinder  the  progress  of  the  gospel  among  men.  We  are  confirmed 
in  this  belief  by  the  wondrous  blessing  which,  under  God,  has  attended  the 
printing  and  dissemination  of  our  denominational  literature.  What  one  of 
us  can  look  at  Sweden  with  its  two  hundred  churches  established,  and  its 
seven  thousand  souls  converted  to  God,  without  rejoicing  that  a  publication 
of  this  society  led  Andreas  Wiberg  to  devote  to  Baptist  missionary  work  the 
energies  of  a  consecrated  soul !  Witness  the  mighty  progress  of  pure  relig- 
ion in  Germany.  See  the  fifteen  thousand  baptized  believers  who  labor 
there  for  Christ,  and  then  remember  that  the  single  grain  of  seed-corn  from 
which  this  vast  harvest  sprang  was  a  little  tract  of  the  American  Baptist 
Publication  Society,  which  led  Dr.  Oncken  thirty-four  years  ago  to  embrace 


244  CHRISTIAN  TRUTH   AND   ITS   KEEPERS. 

Scriptural  views  of  Baptism.  And  who  can  tell  how  many  thousands,  once 
dead  in  trespasses  and  sins,  have  read  the  tracts  of  this  society,  and  reading 
them  have  seemed  to  touch  the  bones  of  some  dead  prophet,  and  to  be  raised 
thereby  to  new  spiritual  life.  And  this,  my  friends,  is  the  work  your  Society 
is  doing.  Day  by  day  and  year  by  year,  it  is  sending  forth  its  leaves  for  the 
healing  of  the  nations.  Through  its  Sabbath  school  and  tract  departments 
it  is  reaching  thousands  upon  thousands  whom  you  and  I  will  never  see, 
spreading  everywhere  the  knowledge  of  Christ  and  of  his  commandments. 
Like  the  foraminifera,  those  microscopic  "toilers  of  the  sea,"  —  each  one 
so  small  that  a  hundred  and  fifty  of  them,  strung  together  end  to  end,  would 
form  a  line  only  a  twelfth  of  an  inch  in  length,  but  which,  with  all  their 
littleness,  built  up  in  the  geologic  ages  the  enormous  masses  of  the  Wealden 
chalk,  and  stretches  of  limestone  rock,  hundreds  of  miles  in  extent  and 
thousands  of  feet  in  thickness, —  these  little  publications  which  singly 
seem  so  insignificant,  sent  forth  and  scattered  broadcast  through  the  land, 
are  building  up  whole  continents  of  truth,  and  laying  foundation  for  the 
future  which  no  after  storms  or  cataclysms  can  ever  wear  away. 

Into  this  work,  then,  let  us  put  our  strength  of  money  and  of  heart.  We 
have  no  iron  wheel  of  outward  organization,  revolving  at  the  bidding  of  some 
central  despotism,  to  fill  our  treasury.  Let  us  demonstrate  that  the  voluntary 
offerings  of  Christian  love  will  accomplish  more  than  forced  levies  can.  Let 
us  show  that  we  value  our  principles,  by  our  zeal  and  liberality  in  diffusing 
them.  And  while  we  stand  faithful  to  Christ,  and  to  the  truth  as  he  has 
revealed  it  to  us,  let  us  not  fail  to  adopt  for  our  own  the  reputed  maxim  of 
the  noble  Persians  —  ever  to  speak  of  our  opponents  in  controversy  with 
heartfelt  acknowledgment  of  all  that  God  has  wrought  in  them  of  good, 
—  for,  after  all,  the  differences  which  separate  us  are  far  less  important  than 
the  ties  that  bind  us  together  ;  though  we  cannot  now  in  all  things  see  alike, 
we  may  still  rejoice  in  the  inheritance  which  we  possess,  as  children  of  one 
common  Father ;  though  the  bars  of  outward  organization  render  our  union 
imperfect  here,  we  may  look  forward  with  all  the  more  of  longing  to  that 
time  when  all  these  divisions  of  the  twilight  shall  disappear  in  the  sunrise  of 
a  fuller  knowledge,  and  it  shall  be  known  to  all  the  universe  at  last  that 
there  is  but  "one  flock  and  one  Shepherd." 


XX. 

UNCONSCIOUS  ASSUMPTIONS 

OF   COMMUNION   POLEMICS.* 


It  is  often  the  serious  misfortune  of  able  and  honest  men,  that  they  unwit- 
tingly argue  upon  principles  which,  when  formally  stated,  they  would 
unhesitatingly  repudiate.  Many  attempts  to  construct  new  roads  through 
the  tangled  wilds  of  the  Communion  controversy  only  result  in  the  discov- 
ery of  the  old  open-communion  thoroughfare ;  and  the  rejoicing  of  those 
who  make  the  discovery  is  partly  attributable  to  the  novelty  of  their  situa- 
tion, and  to  the  fact  that  they  have  not  yet  followed  the  road  through,  to  its 
disagreeable  and  unscriptural  terminus.  The  best  service  that  can  be  ren- 
dered to  such  as  have  thus  lost  their  way,  and  have  perchance  led  others 
into  the  same  error,  is  to  show  by  map  and  compass  that  they  are  journey- 
ing in  a  wrong  direction,  and  that  the  path  they  travel  conducts  them  to  a 
very  different  point  from  that  which  they  seek. 

The  first  of  the  unconscious  assumptions  that  underlie  the  arguments 
to  which  we  allude  is  this,  that  the  practice  of  the  churches  is  a  sort  of  com- 
mon law  which,  when  codified,  may  supplement  or  qualify  the  law  of  the  New 
Testament.  It  is  true  that,  in  some  professedly  Baptist  churches,  the  ancient 
principles  of  the  denomination  are  not  carried  out  with  absolute  logical  con- 
sistency. In  certain  churches,  there  is  a  growing  tendency  to  pass  lightly 
over  the  question  of  communion-faith  in  their  admission  of  members,  and  to 
refrain  from  discipline  in  cases  where  members  practice  occasional  commun- 
ion with  churches  not  of  our  faith  and  order.  We  have  sometimes  known 
instances  where  orthodox  Baptist  deacons  have  not  refused  the  bread  and 
wine  to  Pedo-baptist  brethren  who  took  upon  themselves  the  responsibility  of 
remaining  at  an  ordinary  celebration  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  These  and  sundry 
other  irregular  and  exceptional  cases  convince  our  critics  that  the  old  bottles 
of  ancient  law  are  not  strong  enough  or  large  enough  to  hold  the  new  wine 
of  Christian  enlightenment  and  charity.  They  therefore  proceed  to  elevate 
practice  itself  into  law  —  to  make  irregularity  its  own  voucher  —  to  legalize 
license  —  to  turn  permission  under  sufferance  into  acknowledgment  of  fun- 
damental right. 

It  scarcely  needs  to  be  pointed  out  that  this  is  a  method  the  reverse  of 
scientific,  evangelical,  or  Baptist.  Here  is  unconsciously  assumed  the 
fundamental  principle  of  all  unprotestant  ecclesiasticism  —  the  principle 
that  not  only  God,  but  man  also,  makes  law  ;  that  the  church,  equally  with 
the  Scriptures,  is  the  standard  of  appeal  in  questions  of  duty ;  and  that  the 
analogy  of  faith  is  to  be  looked  to  as  a  primary  source  of  truth,  instead  of 


*  Printed  in  The  Examiner,  Jan.  21, 1875. 

245 


246  UNCONSCIOUS  ASSUMPTIONS 

being  a  secondary  source,  of  value  only  when  it  corroborates  conclusions 
drawn  directly  and  at  first  hand  from  the  word  of  God.  How  far  such  a 
principle  as  this  might  lead,  history  furnishes  sufficient  witness.  When 
stated  in  words,  it  would  be  rejected  with  marked  energy  by  some  who  are 
dissatisfied  with  our  common  practice.  This  proves  without  doubt  that 
they  will  not  speedily  go  over  to  Presbyterianism  or  to  Home,  but  it  does 
not  make  it  any  the  less  certain  that  their  method  is  fatally  incorrect,  and 
that  this  seeking  for  the  law  in  human  custom  and  observance,  instead  of 
conforming  human  custom  and  observance  to  the  law,  would  slowly,  perhaps, 
but  surely,  work  the  ruin  of  the  church  of  Christ. 

Bat  is  there  an  original,  all-comprehending,  all-compelling  law  ?  Ah,  that 
is  the  question  !  When  our  new  guides  speak  of  an  authoritative  order  of 
the  ordinances,  we  can  hardly  avoid  believing  that  they  have  some  just 
notion  of  a  divine  prescription  which  makes  the  yea  and  nay  of  men  of  little 
account  in  the  comparison.  But  there  is  no  explaining  the  conclusions  at 
which  they  arrive,  without  allowing  that  there  is  a  second  underlying  assump- 
tion equally  erroneous  with  the  first, —  this,  namely,  that  there  is  no  fixed, 
complete  and  binding  system  of  church  organization  revealed  in  the  New 
Testament.  It  is  possible  to  hold  to  an  authority  which  is  merely  the 
authority  of  rational  order.  It  is  possible  to  believe  in  a  merely  germinal 
New  Testament  church.  It  is  possible  to  urge  the  obligatoriness  of  church 
ordinances  upon  grounds  of  expediency.  Our  friends  do  not  do  this.  But 
when  they  urge  that  impulse  may  break  over  this  order,  and  that  faith  is 
above  law,  we  seem  to  see  the  unconscious  influence  of  some  development- 
theory  of  the  church,  that  gives  to  the  free  spirit  power  to  mould  and  shape 
Christ's  ordinances,  or  to  dispense  with  them  at  its  will. 

There  are  two  logical  theories,  and  two  only.  Either  the  law  of  Christ  is 
adequate,  or  it  is  not.  Either  men  may  change  it,  or  they  may  not.  Either 
the  New  Testament  furnishes  us  with  the  model  of  the  church,  or  it  does 
not.  If  it  does,  then  there  are  no  exceptions  to  its  rule, —  a  divine  law  is 
far-seeing,  and  needs  no  change.  Upon  this  ground  the  Baptist  brotherhood 
have  stood,  and  do  stand.  But  there  is  other  ground,  not  so  Scriptural,  but 
yet  logically  consistent  with  itself.  It  is  the  ground  that  there  is  no  definite 
or  adequate  model  of  church-organization  in  the  New  Testament  —  at  least, 
none  that  binds  the  conscience  and  practice  of  the  church  through  all  time. 
Upon  this  theory,  a  man  may  unite  himself  to  the  Christian  church  and  sub- 
mit to  her  ordinances,  according  as  he  finds  it  expedient  or  convenient. 
Truth  in  this  matter  is  entirely  subjective.  The  church,  like  an  ox-yoke,  is 
useful, —  when  its  apparent  usefulness  ceases,  let  it  go.  The  Christian's 
individual  relation  to  Christ,  this  is  the  only  real  and  binding  thing. 
Churches  are  chance  assemblages  of  believers.  Church  organization 
expresses  no  living  truth, — let  it  follow  the  customs  of  the  times  or  the 
inclination  of  the  moment.  Church  government, —  let  it  be  autocratic  in 
Italy ,  democratic  in  America,  and  double-headed  in  Japan.  God  has  planned 
a  gospel  for  all  men,  but  he  has  not  planned  a  church.  And  then,  if  the 
New  Testament  is  not  a  sufficient  authority  for  practice,  what  reason  is  there 
to  believe  that  it  is  a  sufficient  authority  for  doctrine  ? 

Shall  we  be  Plymouth  Brethren,  or  shall  we  be  Baptists  ?  Either  one  of 
the  two  we  can  be,  and  preserve  some  show  of  logical  consistency.  But  to 


OF    COMMUNION    POLEMICS.  247 

be  both  at  once, —  that  is  a  riding  of  two  horses  which  is  not  only  difficult, 
but  for  any  length  of  time  impossible  to  a  thinking  man.  And  why  should 
we  attempt  impossible  tasks  ?  We  have  such  a  thing  as  church  organization 
in  the  New  Testament.  There  are  specified  qualifications  for  membership  ; 
there  are  stated  meetings ;  there  are  regularly  elected  officers ;  there  is  a 
custom  sanctioned  and  an  order  enjoined  by  the  apostles ;  there  are  ordi- 
nances delivered  to  the  care  of  the  church  ;  there  are  letters  and  contributions 
aim  registers  ;  there  is  common  work  to  be  done  ;  there  is  common  discipline 
to  be  exercised,  —  what  more  do  we  need  to  constitute  a  thorough  organiza- 
tion ?  And  if  Christ's  promise  was  fulfilled,  and  the  divine  Spirit  led  the 
Apostles  into  all  truth,  in  their  church- teaching  and  church-building,  then 
what  right  have  we  to  admit  exceptions  to  the  acknowledged  order  of  God's 
house  ?  Our  rights  in  such  an  organization  are  not  rights  —  they  are  only 
privileges,  whose  enjoyment  is  conditioned  upon  obedience  ;  and  faith  car- 
ries with  it  the  privilege  of  Communion,  only  as  it  implies  obedience  to  all 
things  which  Christ  has  commanded. 

But  let  us  come  to  a  third  assumption, —  still  remembering  that  none  of 
these  are  acknowledged  or  could  be  in  words  —  for  they  are  too  baldly  false 
for  any  Baptist  openly  to  acknowledge.  It  is  an  assumption,  nevertheless, 
without  which  the  fabric  of  the  new  doctrine  would  topple  over  for  sheer 
one-sidedness.  It  is  this  :  The  ordinances  are  purely  formal  and  external, 
instead  of  being  living  expressions  of  the  inmost  realities  of  the  Christian 
faith.  Some  such  postulate  as  this  must  be  supposed,  before  we  can  com- 
prehend such  statements  as  that  the  ritual  is  so  subordinate  to  the  spiritual, 
that  no  ritual  deficiencies  can  justly  prevent  the  exercise  of  so  called  spiritual 
rights.  By  what  strange  confusion  is  it  possible  to  demand  ceremonial 
privileges  without  ceremonial  qualifications  ?  Only  by  forgetting  that  all 
ritual  of  God's  appointment  is  profoundly  spiritual,  and  that  disorder  in 
ritual  falsifies  the  truth  which  the  ritual  was  ordained  to  symbolize  and 
represent.  Why  do  we  hold  so  strenuously  to  the  duty  and  privilege  of 
Christian  baptism  ?  Because  of  the  meaning  of  a  Greek  word,  or  an  aesthetic 
fancy  for  a  form  ?  God  forbid !  We  hold  to  baptism,  because  it  is  the 
divinely  appointed  vehicle  and  symbol  of  the  great  central  truth  of  the 
•Christian  scheme  —  the  death,  burial  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ,  and 
our  death  to  sin  and  resurrection  to  new  life  in  him.  Why  do  we  hold  to 
the  invariable  precedence  of  Baptism  to  the  Supper  ?  Because  the  ordinance 
which  symbolizes  regeneration  must  go  before  the  ordinance  which  symbol- 
izes sanctifi cation,  as  birth  must  go  before  nourishment,  and  life  before  its 
sustenance.  Instead  of  being  void  of  doctrinal  significance,  these  ordinances 
and  their  order  are  doctrines  incarnate.  Give  up  immersion,  and  you  destroy 
one  great  memorial  of  the  Savior's  death  and  of  the  radical  change  which, 
by  communion  with  that  death,  is  wrought  in  every  believing  soul.  Alter 
the  order  of  the  ordinances  —  grant  that  men  are  qualified  to  partake  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  without  Baptism,  and  you  teach  the  world  that  men  may  be 
.sanctified  without  regeneration ;  that  there  can  be  a  holy  life  without  the 
new-creating  power  of  God. 

And  so  the  depreciation  of  the  ritual  leads  to  a  denial  of  the  spiritual. 
For  the  sake  of  the  spiritual  we  must  hold  to  the  ritual.  We  are  as  far  from 
believing  in  a  special  sacramental  grace,  communicated  after  some  outward 


248  UNCONSCIOUS  ASSUMPTIONS. 

fashion  through  the  ordinances,  as  any  Swiss  Reformer  ever  was.  But  all 
the  more  sacred  do  the  ordinances  and  their  appointed  order  seem  to  us, 
when  we  remember  that  their  only  power  is  the  power  they  exert  as  monu- 
mental symbols  of  the  saving  truth  of  God.  To  change  them,  or  to  permit 
their  change  without  protest,  is  more  than  to  give  up  a  form  ;  it  is  to  strike 
a  blow  at  the  very  heart  of  the  Christian  faith.  For  this  reason  it  seems  to 
us  that  the  indirect  apology  for  violations  of  the  Scriptural  order  to  which 
we  have  alluded,  and  the  suggestion  that  impulse  and  sentiment  may  justify 
a  Christian  in  overriding  that  order,  can  have  no  other  foundation  than  an 
unconscious  assumption  that  Christ's  ordinances  are,  like  some  human  ordi- 
nances, mere  matters  of  form,  instead  of  being  what  they  are,  full  of  spirit 
and  life. 

A  last  assumption  which  we  must  notice  is,  that  the  laissez  faire,  or  let- 
alone  principle,  will  ensure  the  downfall  of  error,  and  the  peace  and  progress 
of  the  church.  There  are  a  multitude  of  quiet  brethren  who,  like  Erasmus, 
deplore  so  great  strife  about  matters  so  small.  Alas,  that  we  should  find 
some  of  our  own  brethren  among  those  who  count  the  difference  between 
truth  and  error,  even  in  the  matter  of  the  ordinances,  unworthy  of  the  bar- 
ing of  their  swords  !  Let  them  deplore  it  as  they  will,  yet  they  cannot 
ignore  the  fact  that  the  battle  would  never  have  raged  for  centuries 
around  these  ordinances,  if  they  had  not  been  the  symbols  of  God's 
truth  and  the  banners  of  the  church.  It  is  because  the  family,  the 
State  and  the  church  are  divine  in  their  origin,  that  they  are  so  constantly 
attacked  by  errorists  of  every  sort.  It  is  because  they  are  endangered,  that 
the  ordinances  are  delivered  to  the  church  as  a  trust  to  be  guarded  for  her 
Lord.  Nothing  will  take  care  of  itself  in  this  degenerate  world  —  least  of 
all,  moral  and  religious  truth.  The  church  is  its  pillar  and  ground, — if  she 
fail  to  support  it  and  hold  it  forth  before  the  world,  the  truth  will  go  down. 
As  to  this  specific  matter  of  the  order  of  the  ordinances,  history  negatives 
the  notion  that  Baptism  can  maintain  itself  when  the  church  admits  the 
uubaptized  to  her  communion.  If  spiritual  union  with  Christ  justifies  us  in 
coming  to  the  table  without  Baptism,  it  equally  justifies  in  coming  into  the 
church  without  Baptism  —  it  equally  justifies  any  and  every  neglect,  any 
and  every  sin.  The  religion  of  sentiment  has  many  a  sad  illustration  in 
individual  transgression.  Let  the  church  as  a  body  accept  the  religion  of 
sentiment,  instead  of  the  warrior  spirit  that  gives  battle  rather  than  yield 
one  inch  of  truth,  and  the  serpent  she  was  to  have  trodden  beneath  her  feet 
will  strangle  her  within  his  folds. 

We  have  a  better  hope  for  the  church  than  this  —  a  better  hope  for  our 
Baptist  churches.  They  have  grown  to  be  many  and  strong,  by  faithfulness 
to  their  convictions.  They  will  grow  in  future,  not  by  disobeying  the  organic 
law  of  their  constitution,  nor  by  welcoming  those  who  disobey  it,  but  by 
keeping  the  ordinances  as  they  were  first  delivered.  Upon  the  assumptions 
we  have  mentioned,  no  proper  keeping  of  the  ordinances  upon  the  part  of 
the  church  is  possible.  She  is  to  set  the  table  for  all  who  choose  to  come. 
She  is  to  baptize  without  question  all  who  present  themselves.  If  any 
theory  could  be  devised  which  would  more  quickly  merge  the  church  in  the 
world,  and  turn  the  Holy  Place  of  the  Temple  into  a  Court  of  the  Gentiles, 
we  know  not  what  it  is.  Nor  is  the  simple  maintenance  of  the  Scriptural 


OF   COMMUNION   POLEMICS  249 

order,  as  we  understand  it,  Eitualism  or  Ecclesiasticism  or  Pharisaism.  We 
pass  no  judgment  upon  the  honesty  of  Christians  of  other  names.  We  da 
not  deny  to  their  organizations  the  title  of  churches.  But  we  do  hold  that 
they  are  churches  irregularly  constituted,  and  that  their  celebration  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  is  a  defective  one,  because  they  have  not  obeyed  Christ's 
ordinance  of  Baptism.  We  give  them  fellowship  in  all  else,  but  we  can- 
not give  them  fellowship  in  their  church-order  and  communion  without 
stultifying  ourselves,  and  proclaiming  our  own  denominational  existence  to 
be  impertinence  and  schism.  Nay,  we  cannot  withhold  our  protest  against 
these  irregularities  without  being  false  to  Christ  and  his  truth,  and  imperil- 
ing the  whole  future  of  his  church. 

Necessity  knows  no  law,  and  David  ate  the  show-bread  without  disrespect 
to  the  Jewish  ritual.  But  impulse  and  the  yearning  spirit  are  under  law  to 
Christ.  Our  love  is  to  abound  in  knowledge  and  in  all  judgment.  Because 
the  Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  we  have  no  warrant  for  unnecessary  labor 
on  that  day.  That  would  be  to  deny  that  anything  was  made  for  man.  In 
short,  no  such  necessity  is  upon  us  as  will  justify  a  breaking  over  of  Christ's 
appointed  order.  Love  will  not  do  it,  for  love  will  lead  to  obedience  to  the 
Scriptural  standards,  and  even  in  the  pain  of  sacrificing  a  ritual  enjoyment, 
will  find  the  evidence  of  its  discipleship,  and  the  assurance  of  greater  near- 
ness to  the  heart  of  Christ  than  irregular  participation  of  the  Supper  can 
ever  give.  With  sorrow  we  say  it  —  but  said  it  must  be  —  it  is  the  unfaith- 
fulness of  our  Pedobaptist  brethren  to  Christ's  order  that  deprives  us  of  the 
privilege  of  communing  with  them.  We  must  hold  them,  and  not  ourselves,, 
responsible  for  our  loss.  And  we  hold  any  and  every  attempt  to  palliate  or 
ignore  this  unfaithfulness,  to  be  not  a  help  to  peace  but  a  hindrance  ;  not  a 
contribution  to  the  settlement  of  differences,  but  a  mere  patchwork  treaty 
that  leaves  unnoticed  every  main  question  at  issue ;  not  a  synthesis  of  truths 
which,  in  spite  of  superficial  antagonism,  have  an  inner  unity,  but  a  for- 
mulation of  essential  and  irreconcilable  contradictions.  For  this  reason  we 
have  confidence  that  Baptists  will  still  stand  for  purity,  and  leave  God  to 
take  care  of  the  peace.  Peace  will  come,  not  by  the  love  that  breaks  down 
and  overrides  organic  law,  but  by  the  love  that  holds  and  holds  forth  the 
truth. 


XXI. 

THE  TEACHER'S  GUIDE  AND  HELPER.* 


This  word  "ministers"  does  not  designate  the  class  of  persons  whom  we 
call  preachers  or  pastors.  It  means  simply  "servants,"  "helpers,"  "pur- 
veyors. "  In  this  sense  every  Christian  is  a  minister,  for  every  Christian  is 
a  servant  of  the  gospel.  I  take  the  text,  therefore,  as  the  basis  of  an  address 
to  Sabbath  school  teachers,  and  in  fact  to  all  who  are  called  to  instruct  the 
young  or  to  exert  religious  influence  over  others.  All  such  are  set  in  various 
ways  to  teach  the  truth.  It  is  a  most  serious  responsibility.  Paul  felt  it  to 
be  so  in  his  own  case.  In  the  passage  that  immediately  precedes  the  text, 
he  likens  his  teaching  to  the  perfumes  scattered  to  the  air,  at  the  triumphal 
entry  of  a  conqueror.  To  the  victorious  soldiery,  those  floating  odors  were 
the  signs  of  freedom  and  reward  after  the  toils  of  the  campaign ;  to  the 
captives  whom  they  guarded,  those  same  odors  were  the  sign  that  the  time 
had  come  for  them  to  die.  So  all  teaching  of  Christian  truth  is,  to  those 
who  hear  it,  a  savor  of  life  unto  life  or  of  death  unto  death.  It  makes  a 
higher  heaven  for  those  who  are  saved,  but  a  deeper  hell  for  those  who 
perish. 

Every  earnest  teacher  will  surely  echo  Paul's  own  words  :  ' '  Who  is  suffi- 
cient for  these  things?"  It  is  well  that  he  can  add  as  Paul  does  :  "  But  our 
sufficiency  is  of  God,  who  has  qualified  us  to  be  ministers  or  servants  or 
purveyors  of  a  new  covenant,  not  of  the  letter  but  of  the  Spirit. "  It  is  the 
Holy  Spirit  of  whom  Paul  speaks.  Over  against  the  powerless  letter  of  the 
Old  Testament  or  Covenant,  he  sees  the  Spirit  of  life  and  power  that  dis- 
tinguishes the  New.  To  be  the  ministers  or  servants  of  this  New  Covenant 
is  to  be  the  ministers  or  servants  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  This  is  the  character- 
istic blessing  and  strength  of  every  true  teacher  that  he  is  an  assistant  or 
helper  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  qualified  for  this  service  by  being  filled  and  guided, 
illuminated  and  energized,  by  the  Holy  Spirit  whom  he  serves. 

We  are  familiar  with  the  thought  that  the  teacher  is  a  minister  and  servant 
of  Christ.  We  are  not  so  familiar  with  the  thought  that  the  teacher  is  a 
minister  and  servant  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  My  object  to-day  is  to  show  that 
this  latter  conception  of  the  teacher's  vocation  is  of  the  greatest  doctrinal 
and  practical  importance.  Not  only  God's  methods  and  nature,  but  also 
man's  ignorance  and  powerlessness,  make  it  indispensable  that  the  teacher 
should  maintain  this  continuous  relation  to  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  text  implies 
all  this.  When  it  calls  the  teacher  a  minister  of  the  Spirit,  it  implies  two 
things  :  first,  that  he  is  a  receiver  from  God ;  and  secondly,  that  he  is  a  com- 


*  A  sermon  preached  before  the  Sunday  School  Convention,  Boston,  May  20, 1877,  on 
the  text,  2  Cor.  3:  6— "Able  ministers  of  the  New  Testament,  not  of  the  letter,  but  of 
the  Spirit." 

250 


THE  TEACHER'S  GUIDE  AND  HELPER.  251 

mnnicator  to  men  of  what  he  has  received.     Let  us  consider  the  teacher's 
need  of  the  Holy  Spirit  from  each  of  these  points  of  view. 

My  first  proposition  then  is  this :  that  tne  teacher  is  wholly  dependent 
upon  the  Holy  Spirit,  because  God's  methods  and  nature  are  such,  that  with- 
out the  Holy  Spirit's  working  there  can  be  no  reception  of  any  spiritual 
blessing  from  God  on  the  part  of  the  teacher  himself.  Let  us  appropriate 
a  phrase  of  recent  scepticism  to  a  Christian  use.  There  is  "a  Power  that 
makes  for  righteousness. "  That  Power  is  no  impersonal  abstraction,  but 
the  personal  Holy  Spirit.  And  by  this  I  do  not  mean  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
is  simply  the  invisible  presence  of  Christ.  It  is  more  than  that.  In  a  true 
sense,  the  work  of  the  Spirit  is  a  separate  one  from  the  work  of  Christ,  and 
we  may  contrast  the  two.  One  feature  of  the  contrast  is  this :  While  Christ 
is  the  organ  of  external  revelation,  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  organ  or  agent  of 
internal  revelation.  And  we  learn  what  this  means,  by  referring  to  our  own 
inner  experience.  Christ  had  come,  his  cross  had  been  set  up,  his  death 
had  been  accomplished,  his  word  had  proclaimed  salvation,  but  in  spite  of 
this  external  revelation  we  saw  nothing  in  him  to  attract  us.  In  his  cross 
\vt-  saw  no  power  to  save.  The  great  truths  of  Christianity  were  like  the 
features  of  the  landscape  long  before  the  sun  has  risen  ;  mountain  and  plain 
and  stream  were  there,  but  they  were  shrouded  in  darkness,  or  only  half 
visible  through  the  gloom.  But  when  the  Holy  Spirit  came,  with  his  quick- 
ening power,  it  was  as  if,  in  an  instant,  that  same  landscape  were  flooded 
with  the  light  and  radiance  of  the  morning  sun.  What  was  before  hidden 
or  uncertain,  now  stood  out  clear  and  bright  and  glorious.  Mountain  and 
plain  and  stream  were  there  before  ;  the  light  did  not  create,  it  only  revealed 
them.  So  the  Holy  Spirit  was  the  sunlight  that  made  real  to  us  the  truth 
of  Christ — truth  which  existed  before,  but  which  was  as  hidden  from  us,  as 
if  it  had  not  been.  Or  suppose  a  blind  man  led  out,  in  the  broad  noonday, 
into  the  centre  of  that  same  landscape, — you  may  describe  the  beauty  of  it, 
but  to  the  blind  man  your  description  is  but  empty  words.  But  now, 
imagine  that  some  oculist  of  surpassing  skill  could,  even  while  the  blind 
man  stood  there,  remove  the  cataract  from  his  eyes,  and  perfectly  restore 
the  sight.  At  once  the  whole  glory  of  the  scene  bursts  upon  him.  So, 
until  the  Holy  Spirit  works  a  change  within  us,  Christ  and  his  truth  are  hid. 
They  are  there  —  eternal  verities  of  God, —  but  we  have  no  eyes  to  see  them. 
Until  the  Holy  Spirit  gives  spiritual  discernment,  and  so  turns  the  outer 
word  into  an  inner  word,  the  natural  man  will  never  see  the  truth. 

This  illustrates  what  I  mean  by  saying  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  organ 
of  internal  revelation,  while  Christ  is  the  organ  of  external  revelation.  But 
there  is  another  point  of  contrast  between  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  and 
the  work  of  Christ.  It  is  this  :  While  all  forth-putting,  outgoing  activity  of 
the  Godhead  is  the  work  of  Christ,  the  returning  movement,  the  drawing 
back  to  God,  is  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Consider  what  this  means. 
All  forth-putting,  outgoing  activity  of  the  Godhead  is  the  work  of  Christ, 
whether  it  be  exhibited  in  nature,  in  providence  or  in  redemption.  It  is  he 
through  whom  the  world  was  created.  He  upholds  and  governs  all  things. 
Gravitation  is  the  expression  of  his  will.  History  is  the  marshaling  of  his 
forces.  Incarnation  and  atonement  are  his  comings  into  time,  and  creature- 
fihip,  and  obligation  to  law.  Again  I  say,  all  forth-putting,  outgoing  activ- 


252  THE  TEACHER'S  GUIDE  AND  HELPER. 

ity  of  the  Godhead  is  the  work  of  Christ.  But  011  the  other  hand,  the 
refluent  wave,  the  returning  movement,  the  drawing  back  to  God,  is  the 
work  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  It  'is  through  the  eternal  Spirit  that  Christ 
"offered  himself  without  spot  to  God  "  ;  it  is  by  this  "one  Spirit"  that  the 
church  throughout  the  world  has  "access  unto  the  Father"  ;  it  is  through 
him  that  fallen  creatures  are  "convinced  of  sin,"  are  led  to  Christ,  and  are 
brought  back  to  God.  All  true  worship  must  be  offered  "in  Spirit  and  in 
truth. "  All  prayer  and  service,  all  aspiration  and  all  life,  are  normal  and 
noble,  and  worthy  of  regard  from  God  or  man,  only  as  they  are  parts  or 
results  of  that  great  movement  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  which  draws  all  things 
t D ward  God,  their  end. 

Go  with  me  yet  one  step  further.  We  have  been  speaking  of  manifesta- 
tions, but  if  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Spirit  are  manifestations,  they  manifest 
something.  Their  work  in  time  reveals  a  secret  of  eternity.  The  being  of 
God  is  disclosed  to  us.  Christ  is  the  Word,  spoken  before  creatures  were, 
and  when  there  was  none  but  God  to  hear.  God  expresses  himself,  and 
knows  himself,  only  through  the  Word.  As  the  sun  in  the  heavens  is  a  true 
sun  only  as  it  pours  forth  its  radiance,  so  God  is  truly  God  only  as  he  shines 
foith  in  him  who  is  the  brightness  of  his  glory,  and  the  express  image  of  his 
person.  The  sunlight  is  derived  from  the  sun,  and  yet  is  as  old  as  the  sun 
itself ;  and  the  Word  is  derived  from  God,  yet  there  never  was  a  time  when 
he  began  to  be.  In  the  nature  of  God  from  eternity  to  eternity  there  is 
outgoing,  expression,  self -communication.  Christ's  "  goings  forth  are  from 
everlasting." 

So  the  Spirit,  and  the  work  of  the  Spirit,  belong  not  simply  to  time  but  to 
eternity.  In  the  Spirit,  we  are  to  conceive  of  the  divine  activity  and  thought 
as  returning  whence  it  came,  and  as  completing  its  movement.  Here  is  a 
ceaseless  process  of  the  divine  mind  ;  but  there  is  more  than  process  — 
there  is  life,  fulness  of  life,  the  energy  of  an  infinite  will,  the  blessedness  of 
absolute  and  perfect  communion.  For  it  is  a  personal  Spirit,  just  as  it  is  a 
personal  Word,  of  whom  we  speak.  God  without  distinctions  of  personality 
would  be  the  living  God  no  longer,  he  would  be  a  lonely  being,  dependent 
upon  the  unsatisfying  association  of  a  finite  universe,  or  an  unconscious 
being,  destitute  of  mind  and  heart,  and  identical  with  the  universe  itself. 
If  there  be  one  God  at  all,  then  that  one  God  must  be  in  some  sense  three. 
If  we  give  up  the  Trinity,  we  must  give  up  all  idea  of  a  living  Unity. 

And  so  we  reach  the  proper  point  of  view  from  which  to  regard  the  teach- 
er's relation  to  the  Spirit.  The  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  necessary  to- 
human  salvation,  because  it  is  necessary  to  God  himself.  All  his  being  is 
grounded  in  this  life-movement  of  the  Spirit,  as  it  is  grounded  iu  the  life- 
movement  of  the  Son.  Let  us  not  make  the  finite  and  the  infinite  change 
places,  and  fancy  God  to  be  less  than  the  things  which  he  has  made.  The: 
mighty  tides  of  life  that  ebb  and  flow  on  the  far  shores  of  the  universe,  only 
shadow  forth  the  unseen  and  unseeable  floods  that  go  and  return  within  the 
bosom  of  God  himself.  All  finite  things  together  are  but  the  "breath  of 
his  mouth,"  a  drop  of  dew  upon  the  fringe  of  his  garment,  a  "whisper  of 
him,"  while  the  "thunder  of  his  power"  is  heard  and  understood  by  none. 
And  all  the  operations  of  his  grace  are  only  partial  manifestations  of  that 
transcendent  movement  which  goes  on  forever  in  God.  By  working  love. 


THE  TEACHER'S  GUIDE  AND  HELPER.  ^53 

.tind  holiness  in  us,  and  drawing  us  through  Christ  and  in  the  Spirit  unto  the 
Father,  he  seeks  to  reproduce  in  us  in  our  limited  measure,  the  eternal  pro- 
cess of  the  divine  mind.  There  is  One  toward  whom  the  whole  creation 
moves,  because  it  partakes  of  his  internal  movement  toward  himself.  The 
Holy  Spirit  can  save  men  only  by  drawing  them  into  his  own  etherial  cur- 
rents of  affection  and  will,  and  thus  bearing  them  on  to  the  meeting-point 
of  all  his  blessed  winds,  in  God. 

If  any  have  been  impatient  of  this  peculiar  treatment  of  my  theme,  as  if 
it  were  too  mysterious  and  lofty,  I4cau  only  urge  them  to  a  close  study  of 
Scripture,  and  of  their  own  experience.  The  teacher  who  has  wearied  of 
his  own  futile  efforts,  will  not  think  it  impractical  or  valueless  to  connect 
his  labor  for  the  recovery  of  others  to  their  allegiance  to  God,  with  the 
ceaseless  divine  operation  which  draws  all  things,  by  the  celestial  gravitation 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  to  himself.  The  Scandinavian  mythology  tells  of  a  mor- 
tal who  attempted  to  drain  a  goblet  of  the  gods.  The  more  he  drank,  the 
more  there  was  to  drink.  His  amazement  grew,  until  he  found  that  the 
goblet  was  invisibly  connected  with  the  sea,  and  that  to  empty  it,  he  must 
drink  the  ocean  dry.  Surely  there  can  be  no  comfort  or  strength  BO  great 
as  this,  to  flnd  that  in  our  labor  for  the  souls  of  men  our  work  is  supervised 
and  supplemented,  and  energized,  by  One  whose  resources  are  vaster  than 
the  ocean,  and  whose  activity  is  as  all-reaching  as  the  tidal  wave  that  sweeps 
round  the  world. 

But  my  second  proposition  demands  attention  now,  this  namely,  that  the 
teacher  is  wholly  dependent  upon  the  Holy  Spirit,  because  without  the 
Spirit's  influences,  he  is  utterly  powerless  to  communicate  to  others  the 
truth  of  God  in  such  a  way  as  to  sanctify  or  save  them.  For,  mark  well 
the  fact,  that  the  teacher  is  a  real  communicator  of  the  truth.  Divine  effi- 
ciency secures  and  honors  the  active  exercise  of  his  human  powers.  The 
Holy  Spirit  does  not  supersede  or  absorb  the  earthly  means.  Mind  is 
to  be  reached  through  mind  and  heart  through  heart,  and,  in  a  just  sense, 
true  teaching  by  true  teachers  is  the  salvation  of  the  world.  Now  the 
first  element  of  true  teaching  is  a  real  possession  of  the  truth  on  the  part 
of  the  teacher  himself.  And  by  the  truth  I  do  not  mean  truth  of  science, 
philosophy  or  history,  but  that  particular  truth  with  regard  to  God,  man, 
and  God's  way  of  saving  man,  which  is  made  known  in  Scripture.  "The 
truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus,"  the  truth  adapted  to  man's  religious  needs,  this  is 
the  special  truth  of  which  the  teacher  needs  to  become  possessor,  and  which 
is  to  be  the  substance  of  all  his  teaching.  This  truth  may  take  as  many 
forms  as  an  element  in  chemistry.  It  may  be  crystalized  into  the  Bible 
text ;  it  may  be  held  in  solution  in  the  mind  ;  or  it  may  float  about  in  the 
shape  of  airy  maxim  and  unconscious  influence.  But  whatever  its  form  or 
distinctness,  some  truth  with  regard  to  sin  and  Christ  and  salvation  is  the 
agency  in  connection  with  which  the  Holy  Spirit  works  every  change, 
whether  of  conversion  or  of  sanctitication.  The  Holy  Spirit  makes  sensitive 
the  heart  as  the  photographer  prepares  his  plate.  But  unless  the  object  to 
be  photographed  is  set  before  the  camera,  and  the  light  from  that  object  is 
poured  in  upon  the  plate,  no  picture  results.  And  so,  in  conjunction  with 
the  direct  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  upon  the  heart,  there  must  go  the  pres- 
entation of  God's  truth  in  its  proper  light,  if  that  truth  is  ever  to  be  impressed 
upon  the  heart  and  to  leave  its  image  there. 


#54  THE  TEACHER'S  GUIDE  AND  HELPER. 

Let  us  never  forget,  moreover,  that  truth  with  regard  to  conduct,  if  it 
is  to  have  this  transforming  power,  must  be  incarnated  in  living  persons. 
Abstract  precepts  do  not  move  us, —  they  must  be  translated  into  life. 
Therefore  it  is  that  he  who  is  the  personal  Truth  came  in  human  form,  and 
lived  a  human  life.  One  look  at  the  suffering  love  and  the  atoning  purity 
of  Christ,  can  do  more  to  melt  and  mould  the  hard  and  the  selfish  than  all 
the  maxims  of  all  the  sages.  And  this  same  necessity  of  embodying  the 
truth,  leads  to  the  appointment  of  Christian  teachers.  They  are  to  speak 
the  truth,  and  to  lend  to  it,  as  they  speak,  the  vividness  of  present  reality. 
They  are  to  exemplify  the  truth  and  to  show  it  in  its  results  —  clarity  of 
thought,  purity  of  emotion,  loftiness  of  aim.  If  you  once  think  what  it  is 
to  speak  to  others  the  truth  with  regard  to  Christ,  you  will  see  that,  without 
the  help  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  it  is  not  within  the  power  of  man.  To  speak 
the  truth,  one  must  have  the  truth  and  know  the  truth.  No  parrot-like 
repetition  of  the  words  of  Scripture  is  true  teaching.  The  words  of  Christ 
—  the  real  substance  of  what  he  spoke  —  were  spirit  and  life.  It  is  the 
ideas  behind  the  words,  that  are  to  be  communicated.  And  to  get  posser-- 
sion  of  these  ideas  is,  to  use  a  German  idiom,  to  think  one's  self  into  God's 
thought ;  it  is  to  press  through  the  veil  into  the  inner  sanctuary  of  divine 
truth  ;  it  is  to  see  it  for  one's  self,  as  Moses  saw  the  Shekinah-glory,  and  to 
come  forth  from  the  holy  place,  to  speak  it  with  burning  lips  and  rejoicing 
heart  to  others. 

I  do  not  know  how  any  human  being  can  thus  get  possession  of  the  truth 
he  is  to  give  to  others,  without  the  help  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  I  see  the 
Ethiopian  eunuch,  on  the  desert  road,  wearily  and  vainly  pondering  the 
words  of  the  prophet.  "  Understandest  thou  what  thou  readest  ?  "  "How 
can  I  except  some  one  should  guide  me?  "  Ah,  man  needs  a  guide  !  The 
eunuch  needed  the  guidance  of  Philip, —  but  Philip  could  never  have  guided 
the  eunuch,  unless  he  himself  had  had  the  guidance  of  the  Spirit.  Only 
that  enabled  him  to  speak  as  the  oracle  of  God,  and  to  preach  Jesus  so  that 
the  Lord  High  Treasurer  of  Can  dace's  empire  was  eager  at  once  to  profess 
his  faith  in  the  Crucified. 

I  see  two  other  New  Testament  worthies,  making  their  way  into  the 
temple.  At  the  "Beautiful  Gate,"  there  crouches  the  pitiful  shape  of  a  life- 
long cripple.  There  are  few  Avords  from  the  apostles.  But  with  the  mention 
of  the  name  of  Jesus,  that  had  wrought  so  many  wonders,  Peter  fastens  his 
eyes  steadfastly  on  the  lame  man  ;  he  grasps  him  by  the  hand  to  lift  him  to 
new  vigor  and  freedom  ;  the  very  tone  of  Peter's  voice  electrifies  the  suf- 
ferer, as  he  commands  him  "in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  of  Nazareth,"  to 
"rise  up  and  walk."  The  faith  of  Peter  flashes  at  once  into  the  cripple's 
soul.  He  leaps  to  his  feet,  and  praises  God.  It  is  a  picture  of  a  second 
element  of  all  true  teaching,  namely,  the  believing  utterance  of  the  truth. 
True  teaching  is  nothing  else  than  a  communication  of  ourselves,  an  impar- 
tation  of  our  own  life  to  others.  Truth  is  not  truth,  unless  it  is  enhaloed 
and  ensphered  in  this  atmosphere  of  faith.  Teaching  is  not  teaching,  unless 
with  the  intellectual  presentation  of  truth  there  goes  the  emotional  intensity 
and  fervor  which  indicate  profound  conviction  on  the  part  of  the  teacher. 
But  with  this  element  added,  the  least  fragment  of  truth  has  power.  The 
single  word  converts  a  soul. 


THE  TEACHER'S  GUIDE  AND  HELPER.  255 

Do  you  know  any  way  in  which  a  naturally  loveless  and  apathetic  person 
can  be  tilled  with  enthusiasm  in  view  of  truth,  so  that  he  utters  it  with  bold- 
ness and  irrepressible  delight?  Contagious  zeal  —  the  consuming  zeal  for 
purity  and  for  right,  that  like  a  flame  of  fire  kindles  and  brightens  every- 
thing it  touches  —  have  you  any  recipe  for  this  ?  The  Bible  gives  us  one. 
"Receive  ye  the  Holy  Ghost."  There  are  little  land-locked  ponds,  along 
oar  New  England  shore,  that  are  shut  away  from  the  sea  by  heavy  bars  of 
sand.  Weeks  come  and  go,  and  the  surface  of  those  ponds  is  scarcely  stirred. 
But  on  some  favored  day,  a  high  tide  overpasses  the  bar  of  sand ;  the  half- 
stagnant  waters  are  purified ;  the  land-locked  bay  is  united  once  more  to  its 
parent  flood,  and  is  stirred  to  its  deepest  depths  by  the  pulsations  of  the 
great,  deep  sea.  So  they  who  in  their  natural  state  are  sundered  from  the 
parent-heart  of  God,  are  brought  by  the  Holy  Spirit  into  union  with  him. 
What  of  themselves  they  could  not  feel,  they  feel  now.  The  Spirit  of  God 
has  communicated  to  them  something  of  the  infinite  longing  of  God's  heart, 
and  his  infinite  love  for  the  perishing.  They  not  only  pray  with  unutterable 
sighings  for  the  salvation  of  men,  but  when  they  speak  to  them  of  God  and 
of  his  mercy,  it  is  with  a  confidence  and  power  that  none  of  their  adversaries 
are  able  to  gainsay  or  resist.  And  all  because  it  is  not  they  that  speak,  but 
the  Holy  Spirit. 

True  teaching  has  the  truth,  and  speaks  the  truth  with  self-propagating 
faith.  But  there  is  yet  a  third  element  in  it.  Besides  this  real  possession 
of  the  truth,  and  believing  utterance  of  the  truth,  there  is  also  a  wise  adapta- 
tion of  the  truth  to  persons  and  to  times.  "  He  that  winneth  souls  is  wise." 
The  teacher  has  a  work  of  spiritual  surgery  to  do.  He  must  lay  bare  the 
sore  and  ugly  spots  of  character,  that  he  may  persuade  his  patient  to  undergo 
the  divine  operation  and  be  healed.  He  must  touch  with  his  scalpel  the 
tenderest  part  —  the  soul's  self-will  and  pride.  Blunt  instruments  and  mis- 
directed treatment  will  not  do.  He  must  not  imitate  the  mistakes  of  the 
apothecary,  and  administer  a  composing  draught  to  the  already  narcotized 
soul.  And  on  the  other  hand,  "the  servant  of  the  Lord  must  not  strive." 
Unhealthful  excitement  brings,  by  necessary  law  of  reaction,  a  spiritiial 
stupor  exactly  proportional  to  the  waste  of  nervous  power.  '  What  shall  I 
speak  ? '  is  a  difficult  question  for  the  conscientious  teacher  ;  '  when  shall  I 
speak  ?'  is  a  more  difficult  question  still.  "  There  is  a  time  to  speak  and 
there  is  a  time  to  keep  silence  " — and  the  suppressed  anxiety  of  a  faithful 
friend  has  often  spoken  louder  than  words.  To  be  "instant  in  season  and 
out  of  season,"  and  yet  to  be  "courteous  to  all  men;"  to  "redeem  the 
time,"  so  that  no  golden  opportunity  shall  run  to  waste,  and  yet  to  give  to 
each,  not  another's,  but  his  own  "  portion,  in  due  season,"  this,  in  matters 
of  the  soul,  requires  a  spiritual  discernment  that  is  foreign  to  mere  human 
nature. 

But  the  labyrinth  has  a  clue,  the  moment  the  teacher  regards  himself  as 
a  servant  of  the  Spirit.  He  speaks  now  "as  the  Spirit  gives  him  utterance. " 
He  is  practically,  as  well  as  theoretically,  guided  into  the  truth.  He  is 
enabled  to  interpret  God's  providences,  so  that  they  disclose  to  him  his 
duty.  And  that,  in  no  mystical  way  of  new  revelation  apart  from  Scripture, 
but  in  the  rational  and  Biblical  way  of  quickening  his  intellectual  powers, 
so  that  he  exercises  a  common  sense  that  is  sanctified,  and  a  judgment  free 


256  THE  TEACHER'S  GUIDE  AND  HELPER. 

from  selfish  bias.  Have  you  noticed  the  steady  and  quiet  strength  of  the 
man  who  trusts  the  Spirit's  word  :  "I  will  instruct  thee  and  teach  thee  in 
the  way  that  thou  shalt  go  ;  I  will  guide  thee  with  mine  eye  ?  "  The  Scrip- 
tures contrast  the  full  tide  of  rational  and  satisfied  life  which  fills  the  breast 
of  the  Christian,  with  the  wild  excitements  and  insatiable  cravings  of  him 
whose  dependence  is  upon  physical  stimulants.  "  Be  not  drunk  with  wine, 
wherein  is  excess,  but  be  filled  with  the  Spirit. "  No,  the  atmosphere  of  the 
Spirit  is  not  one  of  nitrous  oxide, —  it  is  the  pure,  cool  air  of  the  mountain- 
tops  of  truth,  and  the  more  one  breathes  it,  the  more  he  recognizes  it  as  a 
"  spirit  of  power  and  of  love  and  of  sound  mind."  A  wisdom  that  is  not  of 
this  world,  becomes  his.  The  Holy  Spirit  makes  him  not  only  a  ready  but 
a  trained  and  skilled  assistant,  in  the  work  of  bringing  others  to  Christ. 

Persons  who  are  not  naturally  attractive  have  in  these  ways  been  made 
centres  of  saving  influence.  The  bent  piece  of  soft  iron  has  no  natural  power 
to  draw  other  iron  to  itself, — but  attach  it  to  the  battery,  and  it  becomes  a 
magnet,  that  draws  to  itself  everything  within  its  range.  Sunder  its  con- 
nection with  the  copper  and  the  zinc,  and  all  power  is  gone,  but  thus  con- 
nected, it  is  its  very  nature  to  attract.  So  let  God's  Holy  Spirit  take 
possession  of  the  teacher  and  he  becomes  a  magnet,  to  draw  those  whom  he 
instructs  to  God.  Virtue  goes  forth  from  him.  He  becomes  a  living  force 
for  good.  Borne  himself  upon  the  mighty  current  that  sweeps  toward  the 
centre  and  source  of  all  things,  he  finds  that  he  is  not  left  to  go  alone. 
Others  are  won  to  commit  their  barks  to  this  same  current,  and  so  to  accom- 
pany or  follow  him.  Even  though  he  may  see  no  outward  sign  of  the 
movement  in  himself,  or  of  the  power  that  he  has  on  others,  still  he  may  be 
sure  that  the  Holy  Spirit  uses  him.  You  remember  those  Arctic  explorers, 
who  day  after  day  with  infinite  toil  and  pain,  made  their  way  northward,  as 
they  thought,  only  to  find  at  the  week's  end  that  their  instruments  indicated 
a  progress  of  many  miles  in  the  opposite  direction.  They  thought  them- 
selves going  away  from  home  and  friends,  but  they  found  themselves  nearer 
to  them  at  the  end  than  when  they  began.  At  last  they  solved  the  problem. 
They  were  not  on  solid  ground  at  all,  but  rather  upon  an  ice-floe  of  vast 
extent,  and  this  whole  mass,  apparently  solid  as  the  granite  hills,  was  mov- 
ing toward  the  tropics  every  day  upon  the  bosom  of  an  ocean-current  so 
broad  and  deep  and  still  as  to  give  no  sign  whatever  of  its  power.  So  the 
teacher  may  seem  to  himself  to  be  getting  further  and  further  away  from 
the  things  he  loves  and  the  persons  for  whom  he  labors.  But  in  spite  of  all 
appearances,  God  is  furthering  his  work  by  invisible  but  tremendous  opera- 
tions of  his  providence  and  grace.  He  supplements  our  efforts,  and  guides 
them  to  ends  which  his  wisdom,  and  not  our  skill,  has  set.  Consciously  or 
unconsciously,  we  are  borne  onward  to  the  accomplishment  of  the  plans  and 
to  the  glory  of  the  name  of  him,  "of  whom,  and  through  whom,  and  to 
whom  are  all  things. " 

Thus  I  have  spoken  of  our  need  of  the  Spirit  as  grounded,  first,  in  the 
methods  and  nature  of  God,  and  secondly,  in  the  ignorance  and  powerless- 
ness  of  man.  Or  to  put  it  in  plainer  words,  we  need  the  Holy  Spirit,  first, 
because  without  him  we  can  receive  nothing  from  God.  We  need  the  Holy 
Spirit,  secondly,  because  without  him  we  can  communicate  nothing  to  men. 
And  I  have  shown  you  that  this  last  is  certain,  because  only  the  Holy  Spirit 


THE  TEACHER'S  GUIDE  A^D  HELPEK  257 

•can  make  us  real  possessors  of  the  truth,  believing  advocates  of  the  truth, 
and  wise  adapters  of  the  truth  to  the  wants  of  those  we  teach.  But  the 
Holy  Spirit  can  make  us  able  teachers.  And  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is 
within  our  reach*  The  power  to  bestow  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  to  make  men 
teachers  of  his  word,  was  part  of  the  Savior's  recompense  for  his  sufferings. 
He  could  not  give  the  Spirit,  until  he  was  glorified.  But  now,  he  sits  at  the 
right  hand  of  power,  for  the  express  purpose  of  pouring  into  us,  through 
the  Spirit,  the  inexhaustible  fulness  of  his  divine  life.  I  honor  Christ  my 
Lord,  not  when  I  hold  back,  from  a  sense  of  my  unworthiness,  and  refuse 
to  believe  that  so  great  a  gift  can  be  for  me  ;  I  honor  him  only  when  I  take 
the  gift,  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  it  is  offered,  and  use  it  gratefully  in  the 
service  of  him  who  gave  it. 

The  decision  whether  I  will  have  this  Holy  Spirit,  this  present  Christ,  this 
fulness  of  power  and  blessing,  rests  in  a  true  sense  with  me.  Unless  I  will 
to  have  it,  it  will  never  be  mine.  I  must  put  in  the  link  of  connection 
between  my  soul  and  God's  efficiency,  by  the  exercise  of  faith.  There  is  a 
great  reservoir  of  sweet  and  limpid  water  up  among  the  hills,  all  gathered 
there  by  the  art  of  man,  for  the  supply  of  the  thirsty  town.  Conduits  are 
built,  and  pipes  are  laid  ;  my  own  house  is  provided  with  basin  and  faucet ; 
but  still  the  water  does  not  run,  and  I  am  dry.  What  is  lacking  ?  Nothing 
but  the  touch  of  my  hand, —  yet  without  that,  I  may  go  thirsty  all  the  day. 
My  friends,  Christ  is  a  reservoir  in  which  all  the  resources  of  the  Godhead 
are  gathered  up,  and  gathered  up  for  the  use  of  each  of  us.  The  Holy 
Spirit  is  the  conduit  through  which  Christ's  fulness  comes  to  us.  And  yet 
we  shall  never  be  practical  possessors  of  his  power,  until  by  a  personal  act 
of  surrender  and  of  faith,  we  set  the  stream  to  running.  Set  it  running, 
and  let  it  never  stop  !  Drinking  it,  you  shall  never  thirst,  and  it  shall  be  in 
you  a  fountain  of  water  springing  up  into  everlasting  life. 

There  is  only  one  thing  more.  Let  this  water  bless  others,  as  well  as 
yourself.  Our  Lord  did  not  forget  this,  when  he  gave  his  promise.  "In 
that  last,  that  great  day  of  the  feast,"  when  he  "  stood  and  cried,  saying  :  If 
any  man  thirst,  let  him  come  unto  me  and  drink,"  he  added  these  words  : 
"He  that  believeth  on  me,  as  the  Scripture  hath  said,  out  of  his  heart" — 
stirred  as  it  is  with  new-discovered  truth  and  purified  by  nobler  affections  — 
' '  shall  flow  rivers  of  living  water.  But  this  spake  he  of  the  Spirit,  which 
they  which  believe  on  him  should  receive."  He  only  is  a  true  servant  of 
Christ,  who  receives  in  order  to  give.  He  shall  receive  abundantly,  only  in 
order  that  he  may  give  abundantly.  The  spring  that  has  gladdened  his  own 
heart  shall  gladden  others.  Widening  and  deepening  as  they  flow,  the 
waters  from  it,  like  those  of  Ezekiel's  vision,  shall  carry  life  and  verdure 
with  thom,  until  somewhere  in  the  future,  near  or  far,  the  ultimate  result 
shall  be  the  recovery  of  all  the  moral  wastes  that  have  been  caused  by  sin. 
and  the  recreation  of  the  earth  in  the  beauty  of  our  God. 

On  Easter  morning  at  Jerusalem,  the  people  gather  together  in  the  Church 
of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  long  before  the  dawn,  all  carrying  torches  not  yet 
lighted.  The  Archbishop  enters  the  tomb  in  which  tradition  relates  that 
the  body  of  Christ  was  laid,  and  brings  out  from  it  a  lighted  torch,  which 
he  pretends  to  have  been  kindled  there  by  supernatural  power.  One  by 
one  the  people  light  their  torches  from  its  blaze,  and  others  are  lit  from 
17 


258  THE  TEACHER'S  GUIDE  AND  HELPER. 

these,  until  the  darkness  of  the  great  church  is  chased  away  by  the  flooding 
radiance  of  many  thousand  lamps.  The  people  carry  the  sacred  fire  to  their 
homes,  lighting  still  other  torches  as  they  go,  until  every  Christian  house  in 
the  great  city  is  illuminated.  So  Christian  influence  widens  and  spreads. 
The  fountain  of  its  light  and  power  is  in  the  presence  of  the  Lord  —  not  in 
the  sepulchre  where  his  body  lay,  but  in  the  secret  place  where  the  risen 
and  glorified  Redeemer  meets  with  his  chosen  ones,  and  communicates  to 
them  his  own  life-giving  Spirit.  But  he  who  has  his  own  soul  kindled  there, 
gives  light  to  those  he  meets,  and  is  not  impoverished  but  enriched  by  giv- 
ing. Oh  you,  to  whom  is  given  the  work  of  teaching  others  in  the  truth  of 
God,  regard  the  dignity  of  your  vocation  and  fulfill  it  well !  Recognize  the 
Holy  Spirit  as  the  only  source  of  power,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  will  prosper 
your  labors  !  As  you  have  the  promise  of  the  Father,  put  that  promise  to 
the  test,  and  receive  the  Holy  Ghost !  So,  enlightened  and  quickened  by 
God  himself,  you  shall  be  "servants  of  the  Spirit,"  and  successful  partici- 
pants in  his  great  work  —  that  work  of  which  nature  and  history  are  but  the 
preparation  and  arena  —  the  work  of  bringing  back  a  revolted  humanity  to 
its  lost  estate  of  holiness  and  of  communion  with  God  ! 


XXII. 

COUNCILS  OF  ORDINATION: 

THEIR  POWERS  AND  DUTIES.* 


In  an  age  like  the  present,  when  laxity  in  doctrine  abounds,  and  when 
men  are  not  unfrequeutly  led  by  unworthy  motives  to  desire  the  pastoral 
office,  it  concerns  the  purity  and  even  the  existence  of  our  churches  to  sur- 
round with  all  proper  safeguards  the  entrance  to  the  ministry.  Such  safe- 
guards may  in  part  be  found  in  Ordaining  Councils,  provided  that  those 
who  compose  these  bodies  have  proper  understanding  of  their  position  and 
responsibilities.  It  is  the  object  of  this  paper  to  present  a  just  view  of  the 
powers  and  duties  of  such  Councils,  and  to  indicate  the  method  of  proced- 
ure best  adapted  to  secure  the  ends  for  which  they  are  called. 

When  we  speak  of  the  powers  of  Councils,  we  do  not  mean  to  intimate 
that  these  Councils  are  self -constituted,  or  that  they  have  original  authority. 
The  Council,  on  the  contrary,  is  called  into  existence  only  by  the  local 
church,  can  determine  only  such  questions  as  that  church  may  submit  for 
its  consideration,  and  has  power  to  advise  the  church  what  its  action  should 
be,  but  no  power  to  compel  the  acceptance  of  this  advice.  The  so-called 
Council  of  Jerusalem  certainly  gives  us  New  Testament  example  for  one 
church's  seeking  advice  from  other  churches,  in  difficult  junctures,  but 
there  was,  as  we  may  suppose,  an  element  of  inspiration  in  that  decree  of 
"  the  apostles  and  elders  with  the  whole  church,"  which  cannot  be  claimed 
for  the  conclusions  of  subsequent  Councils.  While  Scripture  favors  that 
interdependence  of  local  churches  which  results  from  acknowledging  the  in- 
dwelling of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  others  as  well  as  in  ourselves,  and  the  due 
value  of  the  public  opinion  of  the  churches  as  an  indication  of  the  mind  of 
the  Spirit,  it  still  in  the  last  resort  throws  each  church  upon  its  own  res- 
ponsibility of  ascertaining  doctrine  and  duty  by  individual  interpretation  of 
the  divine  providence  and  word.  Interdependence,  in  short,  is  but  the 
qualification  of  a  fundamental  and  inalienable  independence.  On  earth 
there  is  no  higher  authority  than  that  of  the  local  church.  No  other  church, 
and  no  union  of  churches,  whether  directly  or  through  its  representatives, 
has  any  rightful  jurisdiction  over  the  single  local  body  which  Christ  has 
brought  into  immediate  subjection  to  himself  as  Lawgiver  and  King. 

Yet  all  the  more  has  the  Council,  when  rightly  called  and  constituted,  the 
power  of  moral  influence.  Its  decision  is  an  index  to  truth,  which  only  the 
gravest  reasons  will  justify  the  church  in  ignoring  or  refusing  to  follow.  If 
there  is  a  moral  obligation  to  seek  its  advice,  there  is  also,  in  all  ordinary 
cases,  a  moral  obligation  resting  upon  the  church  to  take  its  advice,  when 


*  Printed  in  the  Examiner,  January  2  and  January  9, 1879. 

259 


260  COUNCILS   OF   ORDINATION  : 

this  advice  is  given.  So  much,  at  least,  is  assumed  when  matters  of  import- 
ance are  committed  to  the  decision  of  a  Council,  with  no  provision  for  a  sub- 
sequent meeting  of  the  church  to  review  the  Council's  action.  In  such  case 
the  church  virtually  constitutes  the  Council  its  representative,  in  effect 
deputes  the  Council  to  act  in  its  place,  tacitly  accepts  the  decision  of  the 
Council  as  its  own.  The  fact  that  the  church  has  always  the  right,  for  just 
cause,  of  going  behind  the  decision  of  the  Council,  and  of  determining 
whether  it  will  ratify  or  reject  that  decision,  shows  conclusively  that  the 
church  has  parted  with  no  particle  of  its  original  independence  or  authority. 
Yet  though  the  Council  is  simply  a  counsellor — an  organ  and  helper  of  the 
church  —  the  neglect  of  its  advice  may  involve  such  ecclesiastical  or  moral 
wrong  as  to  justify  the  churches  represented  in  it,  as  well  as  other  churches, 
in  withdrawing  from  the  church  that  called  it  their  denominational  or  Chris- 
tian fellowship. 

It  is  but  an  application  of  these  general  principles  to  a  particular  case, 
when  we  say  that  it  is  the  church  which  ordains,  aud  that  in  ordination  the 
Council  is  only  the  adviser  and  assistant  of  the  church.  In  ordination,  as 
in  deposition  from  the  ministry,  the  church  may,  in  extreme  cases,  proceed 
without  a  Council  or  in  spite  of  the  decision  of  a  Council ;  the  effect,  how- 
ever, being  that  such  ordinance  or  deposition  on  the  part  of  the  single 
church  has  no  ecclesiastical  validity  outside  of  its  own  body,  and  that  the 
church  may  be  even  disfeUowshiped  by  neighboring  churches  where  there 
is  manifest  violation  of  New  Testament  principles  in  its  procedure. 

Ordination  is  an  ecclesiastical  act  so  important  in  itself,  and  so  serious  in 
influence  upon  other  churches  as  well  as  upon  the  church  that  ordains,  that 
the  counsel  of  others  may  well  be  deemed  obligatory  before  the  act  is  con- 
summated. In  the  case  of  deacons,  who  sustain  official  relations  only  to  the 
church  that  constitutes  them,  ordination  requires  no  consultation  with  other 
churches.  Licensure,  which  points  only  to  a  temporary  or  experimental 
service,  may  properly  be  left  to  the  wisdom  of  the  individual  church.  But 
the  setting  apart  of  a  preacher  of  the  gospel  to  a  permanent  work  of  minis- 
tration in  the  churches  involves  so  grave  responsibilities  and  demands  such 
practised  judgment,  that  the  ordaining  church  should  never  fail,  where  this 
is  possible,  to  add  to  its  own  the  wisdom  and  experience  of  other  churches 
of  the  same  faith  and  order. 

The  Council  is  called,  therefore,  not  to  confer  upon  the  candidate,  by 
superior  authority,  some  special  grace  without  which  he  could  not  be  denom- 
inated a  true  minister  of  Christ,  but  to  assist  the  church  in  two  respects  : 
first,  in  determining  whether  the  candidate  has  been  called  and  qualified  by 
God's  providence  and  Spirit ;  and  secondly,  in  granting  to  him  express 
authorization  to  exercise  his  gifts  as  pastor  or  teacher,  within  certain  definite 
local  boundaries  of  the  church  or  the  denomination.  The  prior  call  to  be 
pastor  may  be  said,  in  the  case  of  a  man  yet  unordained,  to  be  given  condi- 
tionally, and  in  anticipation  of  a  ratification  of  its  action  by  the  subsequent 
judgment  of  the  Council.  In  a  well-instructed  church,  the  calling  of  a 
Council  is  a  regular  method  of  appeal  from  the  church  unadvised  to  the 
church  advised  by  its  brethren,  and  the  vote  of  the  Council  approving  the 
candidate  is  only  the  essential  completing  of  an  ordination  of  which  the  vote 
of  the  church  calling  the  candidate  to  the  pastorate  was  the  preliminary  stage. 


THEIR    POWERS   AND    DUTIES.  261 

It  has  been  proposed  of  late  that  the  Council  of  Ordination  shall  consist 
only  of  ministers  who  have  been  themselves  ordained.  The  proposition 
seems  to  us  to  contradict  not  only  our  denominational  usage  and  principles, 
but  the  plain  tenor  of  Scripture  teaching.  That  Timothy  is  enjoined  to 
commit  the  things  which  he  has  learned  to  faithful  men  who  shall  be  able 
to  teach  others  also,  by  no  means  defines  the  method  in  which  he  shall  fulfill 
the  commission.  The  analogy  of  the  choice  of  Matthias,  and  of  the  election 
of  deacons,  would  indicate  that  Timothy  obeyed  the  precept  by  setting  apart 
those  who  had  been  previously  chosen  by  the  suffrages  of  the  whole  body 
of  each  church  respectively.  All  this  was  done  by  the  churches  under  the 
advice  of  one  endowed  with  special  divine  gifts,  and  clothed  with  unique 
and  exceptional  authority.  But  who  shall  be  the  advisers  of  our  later 
churches  in  this  solemn  matter  of  ordination  ?  This  must  be  determined, 
not  from  the  example  of  Timothy,  for  none  have  succeeded  to  his  precise 
place  and  work,  but  from  the  general  tenor  of  apostolic  teaching  with  regard 
to  the  duties  and  responsibilities  of  all  members  of  the  church  of  Christ. 

Careful  examination  will  show  that  there  was  laid,  not  solely  upon  the 
presbytery  or  ministry,  but  upon  the  whole  body  of  believers,  the  responsi- 
bility of  maintaining  pure  doctrine  and  practice,  of  preserving  and  guard- 
ing the  ordinances,  of  electing  their  own  officers  and  delegates,  and  of  exer- 
cising discipline.  It  is  not  merely  the  apostles  and  elders,  but  the  whole 
church  of  Jerusalem,  that  passed  upon  the  matters  submitted  to  them  at  the 
Council,  and  others  than  ministers  appear  to  have  been  delegates.  The 
Scripture  intimates  that  its  own  simplicity  and  sufficiency  were  designed 
for  the  very  purpose  of  inducing  individual  interpretation  of  its  contents,  so 
that  each  Christian  might  judge  of  the  correctness  with  which  it  was 
preached.  How,  then,  can  it  be  maintained  that,  in  deciding  upon  the  doc- 
trinal qualifications  of  a  candidate  for  the  ministry,  the  laity  are  to  have  no 
voice  ?  In  many  an  age  of  church  history,  as  to-day  in  the  Free  Church  of 
Scotland,  the  Scriptural  conservatism  of  the  laity  has  been  the  most  potent 
influence  in  preventing  the  general  adoption  of  lax  and  erroneous  views,  to 
which  the  ministry  have  been  inclined.  Moreover  the  Council  of  Ordination 
is  to  pass,  not  only  upon  matters  of  doctrine,  but  upon  matters  of  Christian 
experience,  and  of  these  the  unordained  church  member  is  often  a  more 
sagacious  judge  than  his  pastor.  As  we  see  no  Scriptural  warrant  for  the 
exclusion  of  lay  delegates  from  Ordaining  Councils,  but  rather  abundant 
evidence  to  show  its  inconsistency  with  the  fundamental  principles  of  a  true 
church  polity,  so  we  reject  the  proposed  innovation  as  having  in  it  the 
beginnings  of  a  hierarchy.  To  make  the  ministry  a  close  corporation  is  to 
recognize  the  principle  of  apostolic  succession,  to  deny  the  validity  of  all 
our  past  ordinations,  and  to  sell  to  an  ecclesiastical  caste  the  liberties  of  the 
church  of  God. 

The  very  first  of  the  duties  devolving  upon  the  member  of  a  Council  of 
Ordination  would  seem  to  be  the  cherishing  of  a  high  sense  of  the  dignity 
and  solemnity  of  his  office,  and  the  determination  to  discharge  his  functions 
with  independence  and  judicial  fairness  as  in  the  sight  of  God.  He  has 
been  called  to  be  an  adviser  of  the  church  of  Christ  in  a  matter  affecting  its 
very  life.  He  is  appointed  as  representative  of  another  church,  because  in 
that  other  church  the  Spirit  of  God  is  believed  to  dwell.  His  businesses  to 


262  COUNCILS   OF   ORDINATION  : 

judge  of  the  work  of  that  same  Spirit  in  the  heart  and  mind  of  one  who 
claims  to  have  been  chosen  by  God  to  be  his  ambassador,  and  he  is  to  reach 
his  decision  by  comparing  the  utterances  and  the  manner  of  the  claimant 
with  God's  revealed  will.  Surely  no  more  lofty  or  serious  task  was  ever  set 
for  man  to  do.  Frivolity,  party-spirit,  favoritism,  personal  pique  or  resent- 
ment, over-anxiety  to  please  —  in  short,  the  whole  brood  of  worldly  impulses 
and  motives  —  what  place  or  right  have  they  at  an  occasion  so  pregnant  with 
blessing  or  disaster  to  the  cause  of  our  Lord  ! 

But  it  is  not  enough  to  have  the  right  spirit.  It  is  a  duty  to  provide 
against  the  wrong,  and  by  all  needful  precautions  ensure  the  issuance  of  a 
true  intent  in  wise  action.  The  Council  does  not  come  together  to  ratify 
the  immutable  decrees  of  the  local  church,  but  rather  to  give  to  the  body 
that  called  it  a  sound  and  candid  judgment  upon  the  facts  presented  before 
it.  The  Council  should  therefore  be  so  numerous  and  so  impartially  consti- 
tuted that  no  danger  remains  of  its  being  over-awed  or  unduly  influenced 
by  the  hopes  or  feelings  of  the  community  or  of  the  church.  It  is  obliga- 
tory upon  those  who  call  the  Council  to  furnish,  in  the  letter-missive,  a  list 
of  the  churches  invited,  that  the  churches  summoned  may  see  for  themselves 
that  the  Council  is  to  be  neither  so  insignificant  in  numbers  as  to  make  pos- 
sible only  a  show  of  deliberation,  nor  so  packed  as  to  make  possible  only  a 
predetermined  verdict.  Neither  the  ministerial  nor  the  lay  element  should 
be  relatively  so  numerous  as  to  make  it  possible  for  one  to  override  the 
other,  and  for  this  reason  each  church  might  well  be  invited  to  send  only  a 
single  lay  delegate  with  its  pastor  —  an  arrangement  all  the  more  valuable 
if  the  limitation  of  the  number  of  delegates  from  each  church  should  compel 
the  invitation  of  a  wider  circle  of  churches.  The  church  calling  the  Council 
should  of  course  be  represented  by  its  delegates,  but  the  number  of  these 
delegates  should  not  be  so  great  as  to  give  undue  weight,  in  the  general  dis- 
cussion and  decision,  to  the  church's  previously  formed  opinions.  Neither 
the  church  nor  the  Council  should  permit  a  prejudgment  of  the  case  by  the 
previous  announcement  of  an  ordination-service.  The  ordination-service 
should  never  be  held  or  expected  upon  the  same  day  with  the  examination 
of  the  candidate,  for  in  every  case  of  difficulty  such  an  arrangement  unduly 
curtails  the  Council's  time  for  deliberation,  and  brings  a  pressure  to  bear 
from  without,  which  involves  danger  of  a  sudden  and  a  wrong  decision. 
Moreover,  while  the  examination  of  the  candidate  as  well  as  his  own  state- 
ments of  faith  and  experience  should  be  in  presence  of  the  whole  church, 
both  for  the  sake  of  furnishing  him  the  best  introduction  to  their  respect 
and  Christian  sympathies,  and  for  the  sake  of  furnishing  the  Council  the 
fullest  opportunity  of  estimating  his  ability  to  sustain  examination,  the 
Council  should  always  conduct  its  subsequent  deliberations  in  private  session, 
and  that  this  private  session  may  be  held,  either  the  congregation  should 
be  dismissed  or  a  withdrawing-room  should  be  made  ready  for  the  Council. 

The  suggestions  already  made  are  embodied  in  the  following  blank  form 
of  a  Letter-missive,  in  which  it  will  be  observed  that  the  correct  view  of  the 
church  as  the  ordaining  body  is  expressed  in  the  resolve  to  ordain  in  case 
the  counselling  brethren  approve  the  candidate  after  examination.  All 
question  with  regard  to  the  necessity  of  a  special  vote  of  the  church  ratify- 
ing the  decision  of  the  Council  is  in  this  manner  obviated. 


THEIR    POWERS   AKD    DUTIES.  263 

The Baptist  church  of to  the Baptist  church  of : 


DEAR  BRETHREN  :  By  vote  of  this  church  you  are  requested  to  send  your 
•pastor  and  one  delegate  to  meet  with  us  in  accordance  with  the  following  reso- 
lutions passed  by  us  on  the ,  188-  : 

WHEREAS,  brother ,  a  member  of  this  church,  has  offered  himself  to 

the  work  of  the  gospel  ministry,  and  has  been  chosen  by  us  as  our  pastor,  there- 
fore, 

Resolved,  That  such  neighboring  churches  in  fellowship  with  us  as  shall  be 
herein  designated  be  requested  to  send  their  pastor  and  one  delegate  each,  to 

meet  and  counsel  with  this  church  at  —  o'clock  —  M.,  on ,  188-,  and 

if,  after  examination  by  the  Council,  he  be  approved,  that  brother be  on 

the  next  day  set  apart  formally,  by  public  service,  to  the  gospel  ministry. 

Resolved,  That  the  Council,  if  they  approve  the  ordination,  be  requested  to 
appoint  two  of  their  number  to  act  with  brother in  arranging  the  ordi- 
nation services. 

Rixnlved,  That  printed  letters  of  invitation  embodying  these  resolutions,  and 
signed  by  the  clerk  of  this  church,  be  sent,  to  the  following  churches, , 

— , , , ,  and  that  these  churches  be  requested  to  furnish  to  their 

delegates  an  officially  signed  certificate  of  their  appointment,  to  be  presented  at 
the  organization  of  the  Council. 

Renolved,  That  Rev.  —      —  and  brethren be  also  invited  by  the  clerk 

of  the  church  to  be  present  as  members  of  the  Council. 

Resolved,  That  brethren ,  ,  and ,  be  appointed  as  our  delegates, 

to  represent  this  church  in  the  deliberations  of  the  Council,  and  that  brother 
—  be  requested  to  present  the  candidate  to  the  Council,  with  an  expression 
of  the  high  respect  and  warm  attachment  with  which  we  have  welcomed  him 
and  his  labors  among  us. 

In  behalf  of  the  church, 

,  188-.  ,  Clerk. 

A  just  conclusion  of  the  labors  of  the  Council  may  be  either  facilitated  or 
hindered  by  the  forms  observed  in  its  conduct.  Although,  in  this,  individ- 
ual freedom  and  local  usage  must  have  their  influence,  yet  there  are  advan- 
tages in  uniformity  of  action,  and  it  is  with  a  view  to  promote  this  uniform- 
ity that  we  here  suggest  certain  rules  which  already,  in  some  portions  of  the 
country,  have  been  found  practicable  and  serviceable.  Our  present 
methods  are  too  often  loose  and  inefficient.  Not  unfrequently  a  moderator 
is  chosen,  before  it  can  be  told  that  there  exists  a  Council  to  be  moderated. 
Persons  are  counted  as  members  of  the  Council,  upon  their  mere  oral  dec- 
laration that  a  certain  church  has  appointed  them  its  delegates.  Members 
of  the  Council  are  so  scattered  in  the  general  audience  that,  in  voting,  they 
are  indistinguishable  from  those  who  are  not  members.  Candidates  have 
been  admitted  to  examination  without  presenting  documentary  evidence  of 
membership  in  the  ordaining  church,  or  in  any  other  properly  constituted 
church.  Severe  scrutiny  fails  to  be  given  to  imperfect  or  unsatisfactory 
statements  of  the  candidate,  because  of  an  undue  anxiety  to  spare  him  what 
might  be  a  salutary  mortification.  Good  brethren  refrain  from  opposing 
manfully  the  acceptance  of  an  unsound  or  incompetent  person,  because  of 
over-desire  to  gratify  the  church.  These  are  ways  in  which  the  real  purpose 
of  the  Council  may  be  either  endangered  or  altogether  frustrated.  There  is 
a  call  for  moral  courage  in  standing  squarely  against  either  hasty  or  unwar- 


264  COUNCILS   OF   ORDINATION  I 

ranted  action.  Where  differences  from  the  faith  on  the  part  of  the  candi- 
date are  not  vital,  it  maybe  duty  for  a  member  of  the  Council  to  fall  in  with 
the  general  decision  of  his  brethren.  There  are  more  serious  cases,  where 
dissent  should  manifest  itself  in  protest  and  withdrawal. 

As  a  safeguard  against  the  irregularities  already  mentioned,  as  well  as 
against  other  and  more  serious  evils  that  might  follow  in  their  train,  the  fol- 
lowing would  seem  to  be  a  useful  and  proper  order  of  procedure  : 

1.  Reading  by  the  clerk  of  the  church,  of  the  letter-missive,  followed  by  a 
call,  in  their  order,  upon  each  church  and  individual  invited,  to  present  respon- 
ses and  names  in  writing  —  each  delegate,  as  he  presents  his  credentials,  taking 
his  seat  in  a  portion  of  the  house  reserved  for  the  Council. 

2.  Announcement  by  the  clerk  of  the  church,  that  a  Council  has  convened, 
and  call  for  the  nomination  of  a  moderator  —  the  motion  to  be  put  by  the  clerk 
—  after  which  the  moderator  takes  the  chair. 

3.  Organization  completed  by  election  of  a  clerk  of  the  Council,  the  offering 
of  prayer,  and  the  invitation  of  visiting  brethren  to  sit  with  the  Council  but  not 
to  vote. 

4.  Reading  on  behalf  of  the  church,  by  its  clerk,  of  the  records  of  the  church 
concerning  the  call  extended  to  the  candidate  and  his  acceptance,  together  with 
documentary  evidence  of  his  licensure,  of  his  present  church  membership,  and 
of  his  standing  in  other  respects,  if  coming  from  another  denomination. 

5.  Vote,  by  the  Council,  that  the  proceedings  of  the  church  and  the  standing 
of  the  candidate  warrant  an  examination  of  his  claim  to  ordination. 

6.  Introduction  of  the  candidate  to  the  Council  by  some  representative  of 
the  church,  with  an  expression  of  the  church's  feeling  respecting  him  and  his 
labors. 

7.  Vote  to  hear  his  Christian  experience.     Narration  on  the  part  of  the  candi- 
date, followed  by  questions  as  to  any  features  of  it  still  needing  elucidation. 

8.  Vote  to  hear  the  candidate's  reasons  for  believing  himself  called  to  the 
ministry.     Narration  and  questions. 

9.  Vote  to  hear  the  candidate's  views  of  Christian  doctrine.     Narration  and 
questions. 

10.  Vote  to  conclude  the  public  examination  and  to  withdraw  for  private  ses- 
sion. 

11.  In  private  session,  after  prayer,  the  Council  determines  by  three  separate 
votes,  in  order  to  secure  separate  consideration  of  each  question,  whether  it  is 
satisfied  with  the  candidate's  Christian  experience,  call  to  the  ministry,  and 
views  of  Christian  doctrine. 

12.  Vote  that  the  candidate  be  hereby  set  apart  to  the  Gospel  ministry,  and 
that  a  public  service  be  held,  expressive  of  this  fact;  that  for  this  purpose  a 
committee  of  two  be  appointed,  to  act  with  the  candidate  in  arranging  such 
service  of  ordination,  and  to  report  before  adjournment. 

13.  Reading  of  minutes  by  clerk  of  Council,  and  correction  of  them,  to  pre- 
pare for  presentation  at  the  ordination  service  and  for  preservation  in  the  arch- 
ives of  the  church. 

14.  Vote  to  give  the  candidate  a  certificate  of  ordination,  signed  by  the  mod- 
erator and  clerk  of  the  Council,  and  to  publish  an  account  of  the  proceedings 
in  the  journals  of  the  denomination. 

15.  Adjourn  to  meet  at  the  service  of  ordination. 

It  has  been  seen  that  ordination  is  essentially  a  setting  apart,  first,  by 


THEIR   POWERS   AND    DUTIES.  265 

vote  of  the  church,  and  secondly,  by  vote  of  the  advisory  Council.  These 
two  votes  express  both  a  recognition  of  gifts  conferred  by  God,  and  an 
authorization  to  exercise  those  gifts  within  the  bounds  of  the  Church  and 
the  denomination.  These  two  votes  are  parts  of  one  whole.  They  show 
the  candidate  to  be  the  choice  of  the  church  and  of  the  Council — or,  which 
is  the  same  thing,  of  the  church  by  itself  and  of  the  church  advised  by  its 
brethren.  Examination  is  a  prerequisite  to  the  decision  of  the  Council, 
because  if  the  candidate  is  to  be  recognized  as  a  minister  by  other  churches, 
he  must  give  them  proof  of  his  fitness,  and  that  all  the  more,  if  he  come 
from  a  denomination  whose  doctrine  and  practice  differ  from  our  own.  This 
setting  apart  by  the  church,  with  the  advice  and  assistance  of  the  Council, 
is  all  that  is  necessarily  implied  in  the  New  Testament  words  which  are 
translated  "ordain,"  and  such  ordination  by  simple  vote  of  church  and 
Council  could  not  be  counted  invalid. 

But  it  would  be  irregular.  New  Testament  precedent,  which  is  the  com- 
mon law  of  the  church,  has,  in  the  general  judgment  of  our  churches,  made 
certain  accompaniments  of  ordination  not  only  appropriate  but  obligatory. 
A  formal  publication  of  the  decree  of  the  Council,  by  laying  on  of  hands  in 
connection  with  solemn  prayer,  is  the  last  of  the  duties  devolving  upon  this 
advisory  body  which  serves  as  the  organ  and  assistant  of  the  church.  This 
public  service  is  not  the  essence  of  ordination,  nor  does  it  convey  any  new 
powers,  much  less  any  divine  grace.  Although,  in  the  case  of  Timothy, 
there  appears  to  have  been  a  special  divine  gift  bestowed  in  connection  with 
the  laying  on  of  hands,  the  communication  of  miraculous  or  spiritual  gifts 
was  not  the  result  of  this  imposition  of  hands,  nor  was  it  the  object  for 
which  hands  were  imposed  in  his  ordination ;  for  hands  were  imposed,  as 
in  the  cases  of  the  deacons  and  of  Paul  and  Barnabas,  where  no  record  exists 
of  the  bestowment,  through  that  act,  of  any  spiritual  or  miraculous  gifts  at 
all.  The  imposition  of  hands  is  the  symbolic  and  public  side  of  ordination, 
just  as  baptism  is  the  symbolic  and  public  side  of  regeneration.  As  the 
essential  thing  in  salvation  is  the  new  birth  of  the  Spirit,  yet  the  entrance 
of  the  whole  man  into  the  outward  as  well  as  inward  kingdom  of  God  is  not 
complete  until  this  being  born  of  the  Spirit  is  formally  and  publicly  expressed 
and  symbolized  by  being  born  of  water  also, — so  the  essential  thing  in  ordin- 
ation is  the  recognition  and  authorization  by  vote  of  church  and  Council, 
yet  the  duty  of  the  Council  is  not  fulfilled  until  it  has  symbolically  and  out- 
wardly proclaimed  this  recognition  and  authorization  by  laying  on  of  hands 
and  prayer. 

Thus  the  laying  on  of  hands  is  appointed  to  be  the  regular  accompani- 
ment of  ordination,  as  baptism  is  appointed  to  be  the  regular  accompaniment 
of  regeneration,  while  yet  the  laying  on  of  hands  is  no  more  the  substance  of 
ordination  than  baptism  is  the  substance  of  regeneration.  The  imposition 
of  hands  is  the  natural  symbol  of  the  communication,  not  of  grace,  but  of 
authority.  If  this  distinction  be  only  well  observed,  we  conceive  that  all 
objection  to  the  retention  of  the  symbol  must  disappear.  The  laying  on  of 
hands  does  not  make  Spurgeon  a  minister  of  the  gospel,  any  more  than 
coronation  makes  Victoria  a  Queen.  What  it  does  signify  and  publish  is 
formal  recognition  and  authorization,  and  in  this  light  the  continued  insist- 
ance  upon  the  holding  of  a  public  service,  of  which  the  central  feature  shall 


COUNCILS   OF   ORDINATION  : 

be  prayer  and  the  laying  on  of  hands,  may  well  be  regarded  as  the  bounden 
duty  of  every  Council  of  ordination  which,  by  vote,  sets  apart  a  candidate 
to  the  ministry. 

If  recognition  and  authorization  be  the  essential  things  in  ordination, 
decreed  by  vote  and  symbolized  by  public  service,  then  important  light  is 
thrown  upon  the  question  whether  ministers  coming  to  us  from  other  bodies 
of  Christians  should  be  ordained.  The  proper  inquiries  would  seem  to  be 
these  :  Have  they  ever  been  recognized  by  the  representatives  of  rightly 
constituted  churches,  after  examination,  as  doctrinally  and  practically  quali- 
fied for  the  ministry  ?  Have  they  ever  been  authorized,  by  the  vote  of  such 
a  Council,  to  exercise  their  gifts  within  the  bounds  of  our  denomination  ? 
If  not,  it  would  seem  that  they  still  need  ordination.  Surely  they  are  not 
now  authorized  to  do  what  they  have  never  agreed  to  do, — namely,  minister 
to  Baptist  churches.  The  view  that  we  should  accept  as  valid  some  previous 
ordination  in  another  denomination  proceeds  evidently  upon  the  false 
assumption  that  action  of  every  ecclesiastical  body  is  valid,  not  only  for 
churches  of  its  own  faith  and  order,  but  for  all  churches  of  every  name. 
And  no  line  can  be  drawn  the  moment  we  pass  our  own  bounds, —  Roman 
Catholic  ordination  must  be  valid  as  well  as  Presbyterian.  Nor  does  our 
logic  class  us  with  Separatists  or  extreme  Independents.  In  so  far  as  ordi- 
nation is  an  act  performed  by  the  local  church,  with  the  advice  and  assist- 
ance of  other  rightly  constituted  churches,  we  regard  it  as  giving  formal 
permission  to  exercise  gifts  and  administer  ordinances  within  the  bounds  of 
such  churches.  Ordination  is  not,  therefore,  to  be  repeated  upon  the  trans- 
fer of  the  minister's  pastoral  relation  from  one  such  church  to  another.  In 
^very  case,  however,  where  a  minister  from  a  body  of  Christians  not  Scrip- 
turally  constituted  assumes  the  pastoral  relation  in  a  rightly  organized 
church,  there  is  peculiar  propriety  in  that  act  of  recognition  and  authoriza- 
tion which  is  the  essence  of  ordination.  And  if  it  be  proper  that  he  be 
examined  and  his  claims  passed  upon  by  vote  of  Council,  it  is  equally  pro- 
per that  he  submit  to  that  formal  service  of  laying  on  of  hands  and  prayer, 
by  which  the  previous  action  of  the  church  and  Council  is  simply  published 
and  symbolized.  We  are  now  ready  to  state  in  full  that  a  regular  ordina- 
tion, conducted  upon  Scriptural  principles,  and  therefore  valid  among  all 
churches  of  our  faith  and  order,  involves  three  things  :  first,  the  call  of  a 
church  to  the  candidate  to  become  its  pastor  ;  secondly,  the  vote  of  a  Coun- 
cil to  recognize  and  authorize  the  candidate  to  exercise  his  gifts  in  the 
churches  as  a  minister  of  Christ ;  and  thirdly,  a  public  service  in  which,  by 
prayer  and  imposition  of  hands,  this  authority  is  formally  and  symbolically 
conferred.  Of  these  three,  the  two  former  are  the  essentials,  the  last  the 
regular  and  appropriate  accompaniment.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  word 
ordination,  which  in  the  New  Testament  covers  the  whole  process  of  setting 
apart  in  all  its  three  stages,  should  so  frequently,  even  among  us,  be  inter- 
preted as  referring  only  to  the  last.  Thus  the  Council's  final  and  most 
important  vote  is  often  a  vote  to  "  proceed  to  ordination."  This  intimates 
that  the  public  service  is  the  essence  of  ordination.  The  vote,  as  we  have 
already  intimated,  should  rather  be  a  vote  ' '  that  the  candidate  be  hereby 
set  apart  to  the  gospel  ministry,  and  that  a  formal  and  public  service  be  held 
expressive  of  this  fact. "  We  have  derived  our  denominational  principles 


THEIR    POWERS   AND    DUTIES.  267 

from  the  New  Testament,  but  the  language  in  which  we  too  commonly 
express  these  principles  comes  to  us  from  the  usage  of  denominations  which 
deny  them.  It  will  be  well  for  us  to  conform  our  terminology  to  our  faith, 
lest  our  faith  be  gradually  bent  into  conformity  with  our  terminology. 

The  true  idea  of  the  public  service,  as  simply  expressing  and  formally 
completing  the  ordination,  will  determine  to  a  considerable  extent  the  order 
and  relation  of  parts  in  the  service.  It  is  evident  that  the  central  features 
should  be  the  prayer  of  ordination  and  the  imposition  of  hands.  This 
prayer,  instead  of  being  substantially  anticipated  in  the  opening  invocation, 
should  be  reserved  to  a  single  brother  in  the  ministry  ;  and  others  of  the 
older  ministers,  as  a  true  presbytery,  should,  in  connection  with  the  prayer, 
if  not  during  its  utterance,  lay  their  hands  upon  the  head  of  the  candidate. 
The  prayer  should  recognize  in  the  decision  of  the  Council  the  new  evidence 
that  the  church  has  been  guided  by  God  in  its  choice,  and  should  invoke 
upon  the  candidate,  as  he  is  formally  set  apart  to  the  sacred  office,  the  bless- 
ing of  God  that  is  needed  to  render  his  work  successful.  These  being  the 
chief  portions  of  the  service,  all  the  other  parts  should  be  arranged  with 
reference  to  them.  The  sermon,  if  one  be  preached,  should  be  a  general 
presentation  of  the  gospel  which  the  candidate  is  to  proclaim,  preparing  the 
way  for  the  solemnity  of  the  ordaining  prayer,  but  not  anticipating  or  super- 
seding the  words  of  admonition  to  candidate  and  church  which  are  to  follow 
it.  Before  these  charges  and  after  the  ordaining  prayer  the  brother,  now 
already  ordained  in  the  fullest  sense,  may  well  be  welcomed  to  the  fellow- 
ship of  the  Christian  ministry,  with  the  presentation  of  the  right  hand  and 
a  few  well-chosen  words  of  Christian  congratulation.  That  these  many  ser- 
vices may  be  impressive,  it  is  important  that  each  should  be  not  only  appro- 
priate but  brief,  and  with  this  view  the  musical  portion  of  the  services  should 
be  confined  within  narrow  limits,  and  the  utmost  punctuality  secured  in  the 
assembling  of  the  audience  and  the  beginning  of  the  exercises.  The  prac- 
tical and  executive  ability  of  the  candidate  may  find  good  field  for  its  first 
exercise,  in  preparing  his  church  for  this  service  of  ordination.  Well 
arranged  and  carried  out,  no  service  of  all  his  after-ministry  can  be  of  greater 
value  either  to  himself  or  to  the  people  of  whom  he  is  the  pastor. 

The  following  scheme  is  presented  as  indicating  an  appropriate  order  of 
exercises,  as  well  as  the  relative  amount  of  time  which  may  be  granted  to 
each  participant  in  a  service  whose  total  length  shall  be  two  hours  : 

1.  Voluntary  — five  minutes.  2.  Anthem  — five.  3.  Reading  minutes  of 
the  Council,  by  the  clerk  of  the  Council  —  ten.  4.  Prayer  of  Invocation  — 
five.  5.  Reading  of  Scripture— five.  6.  Sermon  — twenty-five.  7.  Prayer  of 
Ordination,  with  laying  on  of  hands — fifteen.  8.  Hymn  —  ten.  9.  Right 
hand  of  fellowship  —  five.  10.  Charge  to  the  candidate  —  fifteen.  11.  Charge 
to  the  church  —  fifteen.  12.  Doxology  —  five.  13.  Benediction  by  the  newly 
ordained  pastor. 

It  has  been  intimated  that  deacons  as  well  as  pastors  should  be  ordained. 
Although  in  this  case,  for  the  reason  already  given,  the  church  may  proceed 
without  the  advice  of  a  Council,  yet  it  would  seem  quite  as  clear  that  New 
Testament  precedent  requires  the  ordination  of  deacons  to  be  accompanied 
Avith  prayer  and  the  laying  on  of  hands,  as  that  pastors  should  be  thus 


268  COUNCILS   OF   ORDINATION. 

inducted  into  office.  But  is  ordination  confined  to  pastors  and  deacons  ? 
Analogy  would  teach  that  all  whose  permanent  vocation  in  life  is  to  be  that 
of  expounding  the  word  of  God  should  come  under  the  same  law,  and 
should  be  set  apart,  in  like  manner,  to  this  sacred  work.  This  is  especially 
important  in  the  case  of  those  who  are  to  teach  the  teachers,  as  in  our  Theo- 
logical Seminaries.  Theirs  is  a  grave  responsibility  ;  it  should  be  intrusted 
only  to  those  who,  after  careful  examination,  approve  themselves  as  sound 
in  doctrine  and  Christian  in  spirit.  Every  such  teacher  is  to  be  regarded  as 
a  minister  of  Christ  assigned  to  special  service  by  the  church  to  which  he 
belongs  ;  he  should  therefore  be  ordained  with  the  advice  of  a  Council,  not 
to  be  pastor,  but  to  be  teacher, —  ordained  not  by  the  Theological  Seminary, 
which  has  no  such  powers  committed  to  it,  but  by  the  local  church  with 
which  he  is  connected.  In  like  manner,  missionaries  to  new  regions  abroad 
should  be  accounted  ministers  of  the  churches  to  which  they  belong, 
assigned  to  service  in  foreign  lands  ;  they  should  therefore  be  ordained  by 
these  churches.  Philip,  baptizing  the  eunuch,  is  to  be  regarded  as  an 
organ  of  the  church  at  Jerusalem.  Both  home  missionaries  and  foreign 
missionaries  are  the  true  New  Testament  evangelists ;  and  both,  as  organs 
of  the  home  churches  to  which  they  belong,  are  not  under  obligation  ta 
take  letters  of  dismission  to  the  churches  they  gather.  Their  ordinations, 
like  all  other  ordinations,  should  be  regarded  as  having  no  continuous 
validity  after  the  facts  upon  which  they  were  based  have  ceased  to  exist. 
Retirement  from  the  office  of  public  religious  teacher  should  work  a  forfeit- 
ure of  the  official  character.  The  authorization  granted  by  the  Council  was 
based  upon  a  previous  recognition  of  a  divine  call.  When,  by  reason  of 
permanent  withdrawal  from  the  ministry  and  devotion  to  wholly  secular 
occupations,  there  remains  no  longer  any  divine  call  to  be  recognized,  all 
authority  and  standing  as  a  Christian  minister  should  cease  also. 

There  are  many  curious  and  interesting  questions  suggested  by  this  dis- 
cussion, upon  which  we  have  not  touched,  and  upon  which  no  general  agree- 
ment has  yet  been  reached  among  us.  We  are  convinced,  however,  that  the 
principles  which  have  been  laid  down  afford  the  true  basis  for  the  solution 
of  these  questions,  and  that  the  correctness  of  the  principles  themselves  may 
be  either  proved  by  positive  Scripture  statements  or  justly  deduced  there- 
from. We  have  attempted  to  point  out  certain  practical  methods  of  carry- 
ing out  these  principles,  and  of  guarding  them  from  misapprehension  and 
neglect.  A  thorough  exhibition  of  them  as  centering  in  the  direct  subjec- 
tion of  each  church,  as  of  each  soul,  to  Christ  the  Lord,  and  an  application 
of  them  to  all  the  practical  exigencies  of  our  church  and  denominational 
life,  is  yet  a  work  of  the  future. 


XXIII. 

THE  CLAIMS  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MINISTRY 

ON  YOUNG  MEN  IN  COURSES  OF  PREPARATORY  STUDY.* 


Just  a  hundred  years  ago  this  very  morning,  behind  some  half-finished 
earth-works  and  a  rail  fence  rilled  in  with  new-mown  hay,  about  a  thousand 
undisciplined  militia-men  undertook  to  defend  Breed's  Hill,  near  Boston, 
from  the  attack  of  two  thousand  British  regulars.  It  was  a  hotter  day  than 
this  has  been,  and  the  red-coats,  heavily  laden  with  rations  for  themselves 
and  ball-cartridges  for  the  Yankees,  moved  slowly  up  toward  the  fortifica- 
tions which  these  latter  had  been  throwing  up  during  the  night.  Putnam 
and  Prescott  went  about  among  our  men,  saying  :  "Aim  low;  wait  till  you 
can  see  the  whites  of  their  eyes  !  "  That  waiting  was  a  test  of  of  courage, — 
it  is  not  easy  to  wait  with  a  mighty  column  of  troops  moving  upon  you. 
But  the  raw  recruits  did  wait  till  the  British  were  only  ten  rods  away,  and 
then,  taking  sure  and  deadly  aim,  they  fired.  With  that  fire,  scores  of  the 
advancing  soldiers  fell ;  the  survivors  faltered  and  began  retreat.  Their 
officers  drove  them  back,  and  even  pricked  them  with  their  swords  to  pre- 
vent their  running  away  ;  reinforcing  columns  advanced  ;  a  second  charge 
was  made,  but  as  before,  half  of  the  attacking  force  fell  before  the  withering 
fire.  If  the  Americans  had  only  been  provided  with  powder,  they  might 
have  won  the  day, — but  one  round  more  exhausted  their  ammunition,  and 
at  the  third  general  advance  of  the  British,  our  men  were  obliged  to  retire. 
The  battle  commonly  called  Bunker  Hill  had  been  fought,  and  the  inspira- 
tion and  the  lessons  of  it  had  become  matters  of  history.  Lost  though  it 
was,  it  was  as  good  as  a  battle  gained.  It  convinced  our  countrymen  that 
war  was  upon  them,  and  that  they  must  fight  it  through.  It  nerved  America 
for  the  long  and  bitter  conflict  that  followed,  by  proving  that  British  regu- 
lars were  no  more  than  a  match  for  American  volunteers.  It  furnished  the 
type  and  seed  of  many  after  battles  and  of  that  final  victory,  which  was 
gained  by  patience  and  fortitude  and  trust  in  God  and  the  shedding  of  pat- 
riotic blood. 

Here  in  these  pleasant  seats  of  learning  and  of  religion,  and  at  this  quiet 
hour,  there  are  no  counter-signs  and  sentries  and  roll-calls  after  battle,  and 
groans  of  wounded  men,  such  as  were  there  at  Bunker  Hill  on  the  evening 
of  that  17th  of  June,  a  hundred  years  ago.  But  I  cannot  repress  the  feeling 
that  we  are  deciding  the  future,  and  planting  the  seeds  of  greatness  or  of 
shame,  as  really  as  they  did  then.  A  few  men  like  Warren,  who  were  will- 
ing to  give  their  lives  for  their  country,  determined  that  day  their  country's 


*  An  address  written  for  the  Anniversary  of  Peddie  Institute,  Hightstown,  N.  J.,  June 
17,  1875. 


270  THE   CLAIMS   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY. 

position  among  the  nations  of  the  earth.  And  so  you,  in  these  preparatory 
schools,  and  in  these  societies  that  represent  and  adorn  them,  stand  at  the 
fountain  head  of  coming  history.  What  you  are  and  what  you  do  and  what 
you  resolve  here,  will  make  its  mark  not  only  upon  your  own  lives  but  upon 
the  character  and  fate  of  this  and  of  other  generations.  We  cannot  estimate 
too  highly  the  importance  of  this  early  work  and  of  the  decisions  which  are 
now  made.  Our  philosophers  and  educators  are  coming  to  see  that  the 
elementary  drill  determines  the  future  of  the  student  and  of  the  man.  Let 
the  primary  instruction  be  absolutely  thorough,  and  subsequent  advancement 
will  be  natural  and  rapid.  Let  the  boy  begin  his  Latin  with  a  listless  and 
indolent  and  superficial  spirit,  and  all  after  opportunities  will  serve  him  in 
vain.  And  so  with  regard  to  early  impulses  and  aspirations.  The  first 
notions  with  regard  to  one's  calling  in  life,  and  to  the  honorableness  and 
advantage  of  the  several  pursuits  in  which  men's  hands  and  hearts  aro 
engaged,  have  much  to  do  with  the  forming  of  the  young  man's  character 
and  the  determining  of  his  after  failure  or  success.  And  this  thought  leads 
me  to  the  subject  of  my  address  this  evening.  I  wish  to  speak  to  you  with 
regard  to  one  of  these  pursuits  in  life,  which  is  seldom  formally  commended 
to  young  men,  but  in  which  we  all  ought  to  be  deeply  interested.  Standing, 
as  I  do,  in  a  place  where  proper  thoughts  of  it  are  so  much  to  be  desired, 
both  for  the  sake  of  those  who  are  planning  their  life-work,  as  well  as  for 
the  sake  of  the  church  and  the  world,  I  feel  called  to  speak  to  you  for  a  few 
moments  of  the  nature  of  the  Christian  ministry  and  its  claims  upon  young 
men  in  course  of  study,  as  a  pursuit  worthy  in  itself,  attractive  in  its  sur- 
roundings, noble  in  its  results. 

I  do  not  need  to  say  more  than  a  single  word  with  regard  to  the  nature  of 
the  Christian  ministry.  We  all  agree  that  there  is  a  class  of  men  set  apart 
to  be  special  representatives  and  spokesmen  for  God  —  to  make  known  his 
will,  to  vindicate  his  claims,  to  proclaim  his  goodness,  to  win  men  to  his 
service  and  love.  There  have  been  false  priests  and  ministers,  but  they  have 
only  been  counterfeits  of  the  true,  and  their  success  has  been  possible  only 
because  there  is  an  instinct  in  the  human  heart  that  bids  it  hope  and  wait 
for  a  revelation  from  God.  The  world  has  bowed  to  priests  more  than  it 
ever  has  to  kings,  and  that  for  the  reason  that  the  world  has  always  recog- 
nized that  its  highest,  grandest  interests  lay  in  the  unseen  and  eternal.  And 
now  to  be  a  true  interpreter  of  this  unseen  universe  to  men  who  long  eagerly 
to  solve  its  problems,  to  be  the  messenger  of  forgiveness  and  peace  from 
this  dread  yet  loving  God,  from  whom  men  know  themselves  to  be  exiled 
and  banished  by  reason  of  transgression,  to  be  the  divinely  appointed  helper 
of  all  righteousness  and  herald  of  immortal  life  to  the  sorrowing  and  perish- 
ing,—  this  is  a  higher  vocation  than  any  other  known  to  men,  by  as  much 
as  it  has  to  do  with  grander  themes  and  more  important  destinies.  Other 
callings,  however  noble,  have  to  do  with  the  finite  and  temporal, — this  with 
the  infinite  and  eternal.  He  who  is  honored  with  this  calling  is  the  partner 
of  the  living  God  in  that  work  for  the  doing  of  which  the  floor  of  the  heavens 
was  laid  with  its  mosaic  of  constellations,  and  the  curtain  of  night  and  chaos 
rose  at  the  creation. 

But  let  my  position  and  aim  be  fully  understood.  I  do  not  take  for 
granted  that  it  is  the  bounden  duty  of  all  men,  or  even  of  all  Christian  men, 


THE    CLAIMS    OF   THE    CHRISTIAN"    MINISTRY.  271 

to  be  ministers  of  the  gospel.  "  No  man  taketh  his  honor  unto  himself,  but 
he  that  is  called  of  God,  as  was  Aaron."  The  Scripture  tells  us  that  "there 
was  a  man  sent  from  God  whose  name  was  John,"  and  that  single  sentence, 
like  some  painter's  first  rough  sketch  of  a  great  picture,  expresses,  even  more 
vividly  than  the  finished  portraiture,  the  essential  secret  of  his  life  and 
work.  John  the  Baptist  was  great,  not  only  because  he  was  commissioned 
by  God,  but  because  he  knew  and  fulfilled  this  divine  commission.  But 
what  was  true  of  John's  call  may  be  true  also  of  thousands  whose  special 
vocation  is  different  from  his.  There  are  other  callings,  and  many  of  them, 
in  which  men  serve  their  generation  by  the  will  of  God.  Indeed,  every  man 
is  called  of  God  to  do  some  special  work  for  him,  whether  it  be  at  the  car- 
penter's bench,  or  on  the  quarter-deck  of  a  man-of-war,  or  amid  the  strifes 
of  the  forum,  whether  by  selling  goods,  or  by  healing  men's  bodily  diseases, 
or  by  extending  the  area  of  scientific  knowledge.  And  every  man  may  find 
out  what  his  calling  is,  and  have  the  nobleness  that  comes  from  working 
consciously  in  the  line  of  the  divine  purposes.  Even  though  you  may  not 
be  called  to  public  preaching  of  the  gospel,  still  yon  are  called.  As  you 
value  your  interests  for  time  and  eternity,  learn  what  it  is  for  which  God 
has  created  you  and  sent  you  into  the  world,  and  then  give  yourself  body 
and  soul  to  the  work  which  he  has  for  you  to  do. 

But  I  am  persuaded  that  God's  call  to  enter  the  ministry  is  a  commoner 
one  than  we  think, —  aud  that  this  call  is  often  ignored  by  those  to  whom  it 
comes,  or  if  not  ignored,  at  least  questioned  and  resisted.  This  arises  partly 
from  wrong  conceptions  of  the  method  in  which  the  call  is  made  known. 
Young  men  fancy  that  that  call  consists  in  some  audible  voice,  or  physical 
impression,  or  supernatural  conviction  of  duty.  I  venture  to  say  that  many 
men  are  called  who  have  never  known  any  of  these.  Let  us  remember  that 
God's  Spirit  works  from  within,  not  from  without.  The  Spirit  does  not 
supersede  our  own  faculties,  but  energizes  and  works  through  them.  Him- 
self inaudible  and  invisible,  he  makes  us  hear  and  see  what  truth  and  duty 
are.  But  then,  if  we  be  naturally  timid  and  distrustful,  our  convictions  of 
religious  duty  will  partake  of  this  timidity  and  distrust.  We  shall  have  to 
weigh  evidence  and  act  according  to  the  balance  of  probability.  In  this 
matter  of  determining  whether  we  are  called  to  the  ministry,  therefore,  just 
as  in  determining  whether  we  are  called  to  be  lawyers  or  merchants,  it 
belongs  to  us  to  consider  our  endowments  and  opportunities  for  culture,  our 
natural  and  our  spiritual  tastes,  the  advice  and  opinion  of  judicious  friends, 
the  impulses  of  our  hearts  when  we  are  most  under  the  influence  of  the 
Spirit  of  God.  And  as,  in  the  person  called,  God's  work  does  not  exclude 
but  implies  a  natural  process  of  consideration  and  judgment,  so  it  does  not 
exclude  but  implies  the  cooperation  of  others.  That  was  a  strange  notion 
of  divine  sovereignty  which  used  to  forbid  the  mother  from  praying  for  her 
own  child,  or  urging  him  to  become  a  Christian.  As  if  that  would  interfere 
with  God's  work  !  God's  work  in  turning  the  sinner  involves  our  work  of 
warning  and  kindly  invitation.  And  so  God's  work  of  calling  men,  into  the 
ministry  of  the  gospel  involves  our  work  of  seeking  out  young  men,  and  lay- 
ing before  them  the  needs  of  the  world  and  the  claims  of  the  Christian 
ministry.  Of  old,  the  churches  selected  fit  men  and  laid  upon  them  this 
responsibility,  and  when  they  fled  from  it,  hunted  for  them  until  they  found 


272  THE   CLAIMS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY. 

them  and  obtained  their  submission  to  the  voice  of  the  congregation.  And 
modern  times  are  not  without  notable  instances  of  men  whose  first  thought 
of  preaching  has  been  suggested  by  the  formal  action  of  the  church  to  which 
they  belonged.  Mistakes  have  sometimes  without  doubt  been  made,  and 
the  voice  of  the  church  is  not  final  and  authoritative.  There  must  be  the 
inward  feeling  of  the  candidate  himself  responding  to  this  call,  if  it  does  not, 
indeed,  precede  it.  But  this  is  what  I  urge  —  not  only  the  privilege  but  the 
duty  of  Christian  people  to  seek  out  those  who  have  natural  gifts  for  the 
ministry  and  who  are  providentially  situated  so  that  they  can  prepare  for  it,  and 
to  lay  upon  them  the  responsibility  of  considering  and  deciding  whether  God 
does  not  call  them  to  devote  themselves  to  the  work  of  preaching  the  gospel 
to  their  fellow-men.  It  is  our  business  to  say  to  such  young  men,  not  that  it 
is  their  duty  to  preach  Christ's  gospel,  but  that  it  is  their  duty  to  consider 
whether  this  may  not  be  their  duty,  and,  as  a  help  to  such  consideration,  set 
before  them  the  real  nature  of  ministerial  work  and  the  manifold  arguments 
which  incite  a  lover  of  Christ  to  enter  upon  it. 

Such  influence  on  my  part  and  yours,  is  needful  to  counteract  false  impres- 
sions which  have  become  prevalent  in  our  day  —  impressions  which  work  to 
the  prejudice  of  the  ministry,  when  its  claims  are  considered  by  young  men  in 
course  of  study.  We  live  in  an  age  when  the  outward  is  all-absorbing.  In  the 
rush  and  noise  and  show  of  our  money-getting  time,  the  pursuits  that  are 
intellectual  and  spiritual  constantly  tend  to  be  undervalued.  Palpable 
results  are  sought,  and  it  is  deemed  a  hardship  to  spend  in  study  the  early 
years  that  might  be  employed  in  learning  a  trade  or  in  gaining  practical 
acquaintance  with  business.  And  so  we  have  thousands  of  men  successful 
so  far  as  accumulation  of  property  is  concerned,  who  utterly  lack  the  culture 
which  would  enable  them  to  enjoy  or  to  use  their  gains  —  men  who  know 
nothing  but  business  and  have  no  mental  resources  —  men  shriveled  and  dried 
lip  at  fifty,  when  with  early  education  their  minds  might  be  green  and  bring 
forth  fruit  in  old  age.  In  this  over-active  time  it  is  forgotten  that  precocity 
of  worldly  development  is  really  narrowing  to  the  soul.  Does  the  time  of 
preparation  for  work  in  the  ministry  consume  many  years  of  youth  ?  Well, 
it  only  prepares  for  a  more  vigorous  and  broad  and  joyful  manhood  —  devel- 
opes  internal  resources  of  knowledge  and  sympathy  —  opens  deeper  foun- 
tains of  beneficent  and  holy  influence.  You  have  one  only  life  on  earth  to 
live.  Take  time  to  make  your  preparations  thorough.  You  have  one  only 
edifice  of  character  and  work  to  build.  Take  time  to  lay  the  foundations 
solid  and  strong.  Learn  a  lesson  from  Jesus.  He  had  the  greatest  work 
man  ever  had  to  do.  Yet  he  waited  calmly  till  his  thirty  years  of  preparation 
were  finished,  before  he  began  it.  If  God  had  designed  you  to  begin  your 
work  before  the  time  set  for  the  finishing  of  your  studies,  he  would  certainly 
have  had  you  born  earlier.  Since  he  has  waited  so  long  for  your  appear- 
ance upon  the  stage,  he  can  wait  a  few  years  longer  till  you  are  fully  ready 
to  serve  him. 

There  are  undoubtedly  infelicities  in  the  life  of  the  minister  of  the  gospel, 
and  no  man  can  serve  Christ  in  the  ministry  without  making  great  sacrifices. 
The  ordinary  minister  must  resign  the  hope  of  luxury  and  ease.  Even  the 
most  successful  will  find  that  success  is  purchased  only  by  care  and  labor. 
But  is  it  different  in  other  pursuits  ?  Are  not  the  great  fortunes  won  by 


THE   CLAIMS   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY.  273 

prolonged  and  excessive  toil?  And  what  proportion  of  those  who  enter 
upon  the  professions  or  upon  trade  achieve  a  competence  ?  A  celebrated 
Wall  Street  merchant  told  me  that  not  one  in  a  hundred  that  set  up  business 
in  the  street  survived  the  vicissitudes  of  twenty  years.  The  vast  majority 
lost  property  and  hope.  The  great  money-marts  are  strewn  with  wrecks,  if 
we  could  only  see  them.  While  the  ministry  offers  few  golden  prizes,  it 
does  ofi'er  as  safe  and  sure  a  support  to  a  faithful  man  as  business  does.  As 
the  result  of  extensive  observation  it  can  be  said  that  "they  that  wait  upon 
the  Lord  shall  not  want  any  good  thing."  Levi  had  no  portion  with  the 
tribes,  but  the  Lord  was  his  inheritance.  What  David  said  of  the  righteous 
in  general  is  even  more  true  of  the  ministers  of  the  gospel :  "  I  have  not 
seen  them  forsaken,  nor  their  seed  begging  bread." 

But  since  there  are  popular  impressions  of  the  sort  I  have  mentioned,  it 
is  no  more  than  fair  to  oppose  to  these  certain  undoubted  advantages  and 
felicities  of  the  minister's  lot.  I  do  this,  not  to  give  a  rose-colored  picture 
of  clerical  life,  not  to  influence  any  man  to  enter  the  ministry  from  worldly 
motives,  but  simply  to  counteract  and  counterbalance  the  false  notions 
insensibly  received  from  others.  I  feel  that  I  can  do  this  from  experience 
as  well  as  from  observation,  since  I  know  of  one  ministry  begun  with  many 
forebodings  and  with  many  inward  and  outward  trials,  which  proved  immeas- 
urably happier  than  fear  had  prophesied,  and  which,  now  that  it  is  past, 
fulfils  the  poet's  declaration  that  "blessings  brighten  as  they  take  their 
flight."  We  may  safely  compare  the  work  of  the  ministry  with  that  of  other 
professions,  as  to  the  comfort  of  its  outward  surroundings,  its  influence  upon 
the  character  of  him  who  performs  it,  the  nobility  and  permanence  of  its 
results. 

I  do  not  know  any  calling  in  life  that  has  so  attractive  an  aspect  at  the 
start,  as  that  of  the  ministry.  The  young  physician  or  lawyer,  after  com- 
pleting his  preparatory  studies,  has  to  enter  upon  his  work  as  a  stranger  in 
the  community  and  a  competitor  of  those  who  have  had  the  experience  and 
the  success  of  years.  He  seldom  has  the  support  and  sympathy  of  influen- 
tial friends.  He  must  first  struggle  for  the  acquaintance  and  confidence  of 
others.  His  first  years  are  happy  if  he  can  secure  a  bare  subsistence.  Only 
in  middle  life  does  he  reach  a  generous  support.  Wealth  and  position  belong 
to  advanced  years.  But  the  young  minister,  on  the  other  hand,  begins  life 
with  sympathizing  friends  around  him,  limited  in  number  only  by  the  mem- 
bership of  the  church  of  which  he  is  pastor  —  friends  who  are  considerate 
and  patient  and  helpful.  They  cheer  him  in  his  despondency  and  lift  him 
over  his  failures.  He  has  social  position  assured  to  him  from  the  very  start 
—  access  to  the  most  intelligent  company  which  his  town  affords,  and  a 
pecuniary  support  which  suffices  for  the  needs  of  a  man  of  intellectual  tastes. 
Absolved  from  worrying  cares,  and  borne  along  by  the  consciousness  that 
many  a  kind  Christian  heart  is  praying  for  him,  he  throws  himself  into  his 
work  with  heart  and  soul,  and  gains  his  first  experience  of  happy  and  suc- 
cessful labor  in  the  service  of  Christ  and  the  church. 

But  mere  comfort,  whether  physical  or  intellectual,  is  of  little  importance, 

except  as  it  assists  the  development  of  character  and  helps  the  great  aims  of 

life.     The  attainment  of  a  symmetrical  and  grandly  developed  manhood, — 

is  there  any  pursuit  more  favorable  to  this  than  that  of  the  Christian  min- 

18 


x574  THE   CLAIMS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN"   MINISTRY. 

istry  ?  Consider  the  variety  of  circumstances  and  experiences  through  which 
the  minister  has  to  pass.  He  has  the  life  of  the  study.  It  is  his  business 
to  keep  his  mind  full  of  the  best  thoughts  of  the  past.  To  freshen  his  public 
discourse,  there  must  of  necessity  be  a  constant  pondering  of  the  noblest 
literature.  History  unrolls  her  panorama  before  him.  Science  opens  her 
secrets.  He  has  opportunities  for  general  investigation  and  culture,  denied 
to  men  of  other  pursuits.  The  lawyer  can  hardly  give  his  time  to  philosophy 
or  science,  without  prejudicing  his  success  in  his  chosen  calling.  But  the 
minister  studies  these  as  a  part  of  his  calling.  He  may  learn  much  of  polit- 
ical economy,  of  geology,  of  ethics,  of  art,  not  only  without  hindrance  to 
his  work  as  preacher,  but  with  positive  advantage  to  it.  And  we  may  safely 
say  that,  as  a  rule,  the  clergy  of  the  country  surpass  men  of  every  other  pur- 
suit in  the  variety  of  their  culture. 

But,  with  these  intellectual  opportunities,  there  is  a  peculiar  field  for  the 
life  of  the  emotions.  The  minister  cannot  become  a  recluse,  for  he  must 
constantly  meet,  both  in  public  and  private,  with  hundreds  of  persons  of 
every  age  and  condition,  must  know  many  of  their  inmost  experiences 
of  joy  and  sorrow,  and  in  this  intercourse  must  have  his  own  sympa- 
thies drawn  out  and  developed.  This  wide  circle  of  association,  with  its 
practical  calls  upon  the  tenderest  feelings  of  his  nature,  furnishes  a  large 
part  of  the  joy  and  satisfaction  of  a  true  minister's  life.  The  world  is  full 
of  sorrow ;  every  house  has  its  skeleton.  Multitudes  of  people,  even  in 
Christian  churches,  have  no  one  but  the  minister  whom  they  can  recognize 
as  friend  —  no  other  to  whom  they  can  speak  freely  with  regard  to  the  things 
which  concern  them  most.  The  minister  needs  only  the  endowment  of 
sincere  interest  in  such  persons'  welfare,  to  find  himself  master  of  their 
hearts, —  he  has  but  to  keep  open  ears  and  they  will  tell  him  their  doubts 
and  troubles.  And  the  telling  is  relief.  The  minister  comes  back  from  his 
round  of  pastoral  work,  thanking  God  that  he  is  permitted  to  live,  and 
knowing  that,  if  only  that  one  day's  work  were  all  he  is  permitted  to  do  on 
earth,  he  has  not  lived  in  vain. 

The  Christian  minister  is  in  this  way  drawn  out  of  himself,  and  made  an 
open-hearted  man.  But  it  is  not  all  a  life  of  sympathy, —  there  is  adminis- 
tration of  church  affairs  to  employ  him,  and  the  meeting  of  general  needs 
of  the  community.  The  minister  is  leader  of  public  sentiment  on  the  great 
questions  of  the  day.  His  work  is  to  apply  the  law  of  God  to  public  and 
private  conduct.  The  range  of  his  preaching  is  coextensive  with  the  sphere 
of  human  knowledge  and  of  human  life.  The  word  of  God  is  inexhaustible, 
and  he  is  to  bring  forth  from  its  treasures  things  new  and  old.  But  he  is  to 
apply  the  principles  of  the  word  to  all  human  relations.  How  profound 
the  questions  he  must  discuss  !  How  grand  the  fields  of  investigation  opened 
before  him  !  How  magnificent  the  influence  he  may  wield,  in  shaping  the 
thought  and  life  of  a  whole  community  !  In  the  last  great  war,  the  northern 
preachers  were  chief  objects  of  the  curses  of  the  secession  press.  And  the 
southern  press  was  sagacious.  It  was  northern  preachers,  quite  as  much 
as  northern  generals,  that  led  us  through  to  victory.  They  nerved  the  sol- 
dier's arm  —  they  showed  government  to  be  God's  ordinance  —  they  made 
defense  of  country  a  duty  owed  to  God. — Who  that  remembers  those  times 
can  ever  lend  ear  to  the  sneers  of  those  who  fancy  the  ministerial  calling 
one  of  narrow  opportunities  for  culture  and  influence  ! 


THE    CLAIMS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY.  275 

A  Christian  young  man,  reflecting  upon  the  claims  of  the  different  pro- 
fessions, must  sometimes  ask  :  Which  of  these  professions  will  be  most  apt 
to  make  me  a  truly  religious  man  ?  The  Scripture  has  a  sentence  like  this  : 
Let  not  the  rich  man  glory  in  his  riches,  nor  the  mighty  man  in  his  might, 
but  let  him  that  glorieth  glory  in  this,  that  he  knoweth  me  —  that  is,  knoweth 
God.  To  know  God,  this  is  better  than  to  know  all  things  else,  for  the 
whole  universe  is  but  a  wreath  of  vapor  formed  by  the  breath  of  God's 
mouth,  or  a  drop  of  dew  upon  the  hem  of  his  garment.  What  life  will 
bring  me  nearest  to  God,  and  keep  me  there  ?  Now  we  all  know  that  we 
grow  like  what  we  think  most  of.  Which  of  the  professions  makes  God 
the  most  frequent  and  constant  object  of  thought  ?  which  most  drives  a 
man  to  communion  with  God  ?  I  do  not  answer  without  care.  I  know  of 
such  men  as  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  the  keen-sighted  lawyer  and  the  Christian 
judge.  His  work  upon  the  bench  did  not  prevent  his  daily  hours  of  prayer. 
I  remember  the  story  of  Havelock,  the  English  general  in  India,  who  rose 
for  prayer  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  when  the  march  began  at  six,  and 
at  three  when  the  march  began  at  five.  Yet  I  think  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
in  the  very  necessities  of  Scripture  study,  and  of  preaching  to  the  needs  of 
souls,  the  minister  finds  a  constant  incitement  to  the  cultivation  of  personal 
piety,  such  as  no  other  pursuit  in  life  enjoys.  Ministers,  indeed,  may  do 
their  work  perfunctorily  and  without  converse  with  God,  but  such  a  course 
is  suicidal ;  in  this  neglect,  they  cut  the  very  sinews  of  their  strength.  If 
a  man  regarded  prayer  as  the  business  of  a  life,  would  he  serve  his  purpose 
best  by  entering  other  professions  or  by  entering  the  ministry  ?  And  should 
we  be  far  wrong,  if  we  regarded  a  life  hid  with  Christ  in  God  as  prior  in 
importance  and  order  to  the  outward  labors  of  that  life  ?  Life  first,  and 
then  work!  And  what  pursuit  can  be  compared  with  the  ministry  for 
keeping  ever  before  the  eye  this  need  of  converse  and  fellowship  with  the 
living  God  ? 

I  almost  reproach  myself  with  having  consumed  so  large  a  part  of  your 
time  with  the  relations  of  this  subject  to  the  personal  culture  and  growth  of 
the  man  himself.  I  know  it  is  not  our  own  advantage  that  most  inspires  us. 
Youth  has  nobler  impulses  than  this.  How  may  I  make  the  most  of  myself 
for  others  ?  how  may  I  best  make  my  mark  on  the  world  ?  how  do  most 
service  to  mankind  ?  how  bring  most  honor  to  God  ?  —  these  are  the  decisive 
questions.  And  when  we  come  to  these,  I  think  many  can  answer  without 
hesitation  :  "In  the  Christian  ministry."  No  other  agency  can  take  the 
place  of  the  ministry.  God  has  appointed  it  as  an  indispensable  means  of 
perfecting  the  church  and  propagating  the  gospel.  No  power  of  civilization 
or  of  the  press  or  of  the  sword  can  ever  accomplish  those  moral  wonders 
which  are  brought  about,  when  a  man  clothed  with  God's  power  stands  up 
and  pleads  with  beating  heart  and  living  voice  that  men  will  be  reconciled 
to  God.  Who  can  look  upon  the  vast  audiences  which  in  London  and  New 
York  have  recently  been  moved  by  the  proclamation  of  the  simple  gospel, 
without  believing  that  there  are  capacities  of  pulpit  power  yet  undeveloped, 
and  that  the  calling  of  the  preacher  has  even  a  grander  future  before  it 
than  it  has  seen  in  the  past  ?  To  move  men  in  masses  by  the  power  of  truth 
—  this  is  the  grandest  work  man  has  to  do.  Happy  he  who  is  called  to 
engage  in  it.  We  may  adapt  to  our  purpose  the  simile  of  good  Archbishop 


276  THE   CLAIMS   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN    MINISTRY. 

Leighton,  and  liken  the  true  minister  to  Amphion  with  his  harp.  Ainphion 
charmed  the  beasts  by  his  playing,  and  so  moved  the  hearts  of  the  very 
stones  that  they  followed  his  music  and  built  themselves  into  a  city.  But 
the  Christian  preacher,  as  the  Archbishop  says,  builds  "the  walls  of  a  far 
more  famed  and  beautiful  city,  even  the  heavenly  Jerusalem,  and  in  such  a 
manner  that  the  stones  of  this  building,  being  truly  and  without  fable 
living,  and  charmed  by  the  pleasant  harmony  of  the  gospel,  come  of  their 
own  accord  to  take  their  places  in  the  wall." 

While  I  deny  that  the  outward  infelicities  of  the  preacher's  calling  are 
worthy  of  serious  consideration  by  the  side  of  the  compensatory  circum- 
stances and  satisfactions  which  are  granted  him,  more  attention  is  due  to  the 
inward  trials  of  his  life.  Here  I  would  not  conceal  one  atom  of  the  truth. 
The  ministry  is  in  its  very  nature  a  life  of  self-sacrifice.  The  minister  is  a 
servant  by  the  very  meaning  of  the  word  —  first  a  servant  of  Christ,  and 
then  a  servant  of  the  church  for  Jesus'  sake.  And  the  servant  is  not  greater 
than  his  Lord.  The  path  he  treads  is  the  same  path  his  master  trod.  His 
power  over  men  is  proportioned  to  the  extent  to  which  he  enters  into  their 
sorrows  and  mourns  over  their  sins.  He  cannot  fight  the  evil  of  this  world 
without  appreciating  it  —  and  ofttimes  being  weighed  down  in  spirit  by  the 
mass  and  strength  of  it.  Like  John,  he  will  sometimes  cry  :  "  The  whole 
world  lieth  in  wickedness."  Like  Jesus,  he  will  have  his  Gethsemane 
anguish  over  the  condition  of  human  nature  without  God.  But  all  this,  my 
friends,  is  only  evidence  that  he  has  entered  into  the  mystery  of  the  universe, 
and  gained  a  truer,  deeper  knowledge  of  the  reality  of  things.  He  who  knows 
holiness  and  God  must  deeply  feel  the  contrasts  which  this  world's  life  presents 
to  all  that  is  pure  and  divine.  The  soul  that  never  has  been  penetrated  with 
anxieties,  and  has  never  felt  the  pressure  of  the  great  problems  of  existence, 
has  not  yet  risen  from  childhood  to  manhood.  As  Goethe  once  beautifully 
wrote  : 

"  Who  ne'er  his  bread  in  sorrow  ate, 

Who  ne'er  the  mournful  midnight  hours 
Weeping-  vipon  his  bed  has  sate, 

He  knows  you  not,  ye  heavenly  powers." 

And  so,  too,  there  will  be  times  when  to  declare  God's  whole  mind  and  will 
to  men  who  hate  the  truth,  will  task  all  his  nerve  and  courage.  Many  a  time 
he  shall  go  into  his  pulpit,  feeling  that  he  takes  his  life  in  his  hand.  Many 
a  time  he  shall  prepare  for  his  preaching  by  struggle  and  tears  before  God. 
But  these  are  the  experiences  that  make  men  great.  These  are  the  prepa- 
rations that  make  men  powerful.  The  thunderings  and  lightnings  of  the 
pulpit,  that  have  stirred  men's  hearts  like  the  peal  and  smoke  of  Sinai,  were 
made  possible  by  these  inward  conflicts  and  victories.  The  moving  and 
melting  appeals  of  the  preacher,  in  which  self  was  lost  sight  of,  and  the 
cross  of  Calvary  filled  the  whole  horizon  with  its  glory  and  its  beauty,  were 
born  of  humiliation  and  supplication  in  the  closet.  Better  a  thousand  times 
know  these  inward  trials,  than  to  float  in  air  like  the  gossamer,  and  be  blown 
hither  and  thither  by  every  random  breeze  of  this  world's  folly.  May  God 
make  us  men,  and  men  of  power  in  our  generation,  original  forces  to  mould 
human  society  and  turn  the  currents  of  earthly  life  into  the  channel  of  his 
purposes, —  and  with  this  end,  let  him  fit  us  for  our  work  by  any  discipline 


THE    CLAIMS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    MINISTRY.  277 

that  he  may  see  to  be  needful  for  us.  A  young  and  brave  Christian  heart 
will  find  not  discouragement  but  stimulus  in  this  knowledge  that  the  goal 
of  the  preacher's  life  is  not  to  be  won  without  dust  and  toil. 

Out  from  the  sorrow  and  sin  of  the  world  there  sounds  to-day  the  call 
for  men  to  proclaim  the  glad  news  of  salvation.  During  our  late  war,  the 
drum  was  heard  through  our  streets,  and  the  call  was  uttered  from  pulpit 
and  platform  for  men  to  fight  for  nationality  and  freedom.  A  great  wave  of 
enthusiasm  swept  over  the  land.  Young  men  were  ashamed  to  stay  at  home, 
and  gave  themselves  joyfully  to  the  armies  of  the  Kepublic.  We  honor 
them  to-day,  and  put  their  names  side  by  side  with  those  earlier  heroes  who 
fought  and  suffered  and  died  at  Lexington  and  Valley  Forge.  But  there  is 
a  constant  call  for  men  to  reinforce  the  thinned  ranks  of  Christ's  ministry. 
A  hundred  churches  of  note  are  looking  in  vain  for  fit  men  to  lead  them. 
And  we  have  the  word  of  the  Lord  himself,  as  he  ascended  to  his  Father  : 
"Go  ye  into  all  the  world,  and  preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature" — a 
word  addressed  to  you  and  me  as  truly  as  to  those  who  first  listened  to  it. 
I  remember  well  the  time  when  I  was  first  brought  to  consider  that  call.  It 
flashed  upon  me  that  with  every  young  man  of  suitable  gifts  and  oppor- 
tunities the  presumption  ought  to  be  that  he  was  called  to  be  Christ's  soldier 
and  servant,  and  that  the  question  with  him,  if  he  was  a  Christian,  was  not : 
"Are  there  any  reasons  why  I  should  enter  upon  this  work?  "  but  rather  : 
"Are  there  any  reasons  why  I  should  not  enter  upon  it?"  "I  have  given 
myself  to  Christ,"  I  said  then  to  myself, — "  why  should  I  not  do  that  work 
which  will  most  immediately  and  directly  bear  upon  the  advancement  of 
Christ's  kingdom  in  the  world  ?  I  expect  to  spend  an  eternity  in  praising 
and  serving  him  who  died  for  me, —  why  should  not  my  life  in  heaven  and 
my  life  on  earth  be  all  of  one  piece  —  all  devoted  directly  to  promote  the 
interests  and  the  honor  of  God  ?  One  only  life  have  I  to  live  ;  can  I  make 
that  life  noble  and  beneficent  in  any  way  so  well  as  by  giving  it  to  the  min- 
istry of  Jesus  Christ  ? "  Ought  not  these  same  considerations,  that  had 
weight  with  me,  to  have  weight  with  some  of  you  also  ? 

The  other  day  I  stood  in  that  grand  Memorial  Hall  which  the  sons  of 
Harvard  have  built  to  keep  green  and  sacred  the  memories  of  those  alumni 
and  students  of  the  college  who  fell  fighting  for  the  unity  of  the  nation  in 
our  great  civil  war.  On  marble  tablets  beneath  carven  arches  I  read  the 
names  of  scores  upon  scores  of  good  men  and  true  who  had  died  for  their 
country.  The  great  painted  window  shed  a  subdued  light  upon  the  scene, 
and  I  trod  softly  as  if  my  footsteps  might  wake  some  sleeper  from  his  rest. 
My  eye  wandered  upward  and  caught  the  words  from  the  Latin  Vulgate  : 
"  Qui  enim  voluerit  animam  suam  salvamfacere,  perdet  earn;  qui  autem 
perdiderit  animam  suam  propter  me,  inveniet  earn."  " For  whosoever 
will  save  his  life  shall  lose  it ;  and  whosoever  shall  lose  his  life  for  my  sake 
shall  find  it. "  Was  not  the  legend  true  ?  And  does  it  not  apply  to  all  self- 
sacrificing  labor  for  Christ  —  and  specially  to  work  for  Christ  in  the  ministry  ? 
Those  young  men  whose  names  are  now  inscribed  so  grandly  on  their  Alma 
Mater's  roll  of  honor  gave  their  lives  for  something  grander  than  life  —  their 
country's  unity  and  existence  and  honor.  It  was  faith  in  freedom  and  free 
government  that  carried  them  through  —  and  these  things  were  invisible 
realities.  But  there  is  another  government  grander  still — the  kingdom  of 


278  THE   CLAIMS   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY. 

our  God  —  a  kingdom  which  shall  endure  *vhen  all  earthly  governments 
shall  crumble  and  perish.  It  is  a  nobler  thing  to  give  our  lives  to  that.  Those 
fallen  heroes  are  joined  now,  in  the  nation's  gratitude,  with  others  of  an  earlier 
day  who  laid  the  foundations  of  our  governmental  system  in  their  blood. 
Their  reward  is  fresh  and  sure.  But  this  reward  of  human  fame  is  nothing 
to  the  reward  of  him  who  lives  and  dies  a  true  soldier  of  Christ  in  the  min- 
istry. His  is  the  immortal  honor  that  only  God  can  give  —  and  the  ever- 
lasting thanks  of  fellow-creatures,  whose  rescue  from  the  corruptions  of 
earth  and  whose  place  at  God's  right  hand  are  due  to  his  faithful  service  in 
their  behalf.  Dear  friends,  remember  that  earthly  honors  fade.  Earthly 
mausoleums  cease  to  be.  To  have  one  redeemed  and  deathless  human  soul 
as  the  monument  of  our  life's  work  on  earth,  will  be  better  than  all  the  fame 
that  has  been  won  on  all  earth's  fields  of  battle. 

There  have  been  men  who  have  heard  God's  call  and  who  have  refused 
obedience, —  but  it  has  been  only  to  lose  in  character  and  hope  and  true 
success  for  this  world  —  and  we  know  not  how  much  in  the  world  to  come. 
We  cannot  safely  cheat  God.  He  will  have  his  own  with  usury.  There  was 
Erasmus.  Great  scholar  as  he  was,  three  centuries  and  a  half  ago,  in  those 
troublous  times  when  men's  minds  were  seething  with  new  ideas  of  faith 
and  freedom,  he  cared  more  for  ease  and  reputation  than  he  did  for  truth. 
He  might  have  wielded  a  mighty  influence  in  behalf  of  the  rising  Reforma- 
tion, but  he  declared  that  he  never  was  cut  out  for  a  martyr.  And  so  while 
Luther  was  bold  as  a  lion,  Erasmus  timidly  concealed  his  sentiments  and 
tried  to  be  friends  with  the  Papacy  and  with  those  who  attacked  it  too.  He 
sought  ease,  but  both  parties  suspected  him  and  denounced  him,  till  he  found 
his  position  of  neutrality  a  bed  of  thorns  instead  of  a  bed  of  roses.  He  sought 
to  guard  his  reputation,  but  he  blackened  it  forever.  Courting  the  favor  of 
men,  in  a  time  when  nothing  but  honest,  outspoken  decision  for  the  right 
would  do,  his  name  has  come  to  be  a  synonym  for  pusillanimity  and  moral 
cowardice.  He  sacrificed  all  his  nobility  of  character, —  and  what  did  he 
gain  ?  Nothing  —  absolutely  nothing.  He  only  demonstrated  that  he  that 
findeth  his  life  shall  lose  it. 

But,  says  one,  I  am  ready  to  do  God's  will, — but  these  feeble  powers  of 
mine — how  can  they  accomplish  anything  in  a  work  so  grand  and  holy  as  you 
suggest?  Let  me  answer,  as  God  answered  Jeremiah,  when  he  protested 
that  he  was  but  a  child,  and  could  not  take  up  the  work  of  the  prophet  which 
God  had  laid  upon  him.  "  Say  not  I  am  a  child  ;  for  thou  shalt  go  to  all 
that  I  shall  send  thee, — and  whatsoever  I  command  thee  thou  shalt  speak. 
Be  not  afraid  of  their  faces,  for  I  am  with  thee  to  deliver  thee,  saith  the 
Lord. "  Do  you  not  remember  how  Jesus  took  the  five  loaves  and  multi- 
plied them  ?  It  was  a  symbol  of  his  methods  in  using  the  gifts  of  his  servants. 
He  takes  the  few  talents,  and  makes  them  enough  in  number  to  feed  a  mul- 
titude. He  takes  the  weak,  and  makes  them  strong  enough  to  confound  the 
mighty.  Be  sure  that  he  never  sends  out  a  soldier  at  his  own  charges.  He 
equips  the  soldier  for  the  battle.  None  of  us  have  ever  yet  begun  to  imagine 
how  much  Christ  can  make  of  us  for  his  own  glory,  if  we  only  put  ourselves 
wholly  into  his  hands.  Without  him  we  can  do  nothing,  but  we  can  do  all 
things  through  Christ  who  strengthened  us. 

But  this  address  is  for  all.     It  may  be  that  the  work  of  preaching  Christ's 


THE    CLAIMS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    MINISTRY.  279 

gospel,  as  his  chosen  aud  official  representative,  is  one  from  which  by  special 
circumstances  you  are  shut  out.  Still  you  may  take  the  spirit  and  lesson  of 
this  occasion  with  you.  The  spirit  is  the  spirit  of  service,  whatever  the 
vocation  may  be.  The  lesson  is  that,  giving  up  our  life  to  God  and  for  God, 
we  find  it  to  our  eternal  gain.  We  find  it  in  part  in  this  world.  There  are 
precious  and  sacred  moments  in  the  history  of  the  consecrated  man,  when 
for  a  little  he  seems  to  have  found  his  true  self  and  to  breathe  already  the 
atmosphere  of  heaven.  A  moment  ago,  all  things  seemed  dim  and  unreal, — 
now  he  sees  God  and  spiritual  realities  with  perfect  clearness.  I  can  com- 
pare it  to  nothing  better  than  the  change  which  takes  place  when  you  sud- 
denly bring  a  microscope  to  a  focus.  The  object  is  just  before  you  in  the 
centre  of  the  field  of  view,  but  your  object-glass  is  not  adjusted  to  it  —  either 
you  do  not  see  it  at  all,  or  you  see  it  very  dimly.  But  a  slight  turn  of  the 
screw,  and  lo  !  it  comes  out  before  you  as  clear  and  bright  as  if  it  had  been 
just  created.  But,  you  say,  such  glimpses  of  truth  are  so  rare  !  Well,  they 
they  need  not  be  rare.  As  you  go  on  in  the  Christian  life,  the  seeing  habit 
will  be  more  and  more  the  habit  of  your  mind  —  you  will  endure  as  continu- 
ally seeing  him  who  is  invisible.  All  labors  and  trials  will  become  helpers 
to  you,  drawing  you  nearer  to  God  and  strengthening  your  faith .  Even  the 
cannon-ball  that  brings  devastation  in  its  track  shall  open  for  you,  near  the 
spot  whereon  you  stand,  some  unknown  spring  of  fresh  and  living  water. 
What  a  wonderful  prayer-meeting  that  was  which  the  Christian  general 
whom  I  have  already  mentioned  held  in  the  idol  temple  at  Rangoon  !  In 
the  hand  of  each  of  the  idol  gods  that  lined  the  sides  of  the  great  apartment, 
his  men  put  a  torch,  and  by  the  light  of  these  torches  in  the  idols'  hands, 
they  held  their  worship  of  the  Most  High.  So  for  all  of  us  who  give  our 
lives  to  the  service  of  God,  the  dark  and  trying  events  that  threatened  our 
peace  shall  be  turned  into  torch -bearers  to  light  up  our  worship  and  point 
out  to  us  his  way.  But  this  is  but  the  prophecy  of  another  discovery  to 
come.  Only  when  we  reach  the  city  where  we  need  no  candle,  neither  light 
of  the  sun,  shall  we  know  what  it  is  to  "  find  our  life."  Christ  is  our  life, 
and  we  shall  find  him,  and  with  Christ  we  shall  find  all  that  we  need  —  all 
that  we  were  made  for.  Heaven  will  be  the  place,  and  eternity  the  time,  for 
the  manifestation  of  the  sons  of  God.  Oh,  how  we  shall  rejoice  there,  that 
we  were  willing  to  lose  the  life  that  was  transient  and  earthly,  for  the  sake 
of  the  life  that  was  spiritual  and  eternal ! 

Just  one  thing  more  I  wish  to  say,  and  that  is,  that  this  life  of  service  to 
God  may  be  lived  by  every  young  person  before  me.  It  is  the  very  nature 
of  the  Christian  life  to  implant  within  us  virtues  which  we  have  not  in  our- 
selves, and  to  develop  and  strengthen  them  thereafter,  until  we  and  they  are 
inseparable.  You  may  by  reason  of  certain  experiences  of  temptation  and 
transgression  have  lost  all  confidence  in  yourself.  Remember  that  you  may 
still  put  confidence  in  Christ.  That  is  a  most  instructive  example  of  Bishop 
Cranmer  in  the  reign  of  Bloody  Mary,  the  persecutor  of  the  Protestants. 
You  recollect  how,  in  a  moment  of  weakness  and  terror,  he  abjured  the  faith, 
and  assented  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  Rome  ;  but  you  remember 
also  how,  when  reason  and  the  fear  of  God  returned,  he  repented  of  his  sin 
and  suffered  at  the  stake,  holding  out  first  into  the  fire  the  hand  that  had 
signed  the  recantation,  till  it  was  entirely  consumed.  Christ  gave  his  servant 


280  THE    CLAIMS   OF   THE    CHRISTIAN"   MINISTRY. 

strength  to  put  away  all  his  fears,  and  leave  evidence  to  the  world  of  his 
saving  power  that  will  remain  to  all  after  ages.  So  there  is  no  one  of  you, 
however  weak  he  may  seem  to  himself  to  be,  that  cannot  obtain  strength 
from  God  to  stand  even  single-handed  for  the  Master.  "Act  then  —  act  in 
the  living  present,  heart  within,  and  God  o'erhead," —  and  no  man  can  meas- 
ure the  ultimate  results  of  your  influence. 

When  John  Knox  died,  a  nobleman  at  his  grave  uttered  over  his  coffin 
this  memorable  sentence  :  "  Here  lies  one  that  never  feared  the  face  of  man." 
John  Knox's  voice  had  rung  out  like  a  trumpet  through  Scotland.  Instead 
of  his  fearing  the  face  of  man,  the  wicked,  even  though  they  held  the  highest 
seats  in  the  kingdom,  feared  him,  as  Herod  of  old  feared  John  the  Baptist. 
And  what  was  the  secret  of  it?  Simply  this, —  he  feared  God  so  much,  that 
no  room  was  left  for  fear  of  man.  Let  this  be  my  last  word  to  the  members 
of  these  Societies  :  "Fear  God,  and  you  shall  have  no  other  fear.  Honor 
God,  and  you  shall  be  honored  by  him.  Lose  your  lives  for  Christ's  sake, 
and  you  shall  find  them  to  life  eternal.  And  in  the  great  coming  day,  they 
that  be  wise  shall  shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firmament,  and  they  that 
turn  many  to  righteousness  as  the  stars  forever  and  ever." 


XXIV. 

SOURCES  OF  SUPPLY  FOR  THE  MINISTRY.* 


I  wish  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  proportion  of  our  thoroughly 
trained  young  men  who  enter  the  ministry  is  gradually  but  seriously  dimin- 
ishing. The  deficiency  of  which  I  speak  is  not  confined  to  our  own  denomi- 
nation. A  few  months  ago  I  collected  the  latest  triennial  catalogues  of  our 
leading  colleges,  and  constructed  an  elaborate  table  of  statistics,  in  order  to 
discover  the  precise  proportion  of  college  graduates  that  chose  the  ministry 
as  a  calling  in  the  earlier  and  in  the  later  decades  of  their  history.  The 
result  was  surprising.  Yale  College  in  the  first  years  of  its  history  gave 
seventy-two  per  cent,  of  its  graduates  to  the  ministry.  Fifty  years  ago,  the 
proportion  had  already  become  reduced  to  thirty-one  per  cent.  During  the 
last  ten  years  of  which  the  triennial  gives  professional  statistics,  the  propor- 
tion is  only  eleven  per  cent.  Fifty  years  ago,  Williams  College  gave  fifty- 
nine  per  cent,  of  its  graduates  to  the  ministry, — now  it  gives  only  fifteen  ; 
Amherst  College  shows  a  reduction  during  the  same  half-century  from 
sixty-one  per  cent,  to  twenty -six  per  cent. ;  Hamilton  College  from  thirty- 
eight  per  cent,  to  twenty-three  per  cent. ;  Brown  University  from  thirty -two 
per  cent,  to  seventeen  per  cent. ;  and  the  University  of  Rochester,  which  in 
the  first  ten  years  of  its  history  sent  forty-six  per  cent,  of  its  graduates  into 
the  ministry,  during  the  last  ten  years  of  which  we  have  a  record,  sends  a 
proportion  of  only  twenty-two  per  cent,  t 

It  is  evident  that  we  have  before  us  a  general  fact  of  our  times  which 
ought  to  interest  us,  not  only  as  Baptists,  but  as  Christians.  What  we  see 
of  decline  in  this  respect  cannot  be  due  to  any  special  defects  of  method  or 
administration  into  which  our  Baptist  colleges  have  fallen.  The  evil  is 
common  to  all  our  Christian  colleges.  The  greatness  of  it  may  be  partially 
appreciated  when  we  consider  that  the  result  of  averaging  the  statistics  of 
the  six  colleges  mentioned  is  to  show  that,  while  fifty  years  ago  forty  per 
cent,  of  our  college  graduates  entered  the  ministry,  we  have  now  reached  a 
time  when  only  seventeen  per  cent,  of  those  who  have  received  a  complete 
college  training  devote  themselves  to  the  ministry  of  the  gospel.  We  may 


*  An  Address  before  the  Rhode  Island  Baptist  Social  Union,  Providence,  May,  1877  ; 
printed  in  the  Watchman,  Boston,  October,  1878. 

+  An  article  by  Rev.  George  P.  Morris,  of  Montclair,  N.  J.,  in  the  Independent  of  Jan- 
uary 12,  1888,  brings  these  statistics  down  to  the  date  of  the  present  publication,  and 
adds  much  of  interest.  The  proportion  of  ministers  among  the  alumni  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege, from  1642  to  1650,  was  55  per  cent.;  it  has  regularly  diminished,  until  from  1860  to- 
1870,  it  was  8  per  cent.,  and  from  1870  to  1876,  it  was  1.  2  per  cent.  At  Princeton,  from 
1748  to  1760,  it  was  49  per  cent ;  from  1870  to  1877,  it  was  18  per  cent.  At  Yale  College, 
from  1870  to  1880,  the  proportion  was  8  per  cent. ;  at  Williams,  from  1880  to  1883,  it  was 
I'-'.  7  per  cent. ;  at  Amherst,  from  1880  to  18H2,  it  was  13.  5  per  cent.  These  facts  demon- 
strate that,  since  the  above  address  was  written,  the  decline  has  steadily  continued. 

281 


282  SOUKCES   OF   SUPPLY    FOK  THE   MINISTRY. 

appreciate  it  yet  more  fully  when  we  consider  that  while  the  absolute  num- 
ber of  students  in  these  colleges  has  increased  fifty  per  cent,  during  the 
half -century,  the  absolute  number  of  their  graduates  entering  the  ministry 
has  decreased  thirty-three  per  cent.  In  other  words,  while  our  population 
has  grown  immensely  in  numbers  and  culture,  the  supply  of  ministers  fitted 
by  thorough  training  to  meet  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  demands  of  the 
time  has  not  half  kept  pace  with  our  growth  in  other  respects,  and  is  abso- 
lutely one-third  smaller  than  it  was  fifty  years  ago. 

The  instances  I  have  cited  are  typical  instances  of  our  old  and  large 
institutions.  Have  other  sources  of  supply  been  opened  which  might  render 
these  unnecessary  ?  New  colleges  have  certainly  been  founded,  and  of  their 
graduates  some  have  chosen  preaching  as  their  profession  in  life.  But  the 
new  colleges  have  not  made  up  for  the  lack  of  the  old  ones  ;  they  have  had 
all  they  could  do  to  secure  a  foothold ;  have  not  graduated  any  comparatively 
great  number  of  students  ;  above  all,  have  not  sent  into  the  fields  covered 
by  the  old  colleges  enough  men  to  make  any  perceptible  difference  in  the 
result.  And  in  the  West  and  South,  the  graduates  of  the  younger  colleges 
show  no  more  inclination  to  devote  themselves  to  the  gospel  ministry  than 
do  the  graduates  of  those  which  have  been  longer  established, —  in  fact,  I 
think  it  will  be  found  that  the  influences  which  have  led  at  the  East  to  the 
results  I  have  detailed,  have  operated  yet  more  powerfully  at  the  West,  so 
that  the  facts  I  have  stated  fairly  exhibit  the  real  condition  of  things 
throughout  the  country. 

It  would  be  some  alleviation  and  comfort  if  we  could  believe  that,  as  the 
supply  has  decreased  in  numbers,  there  had  been  a  counterbalancing  increase 
in  the  native  and  acquired  ability  of  those  who  enter  upon  the  sacred  office. 
But  I  fear  it  cannot  be  argued  that  better  quality  has  made  up  for  dimin- 
ished quantity.  The  average  amount  of  talent  in  a  hundred  or  a  thousand 
young  men  is  a  pretty  constant  quantity.  When  you  diminish  the  number, 
you  diminish  your  chances  of  finding  among  the  number  men  of  superior 
ability.  We  have  better  schools,  better  methods,  better  training,  than  we 
had  fifty  years  ago,  but  these  do  not  compensate  for  the  lack  of  the  best  sort 
of  raw  material.  No  amount  of  grinding  or  polishing  will  give  a  good  edge 
to  a  tool  of  soft  iron.  Schools,  however  excellent,  cannot  transform  second- 
rate  men  into  first-rate  ministers.  And  it  seems  to  me  that  I  perceive  a 
marked  and  increasing  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  ablest  and  most 
influential  men  in  our  college  classes  to  turn  away  from  the  ministry  to  other 
pursuits,  so  that  the  proportion  of  talent  entering  the  ministry  is  even  less 
than  the  proportion  of  numbers. 

But  are  there  not  a  multitude  of  ministers  who  can  find  no  pastoral  charge  ? 
I  am  reminded  of  an  anecdote  of  Daniel  Webster.  He  was  asked  by  a  young 
man  who  proposed  to  study  law,  whether  there  was  any  room  at  the  bar. 
•"  O,  yes,"  said  Mr.  Webster,  "  plenty  of  room,  high  up  ! "  So  there  might 
be  a  minister  at  every  cross-road,  and  yet  a  thousand  churches  be  begging  in 
vain  for  pastors  thoroughly  fitted  for  their  work.  Of  this  last  sort  there  is 
no  overplus,  but  a  great  and  constantly  increasing  dearth.  The  culture  of 
our  communities  has  proceeded  faster  than  the  culture  of  our  ministry.  We 
must  provide  a  more  advanced  culture,  and  we  must  give  the  best  brains  of 
our  sons  to  receive  it,  or  the  civilization  of  the  age  will  run  away  from  the 
church. 


SOURCES   OF   SUPPLY   FOR  THE   MINISTRY.  283 

Let  us  face  the  problem.  We  have  before  us  a  phenomenon  of  our  times 
—  a  continually  growing  tendency  among  our  educated  young  men  to  enter 
upon  other  vocations  rather  than  the  ministry.  I  wish,  if  possible,  to  assign 
some  of  the  chief  causes  of  this  tendency,  that  we  may  wisely  labor  to  coun- 
teract it.  It  seems  to  me  that  we  shall  not  reach  the  root  of  the  matter 
unless  we  grant  that  for  this  general  phenomenon  of  our  Christianity,  which 
manifests  itself  in  Germany  and  England  as  well  as  in  the  United  States,  we 
must  find  a  subtle,  potent  and'pervasive  cause  in  the  philosophical  spirit  of 
<Kir  time.  Every  generation  has  its  philosophy.  Man  knows  two  things, 
body  and  soul,  matter  and  mind  ;  and  according  as  one  or  the  other  absorbs 
his  attention,  he  becomes  a  materialist  or  an  idealist.  But  neither  material- 
ism nor  idealism  by  itself  can  long  content  the  thinker,  and  so  the  pendulum 
of  philosophic  thought  swings  between  the  two  extremes.  Not  half  a  century 
•ago  the  idealistic  transcendentalism  of  Germany  was  the  great  danger  against 
which  we  had  to  guard.  But  this  generation  of  Germans  has  seen  the  lec- 
ture-rooms of  the  Hegelian  philosophers  deserted.  Physical  science  is  taught 
in  them  now.  The  pendulum  has  swung  to  the  materialistic  extreme.  The 
current  philosophy  in  scientific  circles  is  a  philosophy  of  the  senses.  Matter 
is  all  and  in  all.  Or  if  mind  and  matter  be  distinguishable,  they  are  both 
but  the  opposite  sides  or  manifestations  of  an  unknowable  force,  which  is 
conceived  of  under  physical  analogies,  so  that  the  priority  of  spirit  is  practi- 
•cally  denied. 

The  late  lamented  President  Talbot  used  to  say  that  he  liked  metaphysics, 
because  they  had  to  do  with  realities.  Our  age  denies  the  very  existence  of 
those  realities  with  which  intellectual  and  moral  philosophy  has  to  do.  A 
mist  has  risen  from  the  low  grounds  of  physical  research,  and  has  obscured 
the  great  spiritual  facts  and  existences  in  presence  of  which  the  human  spirit 
used  to  rejoice  and  tremble.  Our  literature  is  full  of  evolution  and  natural 
law, — but  the  God  who  works  miracles,  and  has  personal  dealings  with  the 
soul,  is  far  away.  The  young  men  in  our  colleges  get  ideas  from  Herbert 
Spencer,  as  well  as  from  the  Sabbath  sermon.  They  may  be  Christian  young 
men,  and  their  faith  may  not  be  absolutely  destroyed, — the  Christian  college 
is  the  best  of  all  places  to  meet  the  infidel  reasoning,  and  to  overcome  it. 
Yet  these  young  men  breathe  the  atmosphere  of  their  time,  and  it  is  an 
atmosphere  of  doubt  and  questioning.  Is  it  a  wonder  that  the  unseen  and 
eternal  should  become  so  dimmed  to  their  vision,  that  a  life  devoted  to 
teaching  about  these  invisible  things  should  seem  hardly  substantial  enough 
to  attract  them  ? 

And  while  the  hold  of  spiritual  realities  is  weakened,  the  material  progress 
of  the  age  strongly  impresses  the  youthful  mind.  Commerce  and  invention 
have  opened  many  a  new  world  to  the  enthusiastic  adventurer.  Years  ago 
there  used  to  be  only  three  learned  professions  —  law,  medicine,  and  theol- 
ogy. But  there  are  a  dozen  to-day.  Architecture,  the  fine  arts,  literature, 
journalism,  chemistry,  banking,  mining,  offer  brilliant  prizes  to  the  capable 
and  industrious  —  prizes  compared  with  which  the  returns  of  the  pastorate 
seem  very  meagre  and  precarious,  and  the  life  of  the  pastorate  very  narrow 
and  confined.  The  world  has  shot  forward  along  the  line  of  industrial  dis- 
covery and  achievement.  Railroading  and  manufactures  require  a  very  high 
order  of  genius  and  discipline  to  organize  and  conduct  them,  and  these 


284  SOURCES   OF   SUPPLY   FOR   THE   MINISTRY. 

pursuits  offer  pecuniary  compensations  which  the  ministry  cannot.  The- 
style  of  living  in  which  cultivated  people  indulge  has  advanced  in  elaborate- 
ness and  expensiveness  much  faster  than  the  minister's  salary  has  increased. 
All  these  things  our  young  men  see.  To  the  best  of  the  Christian  students 
in  our  colleges,  Satan  offers,  as  he  offered  to  Christ,  all  the  kingdoms  of  the 
world  and  the  glory  of  them,  if  they  will  but  choose  a  secular  calling  rather 
than  the  ministry.  I  almost  wonder  that,  in  this  age  of  materialistic  thought 
and  of  physical  progress,  any  are  found  to  give  themselves  to  Christ's  service 
as  preachers  of  His  gospel.  I  should  actually  wonder,  if  I  did  not  know  that 
young  hearts  are  not  always  sordid  and  selfish,  and  that  the  Spirit  of  Christ 
can  touch  them  with  the  fire  of  self-sacrificing  love.  Let  us  appreciate  the 
nature  of  the  decision,  when  the  spirit  of  the  age  yields  to  the  Spirit  of 
Christ,  and  our  young  men  give  up  their  hopes  of  worldly  preferment  to 
engage  in  a  service  so  self-denying  as  that  of  the  average  ministry. 

The  second  cause  of  the  diminishing  supply  of  educated  men  for  the  min- 
istry is  to  be  found  in  what  I  may  call  the  secularization  of  our  colleges. 
That  I  may  not  seem  to  use  this  phrase  in  any  invidious  sense,  let  me  explain 
my  meaning.  It  is  a  fact  we  need  to  consider,  that  even  our  Christian  col- 
leges, as  distinguished  from  State  institutions,  have  been  more  and  more 
becoming  places  of  secular,  rather  than  religious,  training.  This  is  partly  an 
incident  of  their  general  advance  in  methods.  In  early  days  the  college  was 
looked  upon  chiefly  as  a  feeder  for  the  ministry ;  it  was  indeed  a  college  and 
a  theological  seminary  combined.  If  others  than  incipient  preachers  studied 
in  it,  they  were  those  who  had  in  view  one  of  the  other  learned  professions, 
law  or  medicine.  Now  it  is  a  mark  of  progress,  upon  which  we  ought  to 
congratulate  ourselves,  that  all  classes  of  the  community  are  coming  to  feel 
the  advantages  of  a  thorough  education,  and  the  farmer,  the  manufacturer 
and  the  merchant  desire  their  sons  to  have  a  liberal  training,  even  though 
they  are  to  follow  the  calling  of  their  fathers.  The  colleges  have  felt  this 
demand,  and  have  opened  their  doors  to  all.  They  give  a  broader  and  more 
varied  culture  than  they  gave  fifty  years  ago.  They  have  widened  the  range 
of  their  curriculum  to  embrace  the  new  science  of  the  day,  at  the  same  time 
that  they  have  widened  the  compass  of  their  halls  to  take  in  the  candidates 
for  every  conceivable  human  calling. 

The  results  of  this  are  easily  seen.  The  colleges  have  now  a  smaller  pro- 
portion of  Christian  students.  Much  of  the  instruction  formerly  given  in 
Biblical  studies  and  in  Christian  doctrine  is  given  no  longer.  The  theological 
seminary  has  sprung  up  to  give  a  specifically  theological  training,  and  as  the 
college  and  the  seminary  have  become  more  and  more  differentiated,  the 
work  formerly  done  by  the  one  is  relegated  to  the  other.  No  college  that  I 
know  of  has  any  such  course  of  sermons  on  the  Christian  evidences  and  on 
the  Christian  doctrine,  as  Dr.  Timothy  Dwight  preached  in  the  chapel  of 
Yale  College  a  hundred  years  ago.  The  young  collegian  who  proposes  to 
study  law  has  no  such  instruction  in  theology  as  legal  fledglings  had  then. 
Then  many  a  lawyer  had  tastes  for  Biblical  and  theological  study  awakened 
in  college  which  afterwards  led  to  theological  authorship,  and  reacted  pow- 
erfully and  beneficially  upon  the  work  of  his  chosen  profession.  It  would 
be  well  if  the  men  of  other  professions  could  have  some  such  training  in 
theology  now.  Why  is  it  that  all  other  sciences  are  supposed  to  form  a. 


SOURCES   OF   SUPPLY   FOR  THE   MINISTRY.  285 

necessary  part  of  a  liberal  education,  while  no  place  can  be  found  in  a  col- 
lege curriculum  for  the  most  important  of  all,  the  science  of  God  ? 

So  the  college  has  become  more  collegiate,  and  the  theological  seminary 
more  theological.  It  is  the  old  principle  of  the  division  of  labor.  But  it 
has  its  disadvantages.  With  a  greater  proportion  of  students  bent  on  secular 
pursuits,  there  has  been  a  natural  diversion  of  thought  from  religion  itself. 
Instructors  being  chosen  not  so  much  for  their  religious  spirit  as  for  their 
competence  in  special  departments  of  teaching,  there  is  naturally  a  less 
regard  on  their  part  for  the  religious  welfare  of  the  students  under  their 
care.  The  days  of  wide-spread  revival  in  our  colleges,  those  days  of  strug- 
gle and  prayer  when  the  college  world  was  shaken  to  its  foundations,  and 
universal  awe  was  felt  at  the  manifest  presence  of  God,  are  almost  things  of 
the  past.  Those  were  the  days  when  young  men  felt  the  claims  of  Christ 
and  his  ministry,  and  in  submitting  themselves  to  God,  gave  themselves 
also  to  the  preaching  of  the  gospel.  Now  the  secular  element  is  so  dominant 
that  a  strong  public  sentiment  in  behalf  of  religion  is  difficult  to  arouse. 
The  Christian  element  among  students  and  professors  holds  its  own,  but  it 
does  little  more.  I  am  perfectly  aware  that  the  old  curriculum  and  the  old 
methods  can  never  be  restored,  but  I  trust  in  God  that  the  day  will  come 
when  the  old  revival  spirit  will  fall  upon  our  colleges,  and  when  each  of 
them  may  have  for  its  motto  the  old  legend  upon  the  seal  of  Harvard, 
"  Christo  et  ecclesice"  The  studies  of  the  colleges  may  be  secular,  but 
their  spirit  may  be  religious.  These  colleges  were  all  founded  in  prayer 
and  tears,  by  men  of  God  who  felt  that  education  without  religion  was 
not  only  no  true  education,  but  was  a  curse  to  those  who  received  it.  I 
<jannot  believe  that  the  spirit  of  the  founders  has  spent  itself  and  is  gone. 
But  it  greatly  needs  to  be  revived,  and  for  this  every  Christian  should 
devoutly  pray,  for  the  future  of  the  Christian  cause  is  bound  up  with  the 
religious  condition  of  our  colleges. 

I  wish  now  to  speak  of  a  third  and  last  cause  for  the  disinclination  of  our 
educated  young  men  to  enter  the  ministry,  namely,  a  gradual  change  of  view 
among  the  members  of  our  churches  with  regard  to  the  ministry  itself  as  a 
divine  calling.  I  do  not  now  refer  to  the  disappearance  of  that  adventitious 
dignity  of  ecclesiasticism  which  once  surrounded  the  minister  and  separated 
him  in  the  popular  regard  from  all  others  of  human  kind.  We  who  live  in 
this  generation  can  hardly  picture  to  ourselves  the  solemn  sanctity  that  inves- 
ted his  office  in  old  New  England  days.  That  was  a  time  when,  the  moment 
the  minister  and  his  family  left  the  parsonage  to  walk  to  the  church  on  Sab- 
bath days,  every  parishioner,  young  and  old,  stood  still  by  the  road-side 
with  uncovered  head  until  the  procession  passed.  When  the  minister's 
family  filed  into  the  meeting-house  two  by  two,  the  whole  congregation  rose 
to  receive  them,  and  remained  standing  until  the  minister  had  taken  his 
seat  in  the  pulpit,  and  his  family  had  taken  their  seats  in  the  pew.  That 
old  ecclesiasticism  often  bolstered  up  a  miserable  sloth  and  formality,  and 
though  it  originated  in  real  reverence  for  sacred  things,  it  tended  to  with- 
draw the  minister  from  the  sympathies  of  his  people  and  to  hinder  his  real 
influence.  Bather  than  have  those  days  return,  it  were  better  that  the  min- 
ister should  stand  wholly  upon  his  merits,  and  that  he  should  have  no  influ- 
ence but  that  which  his  personal  character  and  his  faithfulness  in  preaching 
the  word  of  God  might  give  him. 


286  SOURCES   OF   SUPPLY   FOR  THE   MINISTRY. 

All  this  is  true,  and  yet  I  fear  our  people  have  gone  too  far  to  the  other 
extreme  —  I  mean  the  extreme  of  holding  that  there  is  no  sacredness  attach- 
ing to  the  office  of  Christ's  minister,  and  no  divine  calling  except  that  which 
consists  in  gifts.  In  our  revulsion  from  the  theory  of  apostolic  succession 
and  from  the  error  of  supposing  grace  to  be  transmitted  through  human 
fingers,  some  have  gone  to  the  opposite  extreme  of  denying  that  any  grace 
is  bestowed  by  God.  In  short,  there  is  a  theory  of  the  minister's  vocation 
which  would  deprive  the  word  ' '  vocation  "  of  all  its  proper  meaning.  Instead 
of  being  a  calling,  the  ministry  is  regarded  as  a  mere  pursuit  or  profession, 
like  any  other  pursuit  or  profession  in  which  men  employ  themselves.  The 
only  calling  is  gifts,  and  these  gifts  are  self -given.  The  minister  ceases  to 
be  an  ambassador  of  God,  separated  from  his  birth  unto  the  gospel  of  God, 
endowed  with  special  helps,  and  clothed  with  special  authority  from  God. 

See  how  this  change  of  view  affects  young  men  as  they  contemplate  the 
ministry.  All  sense  of  the  honor  of  God's  calling,  and  the  solemnity  of  a 
relation  to  God  so  intimate  as  that  of  his  spokesman  and  representative, 
ceases  at  once.  That  great  attraction  of  the  ministry,  which  has  led  many  a 
lofty-minded  young  man  to  prefer  its  labors  and  trials  to  all  earthly  pleas- 
ure and  fame  and  power,  is  gone  forever,  so  soon  as  we  ignore  the  fact  of  a 
divine  call  to  assume  its  responsibilities.  Only  then,  when  we  regard  it  as 
a  vocation  to  which  God  points  the  soul  by  his  providence  and  Spirit,  does 
obedience  to  his  will  become  blessed,  and  resistance  to  his  will,  dreadful. 
To  me,  this  increasing  unbelief  in  a  divine  call  to  the  ministry  seems  one  of 
the  most  serious  signs  of  the  times.  When  God  calls  a  man,  there  we  may 
be  sure  that  natural  gifts  will  not  be  absent ;  but  I  protest  that,  though  a  man 
might  have  the  natural  gifts  of  a  Fene'lon  or  of  a  Paul,  we  have  no  right  to 
ordain  him,  and  he  has  no  right  to  seek  ordination,  unless  beyond  and  above 
this  possession  of  natural  gifts,  the  secret  conviction  has  been  in  some  way 
wrought  into  his  heart  that  he  is  called  of  God  to  the  ministry,  and  he  can 
say  :  "Woe  is  me,  if  I  preach  not  the  gospel  ?  "  This  belief  that  the  minis- 
ter of  Christ  is  divinely  called  to  his  work,  we  need  to  restore  to  its  true 
place  in  the  minds  of  the  young  men  of  our  colleges  and  of  our  church- 
es. Only  when  they  appreciate  the  sublime  dignity  of  God's  calling,  will 
they  feel  that  "he  that  desireth  the  office  of  bishop  desireth  a  good  work," 
and  that  this  work  is  one  so  surpassing  all  earthly  vocations  that  they  may 
well  desire  it  for  themselves. 

I  have  left  but  a  brief  space  to  indicate  certain  possible  remedies  for  this 
sad  disposition  on  the  part  of  our  young  men  of  talent  and  culture  to  desert 
the  ministry  of  the  gospel.  Let  this  part  of  my  paper  take  the  form  of 
application,  first  to  the  ministers,  and  secondly  to  the  laymen  of  our  church- 
es. It  lies  in  the  power  of  the  ministry  itself  to  increase  the  number  of 
ministers,  by  simply  making  the  ministry  attractive.  There  is  a  querulous 
spirit  discernible  here  and  there  among  our  ministers,  a  jealous,  envying 
spirit,  a  discontented  and  ambitious  spirit,  which  has  its  root  in  unbelieving 
forgetfulness  of  God's  promises,  and  a  dimmed  apprehension  of  God's  truth. 
I  have  heard  good  men  lament,  in  a  way  that  no  struggling  lawyer  or  physi- 
cian would  ever  indulge  in,  their  inadequate  support,  and  the  small  respect 
that  was  paid  them.  But  the  only  way  to  get  respect  is  to  be  respectable, 
and  the  trials  of  the  ministry  are  far  more  easily  borne  when  a  manly  spirit 


SOURCES    OF   SUPPLY    FOE   THE   MINISTRY.  287 

is  summoned  up  to  bear  them.  I  have  heard  ministers  complain  that  they 
were  compelled  to  hawk  themselves  about,  as  slaves  at  Southern  auction- 
blocks  used  to  cry  to  this  dealer  and  to  that :  "Buy  me  !  buy  me  !  "  But  I 
have  heard  also  of  a  certain  slave  in  ancient  Greece,  who,  under  similar  cir- 
cumstances, when  asked  what  his  strong  points  were,  said  proudly,  "I  can 
rule  men  ;  whoso  wants  a  master,  let  him  buy  me  !  "  In  the  early  centuries, 
Christians  sold  themselves  into  slavery,  in  order  that  they  might  obtain 
access  for  the  gospel  to  the  houses  of  noble  masters,  and  so  bring  these  very 
masters  into  submission  to  Christ.  Let  the  Christian  minister  so  reverence 
his  calling,  that  the  selling  of  himself  to  a  church  shall  seem  a  small  price  to 
pay  for  this  mastery  of  men  ! 

But  above  and  beyond  this  high  estimate  of  his  vocation,  there  needs 
earnest  endeavor  to  walk  worthily  of  it.  Men  are  to  be  reached  by  living 
thought  —  thought  that  will  waken  the  intellect  and  stir  the  heart.  The 
minister  must  be  a  thinking  being.  He  must  substitute  thought  for  com- 
monplace. Nothing  will  so  divest  the  ministry  of  its  attractiveness  to  young 
men  as  cant  in  the  pulpit,  or  the  indolent  retailing  of  the  thoughts  of  other 
men.  If  the  preacher  does  his  own  thinking,  he  will  be  apt  to  be  independ- 
ent in  the  expression  of  his  thought.  He  will  be  no  sycophant  to  public 
opinion.  And  yet  his  freedom  will  be  freedom  in  the  truth  ;  not  individual 
dogmatism,  but  continual  reference  to  the  authority  of  Scripture,  and  the 
backing  up  of  what  is  urged  as  truth  by  a  *'  Thus  saith  the  Lord," — this  is 
the  freedom  that  gives  the  preacher  power.  Such  freedom  as  this  will  be 
accompanied  by  humility  of  spirit.  The  messenger  will  be  hidden  behind 
his%  message.  His  fervor  will  not  be  the  self -moved  enthusiasm  of  high 
animal  spirits  and  merely  natural  sympathy ;  it  will  be  that  penetrating  and 
irresistible  earnestness  which  the  unction  and  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  alone 
can  give.  Under  God,  our  ministry  have  the  recruiting  of  their  ranks  in 
their  own  hands.  When  they  are  commanded  to  commit  the  gospel  to 
faithful  men  who  shall  be  able  to  teach  others  also,  they  can  with  God's  help 
fulfill  the  commission.  And  they  can  do  it,  by  making  full  proof  of  their 
own  ministry.  Let  them  be  filled  with  the  Spirit  and  give  themselves 
wholly  to  their  work,  and  no  king  upon  his  throne  can  wield  such  influence 
or  win  so  high  regard.  Under  the  hands  of  such  a  preacher,  young  men 
will  come  to  take  his  view  of  the  ministry,  and  will  count  it  their  highest 
honor  to  enter  it. 

But  my  second  application  of  this  subject  is  to  laymen.  The  rank  and 
file  of  the  churches  have  duties  in  this  matter  also.  They  must  call  forth 
the  ministers  of  the  coming  generation.  God's  call  no  more  renders  unnec- 
essary man's  call  here,  than  God's  regenerating  agency  renders  human 
agency  unnecessary  in  bringing  sinners  into  the  kingdom.  In  the  first 
centuries  the  churches  used  to  feel  their  duty  in  this  regard,  and  when  pas- 
tors were  needed,  they  used  to  lay  the  burden  of  preaching  the  gospel  upon 
young  men  of  proper  native  endowments,  even  when  these  young  men  were 
themselves  reluctant  to  accept  the  charge.  When  they  fled  in  order  to 
escape,  the  churches  sent  their  messengers  after  them,  brought  them  back, 
and  as  it  were,  compelled  them  to  serve  in  the  ministry.  The  one  great 
ancient  church-orator,  Chrysostom,  the  golden-mouthed,  was  chosen  thus. 
And  in  our  own  day  and  in  our  own  denomination,  Dr.  William  B.  Williams, 


"288  SOURCES   OF   SUPPLY   FOR   THE   MINISTRY. 

that  prince  of  preachers,  was  called  after  a  similar  fashion,  his  church  sum- 
marily electing  him  its  pastor,  when  he  was  in  full  practice  of  the  law.  We 
must  do  more  than  we  now  do  to  make  our  young  men  feel  their  responsibility 
in  this  regard.  We  must  convince  them  that  the  burden  of  proof  rests  upon 
them  ;  what  good  reason  can  they  give  why  they  should  not  serve  Christ  as 
preachers  of  his  gospel  ?  The  putting  of  this  question  would  of tener  than 
we  think  reveal  the  fact  that  God  had  already  gone  before  us,  and  had  been 
stirring  the  young  man's  mind,  if  not  with  yearnings,  at  least  with  appre- 
hensions, that  in  that  direction  his  duty  might  lie. 

But  the  layman's  responsibility  does  not  cease  with  the  exertion  of  his 
personal  influence  to  induce  the  brightest  young  men  of  the  churches  to 
enter  the  ministry  ;  he  must  also  do  his  part  to  provide  them  with  proper 
training  for  their  work.  One  of  the  great  duties  of  the  laity  of  the  present 
day  is  to  demand  proper  qualifications  of  mental  discipline  and  sound  doc- 
trine in  those  who  are  to  be  their  teachers.  And  since  the  majority  of  young 
men  cannot  make  these  qualifications  their  own  without  long  courses  of 
study,  it  is  the  additional  duty  of  the  laity  to  see  that  the  means  for  pursuing 
these  studies  are  provided.  While  the  standard  of  preparation  is  so  high, 
young  men  cannot,  without  danger  to  health  and  without  injury  to  their 
scholastic  work,  support  themselves  during  this  preliminary  training  by  the 
labor  of  their  own  brains  or  hands.  When  they  give  up  all  hope  of  secular 
advancement  in  order  to  prepare  themselves  for  the  ministry,  it  is  only  fit 
that  they  should  be  maintained  by  the  churches  they  expect  to  serve.  Their 
time  is  precious, — the  churches  must  economize  it,  and  get  them  into  their 
work  at  the  earliest  possible  day.  And  then  comes  in  the  need  of  institutions 
where  they  may  be  trained  under  Christian  teachers  —  institutions  academ- 
ical, collegiate,  and  theological  —  institutions  thoroughly  endowed,  equipped, 
manned,  and  supported.  As,  in  prospect  of  a  famine,  Joseph  laid  up  in  store- 
houses the  provision  for  future  years,  so  the  churches  must  provide  against 
a  threatened  famine  of  the  word  of  God,  by  treasuring  up  the  means  and 
instruments  of  Christian  education. 

Men  and  institutions, — brethren  of  the  laity,  we  look  to  you  for  these  ! 
But  we  look  to  you  for  something  more  vitally  important  still.  I  mean  for 
that  personal  faith  and  prayer  which  alone  can  change  the  tone  and  spirit 
of  our  times,  and  cause  the  hearts  of  our  best  and  noblest  youth  to  turn,  as 
by  an  irresistible  gravitation,  to  the  ministry  of  the  gospel.  Our  Lord  has 
bidden  us  pray  for  laborers.  I  fear  that  prayer  has  been  disused  of  late. 
While  we  do  our  part  in  urging  upon  young  men  the  solemnity  of  the  obli- 
gation that  rests  upon  them  to  decide  their  duty  in  this  matter  in  the  sight 
of  God,  let  us  feel  our  dependence  upon  him  in  whose  hand  are  all  the 
hearts  of  men,  and  who  turneth  them,  as  the  little  rivulets  of  the  eastern 
fields  are  turned,  by  the  slightest  motion  of  the  hand  or  the  foot  of  the  hus- 
bandman. The  permanent  and  sufficient  remedy  for  all  our  needs  and 
dangers  is  to  be  found  only  in  a  turning  of  the  heart  of  the  church  to  God, 
and  a  turning  of  the  heart  of  our  youth  by  God.  May  these  insufficient 
words  of  mine  help  us  to  appreciate  the  vast  importance  of  the  work  that  is 
thus  laid  upon  us, — and  to  this  work,  as  Abraham  Lincoln  said  at  Gettysburg, 
"let  us  dedicate  ourselves." 


XXV. 

THE  LACK  OF  STUDENTS  FOR  THE  MINISTRY.* 


Not  long  since,  I  received  a  letter  from  a  young  man  who  graduated  from 
our  Seminary  only  three  years  ago,  saying  that  within  the  past  year  six 
different  churches,  all  of  them  strong  and  large,  had  made  him  pressing 
overtures,  urging  him  to  leave  his  present  place  and  to  become  their  pastor. 
And  yet,  on  the  same  day  that  I  received  this  letter,  a  prominent  layman  in 
one  of  our  country  churches  told  me  that  when  his  pastor  recently  resigned, 
the  church  received  a  flood  of  letters  from  ministers  in  all  parts  of  the  State, 
offering  themselves  as  candidates  for  the  vacant  pastorate.  I  beg  you  put 
these  facts  together.  Ministers  enough  and  to  spare,  of  a  certain  sort  — 
uneducated  men,  men  who  cannot  preach,  men  who  cannot  stay  more  than 
a  year  or  two  in  a  place  —  but  such  a  lack  of  trained  and  competent  men, 
that  the  strong  churches  find  pastors  only  by  robbing  one  another,  and  a 
famine  of  the  word  of  God  impends  unless  this  lack  of  ministers  is  supplied. 

What  are  the  figures  ?  Simply  these  :  In  1832,  fifty  years  ago,  there  were 
in  the  United  States  3,600  Baptist  ministers  to  5,300  churches,  or  1,700  more 
churches  than  ministers.  In  1882,  there  were  16,000  ministers  to  26,000 
churches,  or  10,000  more  churches  than  ministers,  while  the  proportion  of 
ministers  to  church  members  had  declined  25  per  cent,  During  the  last  ten 
years  there  have  been  reported  in  our  year-books  4,500  ordinations  to  the 
ministry ;  during  those  same  ten  years  our  Theological  Seminaries  have 
graduated  not  more  than  1,000  men,  so  that  not  one  quarter  of  those  who 
have  entered  the  ministry  have  had  a  full  course  of  training.  Our  popula- 
tion has  been  largely  increasing,  yet  in  sixteen  Northern  Baptist  Colleges 
we  had  in  1882  only  1,582  students,  as  compared  with  1,694  in  the  year 
1872  —  that  is,  a  loss  of  seven  per  cent,  in  the  last  ten  years.  In  1872,  there 
were  in  these  colleges  408  students  for  the  ministry  ;  last  year  there  were 
only  294, —  that  is,  a  loss  within  ten  years  of  28  per  cent.  Within  fifty  years 
the  proportion  of  college  graduates  entering  the  ministry  of  all  evangelical 
denominations  has  dropped  from  46  to  17  per  cent,  while  in  two  of  our  prin- 
cipal Baptist  colleges  it  has  declined  from  42  to  20  per  cent.  Twelve  years 
ago,  or  as  early  as  1871,  a  writer  in  the  Bibliotheca  Sacra  called  attention  to 
the  decreasing  number  of  trained  men  entering  the  ministry.  But  the  evil  is 
far  greater  to-day  than  it  was  twelve  years  ago.  The  sum  and  substance  of 
it  is  that  young  men  of  culture  and  promise  are  ceasing  to  enter  the  minis- 
try, and  that  while  our  church  membership  has  increased  several  fold,  the 
supply  of  educated  ministers  has  greatly  diminished,  and  is  still  continuing 
to  diminish. 


*  An  address  delivered  at  the  meeting  of  the  New  York  Baptist  State  Convention, 
Buffalo,  October  25, 18-53. 

19  289 


290  THE    LACK    OF   STUDENTS    FOR   THE   MINISTRY. 

The  result  is  that  a  multitude  of  weak  men  and  of  half-trained  men  are 
pressing  into  the  ministry.  We  are  not  getting  as  good  material  in  our 
Seminaries  as  we  got  twenty  years  ago.  Men  come  to  us  without  college 
training ;  or,  if  they  come  from  the  colleges,  they  are  not  in  general  the 
strongest  men.  We  have  some  men  —  a  few  —  as  good  as  we  have  «ver  had, 
but  these  are  the  exceptions.  We  can  take  only  what  is  given  us,  and 
neither  the  churches  nor  the  colleges  are  giving  us  as  many  men,  nor  as  able 
men,  as  they  once  did.  Yet  the  demand  for  men  even  of  imperfect  training 
is  so  great  that  the  student  is  tempted  by  the  offers  of  some  admiring  church 
to  cut  short  his  brief  period  of  study,  and  to  enter  the  ministry  before  he 
half  knows  what  he  is  to  preach.  Our  strong  churches  find  it  very  hard  to 
secure  fit  pastors  ;  they  spend  months  and  sometimes  even  years  of  their 
history  in  search  of  them ;  when  they  do  secure  one  who  pleases  their 
fancy,  they  often  learn  too  late  that  his  resources  fit  him  only  for  temporary 
success  ;  they  are  not  long  content  with  his  imperfect  work,  and  they  soon 
seek  a  new  pastor  ;  and  amid  all  this  weakness  and  change  the  hold  of  the 
church  upon  the  thoughtful  and  active  minds  in  the  community  is  lost,  and 
after  ten  or  twenty  years  facts  show  that  the  church  has  gone  backward,  both 
in  numbers  and  in  influence. 

We  want  pastors  of  mental  grasp  and  thorough  culture,  to  instruct  and 
lead  our  stronger  churches.  Where  shall  we  look  for  them  ?  To  the  Sem- 
inaries ?  But  the  Seminaries  —  where  shall  they  find  them?  In  the  col- 
leges ?  But  who  will  fiirnish  them  to  the  colleges  ?  You  would  naturally 
answer  :  Just  such  churches  as  need  their  services.  In  other  words,  if  the 
strong  churches  need  able  and  cultivated  pastors,  the  strong  churches  ought 
to  furnish  the  ministry  with  recruits  of  this  sort  from  their  own  number  ; 
from  their  own  families,  at  least  the  raw  material  for  ministers  should  come. 
Does  it  come  from  such  churches  ?  I  answer  :  Hardly  to  an  appreciable 
extent.  Almost  all  the  students  of  our  Seminaries  come  from  the  small 
country  churches,  and  from  the  families  of  the  poor.  I  belong  to  the  First 
Baptist  Church  of  Rochester.  The  church  lives  under  the  shadow  of  the 
University  and  the  Theological  Seminary.  I  asked  one  of  our  deacons  the 
other  day  how  many  young  men  had  entered  the  ministry  during  the  last 
forty  years  from  the  families  of  our  First  Baptist  Church.  "Well,"  said 
he,  "there  is  you."  "Yes,"  I  said,  "and  who  else  is  there?"  And  he 
could  mention  no  other.  I  love  the  church  to  which  I  belong,  and  I  speak 
of  it  only  because  I  believe  it  an  illustration  and  sample  of  many  others  — 
of  almost  all  our  large  and  well  to  do  churches  throughout  the  State  and  the 
land.  But  I  ask  :  Is  it  right  for  these  large  churches  to  be  always  taking 
and  never  giving  —  depending  upon  others  to  give  them  their  ministers,  but 
furnishing  no  ministers  themselves  ?  Is  not  something  wrong,  when  a  strong 
church  does  nothing  toward  filling  up  the  ranks  of  the  ministry  ?  If  it  has 
a  half  dozen  ministers  in  forty  years,  ought  it  not  to  raise  up  from  its  own 
number  at  least  another  half  dozen  ministers,  to  supply  the  wants  of  other 
fields  ? 

Where  is  the  difficulty  ?  What  is  the  cause  of  the  trouble  ?  It  is  simply 
this  :  We  have  forgotten  that  we  have  anything  to  do  with  respect  to  the 
reinforcement  of  the  ministry.  We  have  said  to  ourselves  :  The  law  of  sup- 
ply and  demand  will  take  care  of  that.  We  have  forgotten  that  the  law  of 


THE   LACK    OF    STUDENTS   FOR   THE    MINISTRY.  291 

supply  and  demand  has  its  foundation  in  the  purely  selfish  interests  of  men, 
and  that  without  the  working  of  God's  Spirit  upon  human  hearts,  the  greater 
the  need  of  an  unselfish  ministry,  the  smaller  will  be  the  supply.  Or  we 
have  said  to  ourselves  :  God  will  take  care  of  this  matter, — when  he  wants  a 
minister  he  will  call  him.  Yes,  and  when  he  wants  a  man  to  be  a  Christian 
he  will  call  him.  But  it  will  not  be  without  your  help.  You  must  go  to 
that  man  and  plead  with  him,  if  you  ever  expect  him  to  be  saved.  So  it  is 
not  enough  for  us  to  preach  the  gospel  ourselves.  We  are  bound  to  "  com- 
mit it  to  faithful  men,  who  shall  be  able  to  teach  others  also. "  Nothing  good 
in  this  fallen  world  will  take  care  of  itself.  Eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of 
liberty.  So  the  church  is  divine ;  but  its  doctrines,  its  ordinances,  its 
offices,  its  privileges,  are  given  to  us  to  defend  and  maintain.  When  we 
withdraw  our  hand  and  leave  any  of  these  interests  to  chance,  then  God's 
cause  will  go  down. 

We  have  forgotten  both  our  own  personal  duty  and  our  dependence  upon 
God.  There  is  the  plain  command  of  Christ,  to  pray  the  Lord  of  the  har- 
vest that  he  send  laborers  into  his  harvest.  How  frequently  have  you  heard 
that  prayer  in  public  worship  during  the  past  twenty  years  ?  How  fre- 
quently have  you  poured  out  your  soul  in  private  for  the  same  blessing  ?  Is 
the  day  of  prayer  for  colleges  observed  in  your  church  ?  Do  mothers  and 
fathers  pray  God  that  their  sons  may  be  ministers  ?  I  have  been  reading  of 
Hannah,  and  of  the  answer  to  her  prayer  in  the  birth  of  Samuel,  the  child 
whose  very  name  meant  "  asked  of  God."  Hannah's  song  of  inspired  praise 
and  her  sacrifice  of  her  son  to  God,  when  he  was  her  only  one,  prove  to  me 
that  it  was  God's  cause  for  which  she  prayed,  and  not  simply  that  her  own 
reproach  might  be  taken  away.  Israel  had  reached  a  low  state,  when  the 
very  high  priest  of  the  nation  had  complicity  with  iniquity.  Hannah  prayed 
for  the  turning  back  of  this  tide  of  sin,  and  for  the  establishment  of  the 
kingdom  of  God ;  and  her  prayer  was  answered  in  the  birth  of  no  common 
child,  and  in  his  doing  of  no  common  work  for  God, —  for  Samuel  was  the 
first  of  the  prophets,  and  the  setter-up  of  the  kingdom  in  Israel. 

How  many  mothers  and  fathers  are  praying  now  that  out  of  the  number  of 
their  children  God  will  raise  up  one,  large  in  mind  and  heart,  sanctified  from 
his  birth,  filled  with  the  Spirit  of  God,  that  he  may  stand  between  the  liv- 
ing and  the  dead,  be  the  mouth-piece  of  the  Almighty,  proclaim  Christ  and 
his  unsearchable  riches,  lead  the  perishing  to  the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh 
away  the  sin  of  the  world  ?  How  many  are  willing  to  let  strangers  care  for 
them  in  their  old  age,  if  their  sons  may  be  only  preaching  the  everlasting 
gospel?  How  many,  when  they  think  of  their  children's  future,  look 
beyond  the  meat  that  perisheth,  and  wish  most  of  all  that  their  sons  may 
feed  upon  the  word  of  God,  and  may  impart  it  to  others,  as  Christ  broke  the 
five  loaves  to  the  hungry  multitude  ?  Ah,  thank  God,  there  are  some  !  Dr. 
Robinson,  of  New  York,  tells  us  of  a  mother  whose  long  continued  prayer 
brought  no  answer,  though  her  son  had  graduated  from  college,  and  had 
begun  to  teach.  But  at  last  he  was  converted,  and  with  his  conversion 
came  the  desire  and  purpose  to  preach  the  gospel.  He  came  fifty  miles  to 
bring  his  mother  word.  Then  for  the  first  time  she  told  him  how,  in  send- 
ing a  missionary-box  to  the  heathen,  when  he  was  a  child,  she  had  enclosed 
one  of  his  little  garments,  and  with  it  had  sent  a  note  begging  the  mission- 


292  THE   LACK   OF   STUDENTS   FOR  THE   MINISTRY. 

ary  to  join  his  prayers  to  hers,  and  never  to  cease  until  the  child  that  had 
worn  that  little  garment  was  made  a  disciple  of  Christ,  and  a  minister  of  his 
gospel. 

Some  such  mothers  there  are,  but  are  there  many  such  ?  Do  we  long  to 
have  our  sons  ministers  of  Christ,  with  all  the  trials  incident  to  that  voca- 
tion, or  do  we  wish  them  to  be  successful  merchants,  lawyers,  journalists, 
physicians?  Ah,  I  look  upon  the  families  of  our  well-to-do  and  educated 
men,  and  I  see  almost  no  sons  of  theirs  entering  the  ministry.  I  look  upon 
the  graduating  classes  of  our  colleges,  and  I  see  only  the  weak,  the  lame, 
the  halt,  the  blind,  willing  to  lay  themselves  upon  God's  altar.  I  look  upon 
our  largest  city  churches,  and  I  find  it  the  rarest  exception  if  one  of  them 
gives  a  candidate  to  the  ministry.  We  want  the  best  gifts,  the  best  train- 
ing, the  best  social  culture  in  the  ministry.  We  look  for  such  most  natur- 
ally to  these  f  amilies,  these  colleges,  these  churches.  But  we  find  Christian 
parents  urging  their  sons  not  to  preach,  rather  than  encouraging  them  to  it ; 
college  presidents  glorifying  other  professions  at  the  expense  of  the  minis- 
try, till  it  seems  to  their  students  a  mean  thing  to  preach  the  gospel ;  Chris- 
tian churches  looking  everywhere  else  for  ministers  but  to  the  young  men 
of  their  own  number. 

I  have  heard  it  said  that  this  is  all  due  to  the  lack  of  heroic  spirit  in  our 
age,  and  West  Point  has  been  referred  to  as  an  example.  There,  as  I  am 
informed,  the  quality  of  the  students  has  greatly  deteriorated  since  ten, 
fifteen,  twenty  years  ago.  Other  professions  hold  out  greater  prizes  than 
the  profession  of  arms.  Engineering  and  art,  chemistry  and  the  service  of 
great  corporations,  offer  far  quicker  promotion  and  greater  salaries  than  can 
be  found  in  army  life.  And  some  would  have  us  believe  that  it  is  so  in  the 
ministry.  Young  men  cannot  make  enough,  in  preaching  Christ,  and  so 
they  will  not  preach.  I  am  unwilling  to  believe  it  of  the  young  men  of  our 
time.  I  do  not  believe  that  they  are  all '  dudes',  devoid  of  all  generous  ambi- 
tion, worshipers  only  of  the  almighty  dollar.  No,  I  remember  how  war 
stirred  our  pulses  once,  and  how  the  need  of  sacrifices  for  the  country 
brought  thousands  of  brave  men  into  the  field,  ready  to  fight,  and  if  need 
be,  to  die.  I  believe  it  is  the  inertness  and  uselessness  of  military  life  in 
time  of  peace  that  keep  the  best  men  from  West  Point  to-day, — and  I  believe 
that,  if  the  young  men  of  our  churches  could  only  hear  the  trumpet-call  to 
heroic  service  in  the  ministry,  they  would  flock  to  the  standard,  ready  for 
any  labor  and  any  sacrifice. 

Why  do  not  young  men  feel  thus  ?  Because  they  are  not  better  than  the 
churches  around  them.  Because  the  churches  themselves  do  not  properly 
estimate  the  dignity  and  the  need  of  the  ministry.  They  have  forgotten 
that  the  minister  is  directly  called  by  God,  intrusted  with  God's  words, 
endowed  with  God's  spirit.  Fathers  and  mothers  have  forgotten  that  "he 
who  desires  the  office  of  a  bishop  desires  a  good  thing  ; "  that  it  is  an  infinite 
honor  to  any  son  of  theirs  to  be  called  to  that  high  office  ;  that  there  is  a 
satisfaction  in  being  used  to  bring  men  from  eternal  death  to  eternal  life, 
that  passes  all  the  satisfaction  of  this  world  ;  and  that  to  give  up  all  for 
Christ  and  his  kingdom  is  to  gain  all  for  time  and  eternity.  Ah,  we  should 
pray,  if  we  reverenced  the  ministerial  office  ;  and  we  should  reverence  the 
ministerial  office,  if  we  simply  believed  God's  word  with  regard  to  the  lost 


THE   LACK    OF   STUDENTS    FOR   THE    MINISTRY.  293 

condition  of  mail,  Christ's  infinite  sacrifice  to  save  him,  and  the  everlasting 
import  of  the  decisions  of  time.  And  here  is  my  greatest  source  of  anxiety. 
I  fear  that  this  lack  of  interest  in  the  supply  of  the  ministry  is  due  to  the 
inroads  of  a  subtle  unbelief  that  substitutes  formalism  for  religion,  and 
dependence  upon  man  for  dependence  upon  God.  God  forbid  that  we 
should  first  lose  our  reverence  for  the  ministry,  as  an  office  of  God's  appoint- 
ment, and  then  also  lose  the  ministry  itself,  which  we  have  thought  a  thing 
of  so  small  account ! 

It  is  our  business  to  ring  the  alarm-bell  and  to  sound  out  the  trumpet- 
call.  As  pastors,  we  need  to  direct  the  attention  of  our  churches  to  this 
great  matter,  and  to  give  them  no  rest  till  they  feel  their  duty  and  discharge 
it.  As  church  members,  we  need  to  pray  and  work  to  diffuse  a  new  senti- 
ment throughout  our  whole  Baptist  body.  As  Baptists,  who  claim  to  believe 
the  whole  word  of  God,  we  need  to  set  ourselves  to  turn  the  tide  and  create 
an  enthusiasm  for  the  ministry  among  our  young  men.  And  as  a  Conven- 
tion of  Baptist  Churches,  met  to  consider  the  signs  of  the  times  and  the 
needs  of  the  cause,  what  could  we  better  do  than  to  pass  with  solemn  unani- 
mity the  recommendation  of  this  Report,  that  all  Baptist  pastors  through- 
out this  State  be  urged  to  preach  upon  this  subject  to  their  people,  and  that 
all  Baptist  churches  throughout  the  State  be  invited  to  set  apart  the  Thurs- 
day of  the  Week  of  Prayer  for  special  intercession  to  God,  that  he  will  stir 
up  the  minds  of  the  best  young  men  of  our  churches  to  give  themselves  to 
the  gospel  ministry.  A  year  ago  our  brethren  of  the  German  Baptist 
churches  took  this  same  action  for  themselves,  and  this  fall  we  saw  the 
result  in  the  quadrupling  of  the  number  of  our  new  German  students  at 
Rochester.  My  brethren,  we  have  sinned ;  we  have  disobeyed  Christ's 
command.  We  are  suffering,  and  must  yet  suffer,  under  his  discipline. 
But  we  trust  that  it  has  not  been  wilful  disobedience,  but  a  sin  of  forget- 
fulness  and  infirmity.  There  is  pardon  for  us,  and  the  turning  of  our  cap- 
tivity,  when  we  repent  and  pray.  May  God  give  us  the  mighty  Spirit  of 
grace  and  supplication,  that  as  one  man  the  churches  of  this  State,  and  every 
member  of  them,  may  "pray  the  Lord  of  the  harvest,  that  he  will  send 
laborers  into  his  harvest. " 


XXVI. 

EDUCATION  FOR  THE  MINISTRY 

ITS  PRINCIPLES  AND  ITS  NECESSITY.* 


Brethren  of  the  Monroe  Association  : —  I  thank  you  for  this  invitation  to 
address  you.  I  take  it  as  a  welcome  home,  to  one  who  has  been  long  away. 
Among  you  I  was  born,  and  not  very  far  from  here  was  the  place  of  my 
spiritual  birth  also.  It  seems  fit  that  I  should  come  back  at  last,  and  do  what 
I  can  to  repay  the  debt  I  owe.  I  am  sure  that  in  doing  the  work  of  theo- 
logical education  among  you,  I  am  serving  you.  The  history  of  this  asso- 
ciation, and  its  growth  in  intelligence  and  spiritual  power,  bear  witness  to  the 
value  of  trained  men  in  the  ministry.  But  the  very  blessing  of  God  upon 
the  work  already  done  only  urges  us  forward  to  larger  work  in  the  future. 
I  do  not  know  how  you  may  feel  here,  but  in  my  Ohio  pastorate  I  was  con- 
stantly oppressed  with  the  spectacle  of  the  destitute  fields  about  me,  and  the 
scarcity  of  men  who  were  able  and  willing  to  fill  them.  With  the  great 
growth  of  the  country,  and  the  diminished  inclination  of  young  men  among  us 
to  resign  the  hope  of  business  advancement  for  the  prospect  of  a  long  course 
of  study  for  the  ministry,  it  seems  to  me  a  time  when  every  church  and 
every  Christian  needs  most  seriously  to  ponder  this  great  need  of  laborers 
to  fill  the  places  of  those  who  are  passing  away,  and  to  occupy  the  vast  fields 
now  opening  on  every  side  of  us.  We  have  been  told  to  pray  that  God  w|ll 
raise  up  ministers.  We  must  remember  that  we  cannot  truly  pray,  without 
at  the  same  time  seeking  out  and  educating  men  for  the  ministry  of  the 
gospel.  We  shall  do  this,  just  in  proportion  as  we  appreciate  the  funda- 
mental principles  upon  which  this  duty  rests.  These  principles  may  be 
stated  in  some  such  way  as  this  :  First,  God  has  appointed  the  ministry  as 
a  chief  and  indispensible  agency  for  the  perfecting  of  his  church  and  for  the 
conversion  of  the  world.  Secondly,  the  ministry,  to  be  most  efficient  and 
successful,  must  be  specially  trained  for  its  work.  Thirdly,  it  is  the  duty 
of  the  churches  to  seek  out  men  of  natural  fitness,  lay  upon  them  the  duty 
of  preaching,  and  when  they  are  moved  to  give  themselves  to  the  work,  fur- 
nish them  with  all  needful  means  of  preparation  for  their  calling. 

About  the  first  point,  not  one  of  us  has  a  doubt.  We  believe  in  the  divine 
appointment  of  the  ministry  —  the  setting  apart  of  a  class  of  men  for  the 
specific  work  of  perfecting  the  church  and  propagating  the  gospel.  All 
Christians  indeed  are  responsible  to  Christ  for  a  similar  work.  But  Christ's 
ministers  are  to  be  leaders  of  the  rest.  No  other  agency  can  take  the  place 
of  theirs.  No  power  of  civilization  or  of  the  press  or  of  the  sword  can  ever 


*  An  address  delivered  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Monroe  Baptist  Association, 
West  Henrietta,  October  2, 1872. 

294 


EDUCATION"   FOR  THE   MINISTRY.  295 

.accomplish  those  moral  wonders  which  are  brought  about,  when  a  man 
clothed  with  God's  power  stands  up  and  pleads  with  beating  heart  and  liv- 
ing voice  that  men  will  be  reconciled  to  God.  In  the  great  political  contest 
which  now  agitates  the  nation,  neither  party  dare  content  itself  with  news- 
paper articles  and  private  influence  alone.  Men  must  be  gathered  in  masses, 
and  confronted  with  other  men  who  sway  them  by  personal  magnetism  as 
well  as  by  argument.  And  so  the  influence  of  the  pulpit  will  endure  so  long 
as  the  world  endures.  There  is  provision  and  demand  for  it  in  the  consti- 
tution of  the  human  mind.  Just  as  physicians  exist  because  man  has  a 
physical  nature,  and  lawyers  exist  because  man  has  civil  relations,  so  minis- 
ters of  religion  exist  because  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  social  and  religious 
nature  in  man. 

Consider  the  second  point,  then.  The  ministry,  to  be  most  efficient  and 
successful,  must  be  specially  educated  for  its  work.  I  might  speak  to  you 
of  the  general  advantages  of  education.  I  might  tell  you  of  the  demand  for 
trained  men  in  all  the  arts.  Only  the  other  day  one  of  the  most  successful 
manufacturers  in  Philadelphia  said  that  it  had  been  found,  among  manufac- 
turing engineers,  that  establishments  and  firms  that  employed  educated  men 
for  managers,  succeeded,  while  those  which  employed  men  not  educated,  did 
not.  I  might  tell  you  of  the  rising  sentiment  all  through  the  land  which 
demands  that  all  who  enter  responsible  positions  in  our  diplomatic  and  civil  as 
well  as  our  military  service  shall  be  men  specially  educated  and  qualified  for 
their  work.  Now  if  this  principle  holds  in  the  management  of  locomotive- 
sin  )]>s,  and  in  the  military  and  civil  service  of  the  nation,  must  it  not  hold 
much  more  in  the  church,  that  great  arsenal  of  spiritual  powers  ?  If  we 
require  the  men  who  doctor  our  bodies  to  pass  through  special  courses  of 
study  before  entering  upon  their  work,  shall  we  not  require  it  of  physicians 
of  the  soul  ?  If  we  provide  normal  schools  for  those  who  teach  our  children 
the  rudiments  of  earthly  knowledge,  shall  we  not  give  equal  facilities  of 
preparation  to  those  who  are  to  instruct  us  out  of  the  word  of  God? 

Just  here  we  touch  the  vital  point.  Ministers  of  the  gospel  are  ordained 
for  the  special  work  of  instructing  and  influencing  mind.  The  priests  of 
the  old  dispensation  were  set  for  a  different  work.  They  were  the  servants 
of  an  external  system  of  rites  and  forms.  Paul  most  sharply  describes  the 
leading  characteristics  of  the  two,  by  calling  the  priests  of  the  Mosaic  econ- 
omy "they  that  minister  at  the  altar,"  while  he  styles  the  ministers  of  the 
New  Testament  "they  that  preach  the  gospel."  The  Old  Testament  priests 
were  representatives  of  the  worshiper  and,  as  it  were,  performed  his  service 
for  him.  The  New  Testament  minister  never  supersedes  his  brethren,  but 
only  teaches  them  to  perform  true  service  for  themselves.  The  New  Testa- 
ment minister,  I  say,  is  set  to  instruct  and  influence  mind.  But  by  what 
means  ?  By  bringing  to  bear  upon  that  mind  the  truth  of  God.  The  office  of 
the  ministry  is  to  enlarge  men's  views  of  truth  and  deepen  their  love  for  it, 
and  then,  with  this  solid  basis  of  intelligent  conviction,  to  organize  and  devel- 
ope  their  practical  activities  in  serving  the  Master  and  converting  the  world. 
And,  therefore,  having  a  work  to  do  which  is  not  mechanical  or  simply 
emotional  in  its  nature,  but  which  consists  in  bringing  truth  to  bear  upon 
men's  minds  and  conduct,  it  is  evident  that  the  ministers  of  the  gospel  must 
be  men  who  not  only  know  the  truth,  but  who  know  how  to  wield  the  truth 


296  EDUCATION   FOR  THE   MINISTRY: 

so  as  to  convince  others.  To  know  this  truth  of  God  as  God  has  written  it, 
know  it  in  its  connections  and  relations,  know  it  in  the  grandeur  of  its  sys- 
tem and  unity,  know  it  in  its  wonderful  adaptation  to  all  the  wants  of  the 
human  soul  —  this  requires  not  only  the  highest  natural  powers,  but  the 
best  training  of  those  powers  which  both  man  and  God  can  give. 

But  the  day  has  gone  by  for  this  general  argument.  We  all  understand 
it.  None  of  us  are  in  danger  of  supposing  that  Paul  did  not  need  his  early 
training  in  the  schools,  because  Christ  appeared  to  him  near  Damascus  ;  or 
that  the  apostles  did  not  need  their  three  years'  theological  course  under 
the  Savior's  teaching,  because  they  were  to  receive  the  Holy  Ghost  after- 
wards ;  or  that  God's  call  obviates  the  necessity  of  study  and  preparation  on 
the  part  of  his  preachers  now.  Let  us  take  all  that  for  granted,  and  let  me  give 
you  some  special  reasons  in  the  nature  of  our  times,  why  a  higher  education 
is  demanded  in  our  ministry  than  has  ever  been  given  before.  One  reason 
may  be  found  in  the  advancing  intelligence  of  the  age.  The  newspaper  and 
the  common  school  have  revolutionized  society.  The  young  of  this  genera- 
tion participate  in  a  general  culture  which  has  been  unknown  to  the  masses 
in  any  age  before.  Our  children  know  more  of  general  literature  and  of 
political  science  at  the  age  of  ten,  than  their  great-grandfathers  knew  at  the 
age  of  twenty.  They  are  critical  hearers  now.  If  the  ministry  is  to  influence 
them,  it  must  be  abreast  of  them  in  intellectual  progress.  Nay,  is  it  not 
true  that,  to  master  this  youthful  mind  of  the  century,  the  ministry  must  be 
before  it  in  point  of  mental  attainment  ?  The  best  economy  for  the  farmer 
who  thinks  twenty  dollars  a  year  a  large  contribution  for  the  support  of  his 
minister,  is  to  make  that  twenty  a  hundred,  and  so  secure  a  pastor  who  can 
have  power  over  his  children's  minds.  If  he  contents  himself  with  the 
cheapest  service  he  can  get,  he  may  think  himself  well  off  if  his  boy's  way- 
wardness does  not  make  every  twenty  dollars  cost  him  in  the  end  a  thousand, 
besides  the  sorrow  of  his  old  age  and  the  ruin  of  the  child.  And  not  simply 
for  those  who  are  to  constitute  the  strength  or  weakness  of  the  next  genera- 
tion. For  the  present  adult  mass  of  our  congregations,  we  need  the  best 
gifts  and  training  that  can  be  furnished.  We  hear  much  about  the  power 
of  the  old-fashioned  ministry  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  and  I  thank  God 
for  all  they  wrought.  But  it  is  not  less  true  that  if  they  lived  to-day,  they 
would  preach  sermons  of  different  model  from  those  they  preached  then, 
—  or  even  Jonathan  Edwards  would  lose  his  hearers.  May  God  give  us  all 
the  fervor  and  self-sacrifice  they  showed,  and  above  all,  the  power  of  the 
Spirit  that  rested  upon  them.  But  with  all  these,  which  we  may  have  as 
well  as  they,  let  us  seek  to  know  the  truest  and  most  effective  method  of 
reaching  the  modern  mind,  for  we  have  to  deal  not  with  the  eighteenth  but 
the  nineteenth  century, — and  we  are  to  bring  out  of  the  treasures  of  God 
things  new  as  well  as  old.  God  calls  upon  us  to  lead  this  advanced  intelli- 
gence of  the  age  with  a  still  more  advanced  intelligence  in  the  ministry  of 
the  church  of  Christ. 

A  second  reason  in  our  times  for  the  most  advanced  culture  in  the  minis- 
try may  be  found  in  the  skeptical  tendencies  of  the  day.  "  This  is  an  age 
of  unsolved  problems,"  a  modern  German  writer  says  most  truly.  The 
world  asks  religious  teachers  for  the  solution  of  them.  There  never  was  a 
day  when  the  higher  forms  of  speculative  doubt  had  influence  over  so  wide 


ITS   PRINCIPLES   AND   ITS   NECESSITY.  297 

a  range  of  mind.  As  the  world  has  come  up  in  intelligence,  it  has  come  out 
from  sensual  opposition  to  intellectual  opposition  to  Christianity.  Brutal 
skepticism  like  that  of  Tom  Paine  and  Voltaire  has  had  its  day.  We  live  in 
an  age  when  the  name  of  religion  is  used  to  conjure  with,  and  all  the  devil's 
most  specious  lies  are  labelled  "Christianity."  It  is  an  age  of  scientific 
marvels,  and  of  arguments  against  all  real  Christianity,  drawn  from  science. 
But  this  science  of  the  day  is  mostly  the  science  of  matter  and  of  the  things 
of  matter.  A  subtle  doubt  whether  there  be  any  science  of  mind,  whether 
there  be  any  such  thing  as  spirit,  pervades  a  large  part  of  our  literature,  It 
lurks  in  the  most  cultivated  minds  of  our  congregations,  and  often  operates 
as  an  antidote  to  our  most  pointed  arguments.  A  thousand  forms  of  heart- 
unbelief  entrench  themselves  in  false  theories  and  false  philosophies,  and 
could  not  long  maintain  themselves  without  these  defenses.  How  plain  it 
is  that  the  preacher  of  the  day  should  be  prepared  to  treat  such  unbelief 
intelligently,  unmask  the  fallacies  of  its  reasoning,  and  then  set  the  mind 
upon  the  sure  foundation  of  truth.  Or  if,  as  is  often  the  case,  the  errors  of 
those  we  address  rest  upon  some  false  historical  foundation,  there  is  great 
need  of  such  knowledge  of  doctrines  and  practices  in  their  past  development 
as  will  enable  the  preacher  to  show  from  what  small  deviations  in  principle 
the  most  enormous  and  soul-destroying  errors  have  grown.  Forewarned, 
forearmed,  says  the  old  proverb.  Let  our  rising  ministry  have  the  meana 
of  knowing  beforehand  the  nature  of  the  opposition  which  they  have  to 
encounter  in  their  work. 

Then  there  is  a  demand  for  special  discipline  of  mind  in  the  preacher,, 
arising  from  the  intensity  of  modern  life.  We  live  faster  than  any  age 
before  us.  Railroads  and  telegraphs  have  compressed  into  days  the  work 
of  years.  We  do  not  live  as  long  as  Methusaleh  did,  but  we  live  just  as 
much.  We  have  learned  to  think  quickly  and  act  quickly.  There  is  a  won- 
derful rush  and  excitement  about  modern  trade  and  modern  amusements. 
Men  come  into  our  churches  and  prayer  circles  jaded,  and  yet  excited,  with 
the  press  of  the  day's  or  the  week's  business.  If  you  would  influence  them 
at  all,  you  must  think  faster  than  they  —  furnish  an  excitement  that  will 
supersede  theirs  —  startle  them  into  attention,  rouse  them  to  thought,  press 
them  to  immediate  action,  lest  they  go  out  into  the  whirl,  and  the  tide  sweep 
them  away  again.  They  will  not  stand  the  sermons  four  hours  long,  that 
were  preached  in  the  days  of  the  Puritans  and  the  Long  Parliament.  What 
truth  they  take  in  must  be  pemmican  and  not  broth,  condensed  and  hot, 
or  they  will  certainly  loathe  the  light  bread  the  pulpit  gives  them.  We  have 
models  in  Scripture  of  short  sermons  and  short  prayers  in  abundance, — I  do 
not  know  that  we  have  more  than  one  instance  of  long  preaching,  and  that 
seems  to  have  killed  one  of  the  hearers.  But,  whether  intended  as  models 
or  not,  these  Scripture  instances  are  the  only  examples  to  follow  in  our  age. 
And  to  preach  the  truth  to  this  generation,  stirring  with  life  as  it  is,  demands 
a  power  of  concentration  and  a  discipline  of  mind  in  the  minister,  that  can 
be  gained  only  b^  diligent  and  protracted  study. — And  the  necessity  of  all 
this  is  the  greater,  from  the  fact  that  the  preacher  of  the  gospel  in  these 
days  must  be  several  men  in  one.  The  old  recluse  life  of  the  monastery  is 
out  of  place  now.  He  must  be  a  public  man,  a  citizen  as  well  as  a  preacher, 
a  man  interested  in  the  denomination  and  the  church  at  large,  as  well  as 


298  EDUCATION   FOE  THE   MINISTRY  : 

devoted  to  his  own  parish.  These  demands  he  cannot  well  meet  without  a 
power  of  quick  and  vigorous  analysis,  a  habit  of  systematic  labor,  a  careful 
economy  of  time,  a  mind  that  can  turn  in  a  moment  from  talk  to  study,  or 
from  study  to  prayer.  If  this  discipline  has  not  been  gained  in  early  life, 
it  is  hard  to  secure  it  afterwards.  The  joints  of  the  mind  are  most  supple 
in  youth, — men  run  most  easily  then  into  the  mould  of  habit.  To  meet  this 
intense  age  on  its  own  ground,  and  turn  its  activities  into  holy  channels,  needs 
early  preparation  of  both  mind  and  heart.  The  best  preachers  feel  their 
needs  in  this  respect  the  most,  and  wonder  that  God  can  use  such  inapt 
material  for  any  good.  Let  us  see  that  the  next  generation  of  preachers 
enters  on  its  work  with  better  equipment  than  we  possess. 

A  better  preparation  is  demanded  again  by  the  fact  that  this  is  an  age  of 
organization.  The  forces  of  evil  are  organized  as  never  before.  Every  new 
enterprise  of  speculation  or  trade  has  its  Society.  So,  too,  it  is  an  age  of 
organized  religious  effort.  Our  churches  in  the  great  cities  are  seeing  the 
necessity  of  a  division  of  labor  among  their  members,  and  of  providing 
agencies  for  developing  the  various  gifts  of  the  church,  and  of  encouraging 
and  sustaining  all  manner  of  benevolent  undertakings.  It  is  beginning  to  be 
seen  that  a  true  pastor  is  more  than  a  preacher,  more  than  a  visitor  of  his 
flock,  more  than  a  worker  on  individuals, —  that  he  is  not  only  to  work  him- 
self but  to  do  a  large  part  of  his  work  through  others, — in  other  words,  that 
he  is  to  combine  and  organize  the  talent  of  the  church  and  to  lead  it  out  to 
new  work  and  new  conquests  for  Christ.  If  Alexander  the  Great  should 
wake  from  his  slumbers,  he  could  not  fight  the  battle  of  Sedan  to-day  with- 
out learning  the  art  of  war.  And  the  pastor  of  a  century  ago,  who  should 
wake  from  sleep  to-day  in  the  midst  of  a  working  church  in  London  or  New 
York  or  Rochester,  and  should  see  the  order  and  efficiency  of  Sabbath  school 
and  mission  work,  of  church  visitation,  of  poor  relief  societies,  of  tem- 
perance organizations,  of  committees  on  strangers,  of  street  preaching 
enterprises,  would  not  only  think  the  millennium  near  at  hand,  but  would 
ask  to  be  taught  this  new  art  of  war  that  he  too  might  be  successful.  In 
this  day  when  we  are  learning  so  much  of  the  value  of  organization  in  Christ's 
work,  how  plain  it  is  that  we  ought  not  to  send  out  our  young  ministers 
without  giving  them  the  opportunity  of  observing  and  participating  in  these 
new  plans  and  agencies  for  the  extension  of  Christ's  kingdom.  I  thank 
God  that  our  Theological  Seminary  is  planted  in  a  large  city,  under  the 
shadow  of  four  large  and  vigorous  churches,  in  which  our  students  in  course 
of  preparation  for  the  ministry  may  see  with  their  own  eyes  and  hear  with 
their  own  ears  what  Christ  is  doing  in  these  modern  days  to  develop  and 
enlarge  the  activities  of  his  church.  I  count  the  pastors  of  these  churches 
as  assistant  professors  in  the  seminary,  and  these  churches  as  our  great  sup- 
port and  strength.  Let  all  our  rising  ministry  have  the  opportunity  of 
learning  from  them,  and  then  go  to  their  several  charges  over  the  land  pre- 
pared to  put  over  the  doorways  of  their  churches  that  inscription  which  one 
sees  over  the  entrance  to  the  Pacific  Mills  :  "And  to  eveiy  man,  his  work." 

But  after  all,  the  great  need  of  this  age  is  the  need  of  consecrated  men, 
men  filled  with  the  Spirit  of  God.  It  is  an  age  of  advancing  intelligence,  of 
intense  life,  of  skeptical  tendencies,  of  organized  effort  of  every  kind, — but 
it  is  also  an  age  of  absorption  in  outward  things.  Meditation,  introspection, 


ITS   PKINCIPLES   AND   ITS   NECESSITY.  299 

hardly  exist.  Nothing  can  make  head  against  the  current  of  wordliness  but 
the  fervor,  the  unction,  the  power,  that  come  from  God.  I  urge  you, 
therefore,  brethren,  to  put  your  rising  ministers  under  influences  which  will 
impress  upon  them  the  necessity  of  a  hidden  life  with  God  and  a  profound 
communion  with  his  truth.  Paul  did  not  rush  at  once  into  the  great  labors 
of  his  life, — he  spent  three  years  in  Arabia.  And  I  believe  that  in  the 
life  of  the  Theological  Seminary  have  been  nurtured  some  of  the  noblest 
characters,  have  been  born  some  of  the  noblest  enterprises,  that  have  ever 
adorned  the  annals  of  the  church.  It  was  while  a  student  in  Williams  Col- 
lege, that  Samuel  J.  Mills  invited  his  college-mates  Hall  and  Richards  to  a 
walk  and  led  them  to  a  retired  spot  in  a  meadow,  where  they  spent  all  day 
in  fasting  and  prayer,  and  in  conversing  on  the  duty  of  missions  to  the 
heathen.  And  so  in  the  Theological  Seminary  it  was,  that  Adoniram  Judson 
and  Samuel  Newell  came  to  the  resolution  of  spending  their  lives  in  pagan 
lands,  and  the  result  of  that  Seminary  work  was  the  formation  of  the  Ameri- 
can Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions.  In  the  three  years  of 
this  Seminary  life,  and  its  warm-hearted  communion  with  other  students 
about  the  needs  of  the  world  and  the  power  of  Christ,  our  young  men  have 
an  opportunity  of  spiritual  growth  and  preparation,  whose  value  is  inesti- 
mable. And  this  Association  can  testify  that,  with  the  inward  growth,  there 
has  often  been  outward  work,  in  destitute  regions  about,  that  proved  the 
value  of  the  preparation,  and  gave  promise  of  great  future  harvests  to  be 
reaped  for  God. 

And  this  brings  me  to  the  third  and  last  thought  of  my  subject, — namely, 
the  obligation  that  rests  upon  the  churches,  not  only  to  seek  out  and  encour- 
age the  men  whom  God  has  called  to  the  work  of  the  ministry,  but  to  pro- 
vide the  means  needful  for  their  training  and  support  until  they  shall  be 
ready  for  their  active  work.  I  fear  that  in  all  these  particulars  we  are  sadly 
deficient.  I  fear  that  the  old  days  when  Christian  men  and  women  conse- 
crated their  sons  to  the  ministry  of  Christ  from  the  cradle  are  almost  gone 
by,  and  that  we  have  fallen  upon  times  when  the  calling  of  a  preacher  is 
thought  rather  beneath  the  aspirations  of  the  cultivated  and  well-born.  We 
need  to  have  a  revival  of  true  sentiments  in  this  matter,  for  depreciation  of 
Christ's  ambassadors  is  depreciation  of  Christ  himself.  When  we  consider 
whose  ambassadors  they  are,  and  what  business  they  transact  between  the 
King  of  kings  and  his  subjects,  what  earthly  dignity  seems  so  high  as  theirs  ? 
Surely  an  office  like  this  demands  the  choicest  and  noblest  gifts.  As  Arch- 
bishop Leigh  ton  has  said  :  "  If  bodily  integrity  was  necessary  to  those  who 
ministered  of  old  at  the  altar,  shall  the  mentally  blind  and  lame  be  good 
enough  for  the  ministration  of  that  gospel  that  exceeds  in  glory  ?  Let  us 
not  imitate  Jeroboam,  who  made  high  places  but  made  priests  of  the  lowest 
of  the  people,  who  had  abundance  of  golden  cups  but  was  content  with 
wooden  priests. "  If  the  minister  of  the  gospel  be,  as  George  Herbert  says, 
"  the  deputy  of  Christ  for  the  reducing  of  men  to  the  obedience  of  God," 
then  no  talents  or  graces  can  be  too  precious  to  be  employed  in  this  sacred 
service.  Why  is  it  then  that  we  lack  for  men, —  why  do  scores  of  most  im- 
portant posts  call  for  able  ministers  of  Christ,  and  call  in  vain  ?  Is  it  not 
because  the  churches  at  large  have  not  felt  the  great  necessity  ?  And  as 
<church  after  church  rises  in  culture  to  the  point  where  the  unanimous  voice 


300  EDUCATION   FOR  THE   MINISTRY: 

is  :  "Let  us  have  an  educated  minister,  to  educate  our  children  and  the  com- 
munity," who  can  tell  where  the  supplies  will  be  for  our  failing  ranks  ten 
years  from  now,  unless  God  grant  us  a  new  spirit  of  prayer  and  effort  for 
the  raising  up  of  a  competent  ministry  ?  If  there  ever  was  a  time  when  we 
needed  to  ponder  our  Savior's  command  to  pray  for  laborers,  it  is  now. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  great  error  of  Luther  was  that,  while  he  restored 
New  Testament  doctrine,  he  did  not  restore  the  New  Testament  church ;  that, 
while  he  cared  for  the  faith,  he  did  not  care  for  the  organization  of  believers 
upon  the  model  left  by  Christ.  I  have  another  fault  to  find  with  Luther, 
which  seems  to  me  almost  if  not  quite  as  serious,  namely,  that  he  did  not  estab- 
lish Seminaries  for  the  education  of  the  ministry.  Contending,  like  a  giant, 
against  the  influence  of  Aristotle,  that  "accursed  mischief-making  heathen" 
as  he  called  him,  he  notwithstanding  left  the  Universities  under  that  same 
influence,  and  the  Universities  trained  up  men  to  undo  all  his  work.  See 
the  result  in  Germany.  When  once  the  spiritual  impulse  of  Luther's  per- 
sonal presence  had  ceased,  the  enemy  began  to  gather  strength.  Unin- 
structed  piety  did  not  stand  against  the  assaults  of  rationalism.  With  the 
Universities  training  men  of  thought  to  do  battle  against  the  faith,  and  no 
distinctively  Christian  schools  to  train  its  defenders,  the  result  was  that,  two 
centuries  after,  infidelity  was  to  all  intents  and  purposes  the  established 
religion  of  Germany,  and  half  the  fruits  of  the  Reformation  were  swept 
away.  Our  German  Baptists  of  the  old  country  are  in  danger  of  repeating 
the  same  error.  With  much  gained  under  the  labors  of  Dr.  Oncken,  there 
is  little  or  no  provision  for  the  leadership  and  instruction  of  the  churches 
after  Dr.  Oncken  has  passed  away.  It  is  only  just  no w  that  they  are  waking  up 
to  see  that,  without  Seminaries  for  the  training  of  ministers,  all  that  has  been 
gained  is  in  peril,  and  that  a  few  years  may  see  the  rushing  tide  of  irreligioii 
sweeping  over  them  again.  We  cannot  consolidate  what  we  have  gained  in 
a  new  convert,  without  instruction  and  discipline.  How  much  less  cas  we 
consolidate  the  results  of  a  great  popular  awakening  over  a  whole  country, 
without  provision  for  the  instruction  and  discipline  of  the  formed  and  form- 
ing churches.  Let  us  appreciate  our  own  position  as  a  denomination, 
brethren !  Under  the  good  Providence  of  God,  we  have  come  up  from 
weakness  to  be  the  second  denomination,  in  point  of  numbers,  in  the  land. 
We  have  secured  the  ear  of  the  world.  Every  step  in  the  progress  of  Bibli- 
cal scholarship  has  been  a  step  forward  for  us.  With  our  very  denomina- 
tional existence  based  upon  knowledge  of  the  original  languages  of  the  Bible 
and  a  correct  interpretation  of  it,  we  stand  or  fall  with  the  education  of  our 
ministry.  And  now  the  question  rises  before  us,  solemn  and  momentous  as 
no  other  can  be,  shall  we  fix  and  consolidate  what  we  have  gained,  or  shall 
we  allow  it  all,  through  ignorance  and  neglect,  to  be  swept  away  ?  I  know 
your  answer,  brethren.  You  say,  let  us  set  ourselves  to  this  great  work 
until  every  village  and  town  and  hamlet  throughout  the  land  shall  be  pro- 
vided with  a  teacher  and  pastor  who  shall  expound  the  word  of  God, — and,  in 
accordance  with  the  model  there  laid  down,  shall  build  up  the  beautiful 
structure  of  a  New  Testament  church  —  a  church  of  baptized  believers. 

And  what  are  the  means  ?  Our  Theological  Seminaries  come  first  and 
foremost.  What  have  they  not  done  for  us  ?  Dr.  Hackett,  our  venerated 
professor,  was  telling  me  only  the  other  day  of  the  time  when  he  and  a  few 


ITS    PRINCIPLES    AND   ITS    NECESSITY.  301 

other  students  were  counting  up  the  number  of  educated  Baptist  ministers 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Boston,  and  they  could  find  but  three, —  now  at 
every  Anniversary  of  Newton  Theological  Institution,  they  come  up  by  scores 
and  even  hundreds.  Seminaries  like  Newton  and  Rochester  have  already 
trained  the  very  best  pastors  and  preachers  we  have  —  the  very  strength  of 
our  denomination  to-day.  It  is  our  duty  to  see  that  the  Theological  Semi- 
nary nearest  to  us,  and  upon  which  we  most  naturally  depend,  shall  never 
want  for  buildings,  library,  teachers,  —  never  want  for  facilities  of  every 
sort  for  the  work  it  has  to  do.  Is  there  one  within  the  sound  of  my 
voice  who  has  been  blessed  by  God  with  abundant  financial  prosperity? 
Let  me  beg  such  an  one  to  consider  the  power  for  good  of  a  blow  struck  at 
the  right  time.  Who  can  tell  the  ultimate  good  accomplished  by  that  single 
man  Crozer,  in  the  establishment  of  the  Seminary  for  theological  education 
in -ar  Philadelphia?  Untold  ages  will  rise  up  to  call  him  blesssed,  and  the 
fruits  of  his  benefactions  will  go  on  ripening  and  gathering  until  the  great 
harvest-day  of  the  world  !  May  God  raise  up  many  such  men  to  bless  the 
church  and  the  world  !  We  may  not  be  able  to  give  as  largely,  but  we  may 
all  do  our  part,  if  we  only  have  the  like  spirit.  There  are  many  even  now 
pressing  their  way  bravely  through  a  Seminary  course,  though  it  costs  them 
sacrifice  and  hardship.  We  must  not  let  such  men  waste  years  of  strength 
in  manual  toil,  before  they  come  to  us,  in  order  to  make  money  enough  to 
pay  their  way  through  the  Seminary.  We  must  not  let  them  want  for  books 
and  clothes  after  they  have  come.  We  must  take  them  into  our  sympathies 
and  prayers,  and  furnish  them  with  all  that  is  needed  to  make  their  course 
of  study  profitable  and  successful.  And  this  cannot  be  done  for  a  large 
number  of  students,  without  large  outlay  and  expenditure.  But  to  this 
all  of  us  may  contribute,  and  in  doing  it  may  feel  that  we  give  directly 
to  Christ  and  the  work  of  his  gospel.  We  may  all  at  least  assist  in  the  work 
of  the  New  York  Baptist  Union  for  Ministerial  Education,  and  thereby  help 
on  to  a  place  in  the  ministry  some  useful  man  who,  when  we  are  dead,  may 
be  proclaiming  the  everlasting  gospel.  Take  this  Society  into  your  hearts 
then,  my  brethren.  Give  liberally  into  its  treasury.  Send  to  it  the  men 
whom  God  has  called,  and  whom  it  should  educate.  And  "may  he  that 
ministereth  seed  to  the  sower,  both  minister  bread  for  your  food,  and  mul- 
tiply your  seed  sown,  and  increase  the  fruits  of  your  righteousness,  being 
enriched  in  everything  to  all  bountifulness,  which  causeth  through  us 
thanksgiving  to  God." 


XXVII. 

EDUCATION  FOR  THE  MINISTRY 

ITS  IDEA  AND  ITS  REQUISITES.* 


We  are  assembled  this  afternoon  to  dedicate  this  edifice  to  God  and  to 
the  cause  of  ministerial  education.  The  enlightened  liberality  of  a  friend 
who  honors  us  with  his  presence  on  this  occasion,  and  whose  name  the 
building  will  bear  through  coming  years,  puts  the  completed  structure  in 
our  possession,  to  be  used  henceforth,  so  long  as  the  timber  and  the  stones 
shall  hold  together,  for  the  one  purpose  of  providing  a  proper  training  for 
those  who  are  to  be  the  preachers  of  the  gospel  of  Christ.  It  is  matter  of 
profound  satisfaction  to  know  that  this  gift,  so  munificent  and  free,  has  been 
made  in  prayer,  as  an  offering  not  to  men  but  to  Jesus  our  Lord.  May  the 
Spirit  of  Jesus  abundantly  rest  upon  the  giver,  and  make  his  gift  to  us  a 
source  of  the  best  gifts  to  him  !  And  may  the  Spirit  of  Jesus  also  rest  upon 
us,  that  we  may  be  made  worthy  of  the  gift,  and  be  properly  qualified  to 
use  it  for  the  honor  of  Christ  and  for  the  advancement  of  sacred  learning  ! 

We  rejoice  to-day,  because  we  see  in  this  dedication  a  sign  of  progress. 
The  members  of  this  Board  of  Trustees,  who  have  so  many  times  during  the 
last  thirty  years  assumed  so  serious  financial  responsibilities,  rejoice  that 
God  has  raised  up  able  friends  for  the  Seminary.  And  if  those  early  pro- 
jectors and  helpers  of  this  enterprise  who  were  called  to  their  reward  before 
their  eyes  could  see  the  fulfillment  of  their  hopes  —  if  those  early  friends 
who  founded  the  institution  in  tears  and  prayers,  can  look  down  upon  this 
scene,  I  am  sure  that  they  rejoice  with  us  —  the  sowers  with  the  reapers. 
God  has  heard  and  answered  prayer  on  behalf  of  his  cause  ;  he  has  estab- 
lished the  work  of  our  hands  ;  to  him  alone  be  praise  ! 

The  Germans  have  a  beautiful  word  derived  from  the  traveler's  custom  of 
getting  his  bearings  before  he  starts  anew  upon  his  journey.  They  say  that 
he  "orients  himself  " —  turns  to  the  east  with  its  sun  and  light,  that  he  may 
know  how  to  direct  his  path.  It  seems  well  for  us  who  have  the  interest  of 
the  Bochester  Theological  Seminary  at  heart,  to  orient  ourselves.  The 
dedication  of  this  building  cannot  be  accompanied  by  anything  more  fitly 
than  by  a  careful  inquiry  into  the  purpose  which  the  building  is  to  subserve. 
I  propose  to  you,  therefore,  as  the  subject  of  this  address  :  The  True  Idea 
of  Theological  Education,  and  the  Eequisites  to  its  Realization.  In  other 
words,  what  ought  to  be  our  aim  in  such  a  Seminary  as  this,  and  what  are 
the  means  needful  to  secure  it  ? 

The  training  of  the  ministry, —  it  is  a  short  phrase,  but  to  unfold  its  mean- 


*  An  Address  delivered  at  the  Dedication  of  Rockef eller  Hall,  Rochester  Theological 
Seminary,  May  19, 1880. 

302 


EDUCATION    FOR   THE   MINISTRY.  303 

ing  will  require  thought  and  care.  It  implies  conviction  on  our  part  that 
there  is  a  set  of  men  specially  called  by  Christ,  the  ascended  Savior  and 
Head  of  the  church,  to  be  the  proclaimers  of  his  salvation  and  the  spiritual 
teachers  of  his  people.  It  implies  conviction  that  the  work  of  preaching 
Christ  and  the  wide  range  of  his  truth  as  it  is  made  known  in  the  Scriptures 
demands  an  intellectual  and  religious  preparation  beyond  that  of  any  mere 
human  calling.  It  implies  that  the  duty  of  training  their  preachers  is  just 
as  imperative  upon  the  churches  as  the  duty  of  training  their  converts  —  the 
work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  not  superseding  the  work  of  the  church  in  the  one 
case  any  more  than  in  the  other.  It  implies  that  the  provision  for  this 
training,  since  it  has  to  do  with  the  infinite  and  eternal  interests  of  men's 
souls  and  of  God's  kingdom,  should  be  the  most  ample  and  complete  that 
our  wisdom  can  devise  and  that  is  warranted  by  the  means  Providence  has 
placed  at  our  disposal. 

The  only  effective  provision  for  such  training  is  that  of  the  Theological 
Seminary.  Happily  we  do  not  need  at  this  time  and  in  this  presence  to 
reiterate  the  old  arguments  in  favor  of  special  Seminaries  of  theological 
instruction.  Experience  is  teaching  us  anew  every  day  that  this  mighty 
rushing  age  can  be  taken  captive  for  Christ  only  by  men  abreast  of  its  high- 
est culture  and  possessed  of  an  intellectual  energy  equal  to  its  own.  Our 
greatest  success  in  establishing  efficient  churches  has  been  precisely  in  those 
quarters  of  the  land  where  we  have  longest  had  an  advanced  training  for 
our  ministers.  We  have  learned  that  college  education  alone  will  not  fit  a 
young  man  for  the  ministry,  any  more  than  it  will  fit  him  for  medicine  or 
the  law, —  special  study  of  his  own  profession  is  requisite  in  each  of  these 
separate  callings,  il'  \\v  would  secure  the  highest  quality  of  service  in  those 
whom  we  employ.  And  we  have  given  over  expecting  training  for  our  young 
ministers,  that  meets  the  demands  of  the  age,  at  the  hands  of  settled  pastors. 
They  have  not  the  time  to  give  to  special  instruction  of  young  men, —  even 
when  they  have  the  minute  acquaintance  with  the  several  branches  of  theo- 
logical knowledge  which  is  needed  in  a  competent  teacher.  It  is  a  settled 
principle  among  us  that  this  instruction  can  be  secured  for  the  vast  majority 
of  our  young  preachers  only  by  the  maintenance  of  institutions  in  which 
each  department  of  sacred  learning  is  represented  by  a  teacher  who  makes 
it  his  lifelong  work  and  specialty. 

What  these  departments  should  be  is  by  no  means  an  arbitrary  matter. 
Both  their  number  and  their  subjects  are  determined  by  the  necessities  of 
the  case.  For  the  theology  in  which  we  desire  the  rising  ministry  to  be 
instructed  is  primarily  a  Biblical  Theology,  a  theology  rooted  and  grounded 
in  Scripture,  a  theology  which  unfolds  and  applies  the  word  of  God  as  the 
material  and  the  directory  of  preaching.  First  of  all,  then,  the  student  must 
learn  to  read  his  Bible,  for  himself,  as  he  can  only  do,  by  knowing  the  orig- 
inal languages  in  which  that  Bible  was  written,  and  by  applying  to  it  the 
principles  of  sound  grammatical  and  exegetical  interpretation.  This  study 
of  the  Bible  naturally  divides  itself  into  work  upon  the  Old  Testament,  and 
work  upon  the  New.  The  Hebrew  of  the  former,  and  the  Greek  of  the  lat- 
ter, must  receive  equal  attention,  as  the  vehicles  of  God's  communications 
to  meu.  Thus  we  see  the  necessity  of  the  two  departments  of  Hebrew  and 
Greek.  But  to  a  well- furnished  expounder  of  God's  work  is  needed  some- 


304  EDUCATION   FOE  THE   MINISTRY. 

thing  more  than  personal  command  of  the  instruments  of  investigation  ;  he 
must  know  how  the  Spirit  of  God  has  led  the  church  of  earlier  days  to  inter- 
pret the  Scriptures,  and  what  the  results  of  such  interpretation  have  been 
upon  the  church's  life.  Thus  we  come  to  recognize  the  indispensableness 
of  a  third  department,  that  namely  of  Historical  Theology,  with  its  two 
branches,  the  History  of  Doctrine,  which  gives  account  of  the  progressive 
apprehension  by  the  church  of  the  truth  of  Scripture  and  the  shaping  of 
that  truth  into  doctrinal  statements  ;  and  Church  History,  which  describes 
the  resulting  and  accompanying  changes  in  the  life  of  the  church  itself. 

We  must  go  still  further.  The  thoughtful  mind  must  systematize  the 
results  of  Scripture  study,  must  gather  into  a  well  proportioned  and  organic 
whole  the  scattered  facts  which  the  Bible  gives  him.  In  the  light  of  past 
errors  and  with  the  help  of  past  interpretations,  he  must  build  these  mate- 
rials into  a  consistent  scheme  which  he  can  defend  against  the  reasonings  of 
the  sceptic  and  harmonize  with  the  facts  of  nature  and  consciousness. 
Hence  arises  the  need  of  a  fourth  department  —  Systematic  Theology.  Sys- 
tematic Theology  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  study  of  Scripture  truths 
in  their  connections,  the  recognition  of  their  divine  unity  as  the  revelation 
of  one  God  and  Redeemer,  the  justification  of  them  as  consistent  with  every 
other  portion  of  our  knowledge.  But  lastly,  there  must  be  a  fifth  depart- 
ment of  Practical  Theology,  in  which  this  system  of  truth  is  considered  as 
a,  means  of  renewing  and  sanctifying  men.  We  do  not  study  theology  as 
mere  abstract  science,  but  solely  with  a  view  to  its  publication  and  enforce- 
ment. Not  a  single  one  of  the  departments  I  have  previously  mentioned, 
that  does  not  daily  make  plain  to  the  student  its  connections  with  preaching 
and  life.  But  in  a  Seminary  for  the  education  of  preachers,  there  needs  to 
be  a  department  that  devotes  itself  exclusively  to  the  side  of  practice.  To 
this  department  belong  Homiletics  and  Pastoral  Theology,  since  these  are 
but  scientific  presentations  of  the  right  methods  of  unfolding  Christian 
truth  and  of  bringing  it  to  bear  upon  men,  in  public  and  in  private.  You 
«an  see  at  once  that  these  five  departments  of  Hebrew,  Greek,  History, 
Doctrine,  Preaching,  are  all  essential  to  the  complete  training  of  the  minis- 
ter ;  and  that  the  range  of  thought  and  of  literature  in  each  is  so  great,  that 
the  mastery  of  any  single  one,  so  as  properly  to  teach  it,  is  enough  to  fur- 
nish the  sole  occupation  of  the  most  laborious  and  able  instructor. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  students  of  the  Seminary  are  but  beginners  ;  that 
the  training  they  need  is  training  in  the  elements  ;  that  those  who  give  this 
elementary  teaching  do  not  need  to  be  so  far  advanced  beyond  their  pupils. 
A  little  consideration,  however,  will  suffice  to  show  how  mistaken  is  this 
reasoning.  The  best  of  elementary  teaching  can  be  given  only  by  one  who 
is  a  master  of  his  subject ;  the  highest  art  is  required  to  simplify  that  which 
is  recondite  and  profound.  None  but  a  thoroughly  furnished  and  experi- 
enced teacher  can  meet  the  intellectual  demands  of  classes  of  college  gradu- 
ates, some  of  whom  at  least  have  inquisitive  and  penetrating  minds.  Nor 
would  it  be  safe  to  entrust  to  instructors  of  minor  ability  the  answering  of 
the  perplexing  and  critical  questions  with  which  the  youthful  student  is  beset 
at  the  first  stage  of  his  theological  inquiries.  Not  everything  can  be  done 
in  three  years  of  study,  but  it  is  of  infinite  importance  that  what  is  done 
should  be  done  aright.  To  form  proper  methods  of  Scripture  interpreta- 


ITS    IDEA    AND   ITS    KEQUISITES.  305 

tion,  to  lay  the  foundation  stones  of  Christian  doctrine  so  that  the  super- 
structure shall  be  safe,  to  adopt  right  ideals  of  preaching  and  of  pastoral 
W0rk, — these  things  are  all -important ;  and  the  securing  of  these  results 
demands  the  most  thorough  scholarship  on  the  part  of  the  teacher,  com- 
bined with  a  strong  personality  and  a  power  of  imparting  what  he  knows 
to  others. 

Here  we  have  five  departments  of  instruction,  the  maintenance  of  which  is 
essential  to  a  liberal  course  of  theological  training.  I  have  not  spoken  of 
other  departments  which  might  be  added,  and  which  some  day  will  be  added, 
for  I  confine  myself  to  the  immediate  and  the  practical.  Ever  since  this 
Seminary  began,  instruction  in  all  these  branches  has  been  given.  The 
only  change  has  been  in  applying  more  and  more  fully  the  principle  of  divis- 
ion of  labor.  The  Hebrew  and  the  Greet,  which  in  the  early  days  of  the 
institution  were  taught  by  a  single  professor,  now  have  each  the  separate 
services  of  a  competent  man,  and  in  like  manner  Homiletics  and  Theology 
now  constitute  two  departments,,  whereas  they  once  constituted  but  one. 
The  older  graduates  of  the  Seminary,  as  they  return  to  their  Alma  Mater, 
can  mark  the  increased  range  and  thoroughness  of  work  that  have  resulted 
from  this  change.  The  question  with  us  now,  is  with  regard  to  the  proper 
support  of  these  departments,  and  the  accumulation  of  an  endowment  suffi- 
cient to  put  the  work  in  each  of  them  beyond  the  contingencies  of  failing 
interest  and  of  financial  reverses.  Many  times  even  in  these  later  years  we 
have  asked  ourselves  whether  it  was  our  duty  to  cut  down  the  salaries  of 
professors  to  correspond  with  a  revenue  diminished  by  hard  times  and  by 
decrease  in  the  current  rates  of  interest.  But  this  has  always  seemed  a  false 
step  to  take.  We  want  the  best  service  that  can  be  procured.  We  cannot 
obtain  the  men  who  will  do  the  work  required,  for  a  sum  less  than  average 
salaries  of  our  city  pastors.  Nor  can  we  expect  to  keep  men,  who  are  con- 
tinually offered  more  for  their  services  in  other  positions.  We  should  act 
with  the  same  wisdom  as  that  which  great  railroad  corporations  show,  when 
they  attract  and  keep  their  best  employees  by  a  fixed  and  sufficient  compen- 
•sjition.  Endowment  funds  should  furnish  to  the  teachers  a  support  equal 
to  that  which  they  could  command  in  other  spheres  of  ministerial  work. 
The  grinding  economy  which  is  compelled  to  abridge  the  education  of  the 
family  and  to  relinquish  every  luxury,  is  not  the  best  condition  for  success- 
ful teaching.  Perpetual  anxiety  about  matters  of  finance,  in  the  Seminary 
or  in  the  household,  is  not  consistent  with  a  complete  devotion  to  the  work 
of  acquiring  and  imparting  knowledge.  The  health  and  mental  vigor  of  the 
ordinary  pastor  require  reinforcement  by  occasional  recreation  and  rest.  It 
is  not  different  with  the  average  professor.  But  recreation  and  rest  involve 
expense.  It  is  a  mistaken  economy  to  render  these  impossible,  through  the 
insufficiency  of  his  compensation.  I  am  not  now  speaking  of  what  is,  nor 
of  what  must  be,  but  simply  of  what  should  be,  in  a  fully  equipped  educa- 
tional institution.  Much  valuable  work  has  been  done  by  small  and  strug- 
gling seminaries  of  learning ;  but,  as  culture  and  wealth  increase,  it  is  found 
by  other  bodies  of  Christians,  and  it  will  be  found  by  us,  that  the  best  secur- 
ity for  faithful  work  on  the  part  of  the  instructor  is  a  pecuniary  support 
sufficient  to  relieve  him  from  distracting  cares,  and  to  permit  his  exclusive 
attention  to  the  task  he  has  been  set  to  do. 
20 


306  EDUCATION   FOR   THE    MINISTRY  : 

What  I  have  said  with  regard  to  the  thoroughness  of  teaching  requisite 
in  such  an  institution  as  this,  implies  that  back  of  the  actual  instruction  there 
should  be  solidity  of  learning.  The  Seminary  must  be  a  store-house,  as  w<-ll 
as  an  apparatus  for  distribution  ;  a  reservoir,  as  well  as  a  net- work  of  canals. 
It  is  an  institution  of  learning  in  the  broadest  sense.  It  is  not  only  to  give 
out  instruction  in  the  present,  but  it  is  to  preserve  the  knowledge  of  the 
past,  and  to  add  to  its  stock.  For  this  purpose,  it  needs  to  be  provided 
with  the  instruments  of  investigation.  It  needs  a  library,  in  which  are 
gathered  the  treasures  of  past  thought  with  regard  to  the  word  of  God  and 
the  history  of  the  church.  Whatever  investigations  may  be  conducted  into 
the  meaning  of  Scripture  or  the  bearing  upon  it  of  ethnological  or  linguistic 
science,  should  find  the  needful  books  at  hand  to  render  them  successful. 
Students  of  varying  tastes  shoufcl  find,  each  for  himself,  the  volumes  adap- 
ted to  stimulate  their  thought  and  to  prompt  original  inquiries.  Missionary 
biographies  should  draw  out  the  missionary  spirit.  Devotional  reading 
should  be  furnished  in  the  prayers  and  experiences  of  holy  men  in  all  the 
ages  past.  And  to  make  this  array  of  literature  accessible,  there  should  be 
a  librarian  who  can  be  at  the  service  of  the  student  through  all  the  working 
hours  of  the  day.  Add  to  the  Library,  a  Museum  of  Geography  and  Archae- 
ology, that  will  furnish,  in  object-lessons,  all  proper  aids  to  the  understand- 
ing of  the  Holy  Land,  its  customs  and  its  configuration.  Add  to  these  a 
Lectureship,  which  shall  each  year  bring  the  student  in  contact  with  dis- 
tinguished preachers  and  scientists,  in  brief  courses  of  lectures  upon  the 
subjects  to  which  they  have  given  special  attention.  Only  with  a  liberal 
supply  of  these  various  helps,  literary,  topographical  and  personal,  can  the 
teacher  do  his  best  work  of  instruction,  or  be  himself  most  thoroughly 
master  of  the  department  to  which  he  has  devoted  himself. 

These  teachers  and  helps  being  provided,  the  Seminary  is  ready  for  its 
work  of  instruction.  The  method  of  that  instruction  is  of  more  importance 
than  the  helps  or  the  men.  We  point  with  satisfaction  to  the  past  history 
of  Rochester,  and  to  the  men  who  have  gone  out  from  this  Seminary,  as  a 
full  justification  of  what  we  deem  the  peculiarities  of  the  institution.  The 
aim  has  been,  from  its  beginning,  to  teach  the  student  to  think  for  himself. 
We  would  not  permit  him  to  be  the  mere  passive  recipient  of  other  men's 
learning ;  we  would  not  have  him  the  lifeless  repeater  of  a  second-hand 
orthodoxy.  The  true  aim  of  theological  instruction  should  be  to  cultivate 
the  habit  of  theological  thought,  to  enable  the  pupil  to  grasp  with  his  own 
mind,  in  his  own  way,  the  fundamental  truths  of  Scripture,  and  to  acquire  the 
power  of  analyzing,  arranging  and  presenting  the  results  of  his  own  think- 
ing, for  the  quickening  and  instruction  of  others.  Instead  of  cramming 
down  the  student's  throat  a  ready-made  scheme  of  doctrine,  he  is  to  make 
every  point  a  battle-ground,  and  win  his  way  to  assured  faith,  through  con- 
quest of  fairly  recognized  difficulties.  Discussion,  instead  of  being  a  mere 
by-play,  is  an  indispensable  requisite  to  right  theological  training  —  discus- 
sion that  sharpens  the  wits,  separates  the  wheat  of  substantial  truth  from 
the  chaff  of  mere  phrases,  questions  mere  forms  of  human  devising  that  it 
may  build  its  faith  on  the  simple  deliverances  of  God's  word.  A  theolog- 
ical "Seminary,"  where  open  question  and  answer  is  a  forbidden  thing 
in  the  lecture-room,  is  almost  a  contradiction  in  terms.  All  our  traditions 


ITS    IDEA    AND    ITS    REQUISITES.  307 

favor,  nay  demand,  unlimited  liberty  of  inquiry.  Not  to  repeat  by  rote 
certain  stereotyped  expressions  do  we  send  out  our  graduates,  but  to  speak 
out  each  his  own  convictions  of  truth,  arrived  at  by  personal  study  of 
Scripture,  and  made  vivid  by  his  personal  experience. 

To  accomplish  this  result  requires  a  happy  combination  of  circumstances. 
Physical,  social  and  religious  influences  all  need  to  be  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  growing  mind  and  heart  of  the  student.  Among  the  physical  influences, 
in  addition  to  properly  warmed  and  ventilated  rooms  for  study  and  for 
class-exercises,  such  as  we  have  secured  in  this  building,  may  be  counted 
that  of  a  well-appointed  Gymnasium.  A  sound  body  is  the  condition  of 
a  healthy  mind.  The  best  of  intellectual  work  can  be  done  only  when  the 
physical  system  is  in  a  state  of  vigor,  and  this  can  be  maintained  only  by 
daily  exercise.  If  our  climate  were  more  propitious,  we  might  trust  to  out- 
of-door  walks  to  provide  this.  But  so  large  a  portion  of  our  Seminary  year 
is  wet  and  forbidding,  that  opportunity  for  in-door  exercise  such  as  gym- 
nastic apparatus  would  afford,  is  eminently  desirable.  There  is  moreover 
an  element  of  recreation  in  this  form  of  physical  training,  when  pursued  by 
young  men  in  companies,  which  adds  very  greatly  to  its  effectiveness.  The 
Gymnasium  should  have  attached  to  it  rooms  for  bathing,  that  cleanliness 
and  exercise  may  go  together.  The  palaestra  of  the  Greeks  united  these 
two,  and  the  period  of  the  highest  physical  development  was  also  the  period 
of  the  noblest  ancient  art  and  civilization. 

Among  these  physical  conditions,  I  should  be  inclined  to  lay  special 
emphasis  upon  the  training  of  the  vocal  organs,  if  it  were  not  that  this  dis- 
cipline of  the  voice  is  also  a  discipline  of  expression,  and  so  involves  a 
higher  intellectual  element.  A  generous  friend  of  the  Seminary  has  enabled 
us  to  make  an  excellent  beginning  in  elocutionary  instruction.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  this  should  constitute  a  part  of  Seminary  teaching  from 
the  commencement  to  the  end  of  the  course  :  for  a  clear  articulation,  a  pure 
tone,  a  manly  address,  are  absolute  essentials  to  success  in  pulpit  oratory. 
But  I  pass  to  consider  a  final  but  most  important  question  respecting  the 
physical  and  material  side  of  seminary  life,  namely,  the  question  of  support. 
How  shall  the  majority  of  students  find  the  means  to  prosecute  their  work  ? 
I  say  the  majority,  for  the  fact  stares  us  in  the  face,  that  but  a  very  small 
minority  of  theological  students  are  blessed,  by  inheritance,  with  this  world's 
goods.  Since  the  days  of  the  apostles,  God  has  called  the  poor  rather  than 
the  rich  to  be  his  ministers.  The  most  of  Seminary  students  come  from 
small  churches  in  the  country  towns  —  churches  that  have  hard  struggle  to 
maintain  their  own  existence,  and  are  quite  unable  to  support  these  foster- 
children  of  theirs  through  the  long  ten  years  of  preparatory,  collegiate  and 
theological  education.  There  are  but  two  resources.  These  young  men 
must  support  themselves,  or  they  must  receive  aid.  They  cannot  support 
themselves,  without  greatly  prolonging  their  course  of  study  and  depriving 
the  churches  of  some  of  their  best  years  of  service.  With  the  increasing 
demands  of  our  Seminary  curriculum,  requiring  as  it  does  for  its  successful 
prosecution  the  whole  time  and  all  the  strength  of  the  ablest  men,  it  becomes 
a  serious  and  even  dangerous  strain  upon  the  constitution  of  the  student,  to 
add  to  this  regular  work  of  the  course  the  work  of  providing  for  his  own 
support.  Many  and  many  a  valuable  man  has  been  broken  for  life  by 


308  EDUCATION   FOK   THE   MINISTRY  : 

attempting  to  carry  through  his  studies  independently  of  foreign  aid.  The 
whole  system  of  beneficiary  help  proceeds  upon  the  principle  that  it  is  a 
saving  to  the  churches  to  economize  the  time  and  the  strength  of  its  young 
ministers.  They  have  given  up  all  hope  of  worldly  gain  in  order  to  devote 
their  lives  to  the  service  of  the  churches, —  it  is  only  reasonable  that  the 
churches  should  enable  them  to  make  their  preparation  for  this  service  as 
brief  and  as  thorough  as  possible. 

The  chief  difficulty  connected  with  the  subject  is  that  of  determining  the 
form  and  the  extent  to  which  this  aid  shall  be  given.  There  has  been  a 
feeling,  on  the  part  of  some,  that  the  reception  of  such  aid  by  the  student 
tended  to  destroy  his  manliness  and  independence.  I  conceive  that  this 
impression  ignores  the  real  relation  between  the  parties.  Whatever  funds 
are  contributed  for  this  purpose  are  given  to  Christ's  cause,  and  with  a  view 
to  the  benefit  of  the  churches.  They  are  distributed  to  students  for  the 
ministry,  not  as  a  personal  gratuity,  but  as  a  means  of  fitting  them  more 
quickly  for  their  work  of  serving  Christ.  What  is  given  for  Christ's  sake, 
they  may  take  for  Christ's  sake.  It  is  money  belonging  to  their  Lord,  and 
bestowed  by  him.  There  is  no  more  discredit  or  humiliation  in  taking 
what  pecuniary  aid  he  gives,  than  in  taking  the  spiritual  aid  he  gives  from 
day  to  day.  It  is  duty  to  take  it,  rather  than  to  narrow  and  abridge  the 
work  of  preparation,  by  devoting  any  considerable  part  of  the  time  for 
study,  to  work  for  personal  maintenance.  No  young  man  feels  his  manli- 
ness or  his  honor  compromised  by  receiving  from  his  father  the  means  of 
education.  There  is  no  more  dishonor  in  receiving  the  means  of  education 
from  the  churches. 

I  am  aware  that  there  are  occasional  instances  of  unworthy  men  who  mis- 
use their  opportunities  and  seek  aid  from  interested  motives.  I  am  per- 
suaded that  the  number  of  such  is  very  small.  The  fact  that  any  such  exist 
should  render  us  careful  in  selecting  the  objects  of  our  beneficiary  appro- 
priations, but  should  not  lead  us  to  doubt  the  principle  upon  which  we  act. 
The  great  majority  of  theological  students,  although  not  free  from  faults  of 
character,  are  yet  true  men,  desirous  of  living  for  God's  glory,  and  for  men's 
salvation.  I  believe  that  there  is  quite  as  much  danger  of  harming  them  by 
ungenerous  treatment,  as  by  over-liberality.  The  utmost  appropriation 
made  to  any  one  student  by  the  Ministerial  Union  for  the  last  few  years  has 
been  $130  per  year.  The  expenses  of  a  Seminary  course  must  be  $200  per 
year,  even  with  the  extremest  economy.  The  idea  that  on  this  $130  a  stu- 
dent can  live  in  luxury,  is  a  very  mistaken  one.  My  own  conviction  is  that 
it  is  all  too  meagre,  and  that  $150,  instead  of  $130,  should  henceforth  be  the 
limit  of  aid.  If  out  of  this  small  sum,  supplemented  by  his  vacation-work, 
the  student  can  save  a  little  for  the  purchase  of  books,  so  much  the  better. 
Let  the  gathering  of  the  foundation  for  a  library  be  the  reward  of  economy 
and  industry.  Money  could  hardly  be  put  to  better  use  than  in  purchasing 
a  few  of  the  best  books  to  serve  as  tools  in  his  opening  ministry. 

I  am  convinced  moreover  that  this  appropriation  of  $150  per  year  should 
be  made  as  an  out  and  out  gift,  and  not  in  the  way  of  a  loan.  To  lay  upon 
a  young  man  at  his  entrance  into  his  work  the  burden  of  a  heavy  debt,  is  to 
handicap  him  in  the  race.  In  the  case  of  a  sensitive  spirit,  it  is  to  cow  and 
discourage  him  from  the  very  outset.  In  a  small  parish,  with  many  neces- 


ITS   IDEA    AND    ITS    REQUISITES.  309 

sary  expenses  at  the  first,  and  with  salary  only  sufficient  for  the  barest 
maintenance,  the  payment  of  such  a  debt  for  one's  education  involves  the 
struggle  and  anxiety  of  years.  Such  a  debt  renders  it  impossible  for  many 
a  young  man  to  enter  honorably  upon  the  service  of  a  small  and  feeble 
church,  and  stifles  his  impulses  to  missionary  self-sacrifice.  His  first  duty 
seems  to  be  to  clear  off  his  incumbrances.  So  the  churches  suffer,  as  well 
as  he.  Rather  than  incur  a  debt,  which  he  foresees  will  thus  hamper  him 
and  forbid  a  whole  hearted  service  in  the  ministry,  many  a  noble  man  re- 
fuses to  accept  aid  at  all ;  attempts  to  maintain  himself  during  his  Seminary 
course  by  preaching  or  by  secular  work  ;  by  consequence  lowers  his  stand- 
ard both  of  preaching  and  of  study  ;  or  if  he  succeeds  in  accomplishing 
both,  as  only  one  man  in  ten  can  do,  injures  himself  in  health,  and  so 
imposes  a  mortgage  of  another  sort  upon  his  whole  future.  In  view  of  these 
considerations,  it  is  my  earnest  desire  that  the  Board  of  this  Seminary  may 
see  the  way  clear  to  a  total  abolition  of  the  loan-system  so  far  as  it  applies 
to  beneficiary  aid.  I  would  even  cancel  all  notes  heretofore  given  in  return 
for  such  aid,  and  take  such  notes  in  future  only  in  cases  where  the  student 
prefers  the  loan,  rather  than  the  gift.  Our  loan-system  was  devised  only 
as  a  temporary  expedient  to  bridge  over  the  time  of  annually  recurring 
deficits,  and  to  bring  back  into  the  treasury  for  future  use  the  money  that 
was  once  paid  out.  But  may  we  not  believe  that,  as  Providence  has  raised 
up  in  the  past  those  who  could  appreciate  our  needs,  so  in  the  future  there 
will  be  found  those  who  will  be  glad  to  provide  a  Scholarship  Fund,  the 
income  of  which  shall  meet  this  regular  and  fundamental  need  of  support 
on  the  part  of  our  students,  at  least  so  far  as  it  is  not  provided  for  by  the 
annual  contributions  of  the  churches  ? 

It  may  be  expected,  in  this  connection,  that  I  will  give  at  least  some  notion 
of  the  safeguards  which  I  would  throw  around  this  giving  of  beneficiary 
aid,  so  that  it  shall  not  be  bestowed  upon  unworthy  persons.  I  admit  that 
not  every  young  man  who  proposes  to  enter  a  Theological  Seminary  is  a  fit 
object  of  these  gifts  of  the  churches.  But  there  are  two  tests  which  take  no 
long  time  to  apply,  and  which  are  well-nigh  decisive.  The  first  is  that  of 
intellectual  activity,  as  shown  by  the  student's  mastery  of  the  regular  les- 
sons of  the  course  ;  and  the  second  is  that  of  moral  activity,  or  the  prose- 
cution of  some  regular  Christian  work  during  his  Seminary  studies.  It  is 
remarkable  how  the  lack  of  moral*  earnestness  reacts  upon  the  scholastic 
earnestness  of  the  student,  and  how  a  whole-hearted  piety  shows  itself  in 
faithfulness  to  the  daily  duties  of  the  study  and  the  class-room.  For  this 
reason  I  would  have  the  curriculum  a  rigorous  one  —  so  rigorous  that  noth- 
ing but  industry  and  self-denying  devotion  to  study  can  enable  the  pupil 
successfully  to  accomplish  its  requirements.  I  would  set  the  standard  so 
high  that  neither  an  indolent  nor  an  incompetent  man  should  be  able  to 
complete  the  course,  and  this  intellectual  test  I  would  apply  without  fear 
or  favor.  We  want  not  so  much  numbers,  as  quality,  in  the  ministry  —  men 
disciplined,  alert,  energetic  ;  and  the  Theological  Seminary  is  the  very  place 
where  these  qualities  shall  be  encouraged  and  trained.  It  is  not  so  easy  to 
see  into  the  heart  and  disoern  the  motive,  but  you  can  look  into  the  exami- 
nation-papers and  discern  whether  hard  work  has  been  done,  and  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases  that  hard  work  will  be  the  evidence  of  an  honest  mind  and 


310  EDUCATION"   FOR   THE   MINISTRY  : 

a  determination  to  do  service  to  God.  I  would  not  only  make  the  reception 
of  beneficiary  aid  dependent  absolutely  upon  the  attainment  of  a  high 
scholastic  standard  —  this  we  have  already  done  —  but  I  would  go  a  step 
further,  and,  within  certain  limits,  graduate  the  amount  of  such  aid  to  the 
thoroughness  of  the  student's  work. 

I  have  alluded  to  the  social  conditions  requisite  to  the  full  success  of 
Seminary  work.  For  the  development  of  the  student's  mind  and  heart,  for 
the  cultivation  of  his  powers  of  thought  and  feeling,  the  relation  between 
professor  and  pupil  needs  to  be  a  peculiar  one.  For  the  safe  management 
of  such  an  institution,  there  must  of  course  be  such  a  thing  as  government ; 
and  that  government  is  not  intrusted  to  the  hands  of  the  students,  but  to 
the  Faculty  and  to  the  Board.  There  must  never  be  the  slightest  doubt 
that  there  are  rules  and  regulations  to  be  submitted  to,  by  every  student, 
and  that  such  submission  is  an  indispensable  condition  of  continued  mem- 
bership in  the  institution.  But,  to  use  Napoleon's  phrase,  the  hand  of  iron 
may  be  incased  in  a  glove  of  velvet.  There  may  be  little  show  of  authority, 
—  little  show  of  authority  is  necessary  where  the  student  recognizes  himself 
as  responsible  for  the  maintenance  of  order,  and  is  in  the  true  sense  a  law 
unto  himself.  While,  however,  I  urge  steadfastly  the  recognition  of  the 
powers  that  be,  in  Seminary  as  well  as  in  civil  government,  I  desire  to  bring 
out  very  distinctly  the  complementary  truth  that  the  relation  between  pro- 
fessor and  pupil  here  is  not  simply  that  which  is  common  in  the  High 
School  or  the  College,  but  is  a  higher,  closer,  more  familiar  relation.  The 
students  of  the  Seminary  are  grown  men  ;  they  are  commonly  mature  in 
mind ;  some  of  them  have  had  experience  in  life  ;  they  have  often  been 
teachers  themselves ;  they  are  all  Christian  men,  or  are  so  regarded ;  they 
have  professedly  devoted  themselves  without  reserve  to  the  service  of 
Christ.  To  such  as  these  the  Professor  must  hold  the  relation  not  simply 
of  the  instructor  to  his  pupils,  or  of  the  gentleman  to  those  whom  he  meets 
in  the  common  intercourse  of  life.  There  must  mingle  with  it  something  of 
the  paternal  and  the  pastoral  element.  Mutual  affection  will  admit  a  dis- 
creet familiarity.  The  teacher  will  believe  all  things  of  the  pupil ;  take  for 
granted  his  good  purpose  ;  be  open  and  accessible  and  serviceable  ;  aim  to 
carry  with  him  the  moral  sentiment  of  his  classes  ;  rule  not  by  compulsion 
but  by  love. 

I  would  make  this  Seminary  an  institution  where  every  day's  exercises 
should  be  a  series  of  examples  in  Pastoral  Theology ;  where  the  student 
should  learn  how  to  rule  his  church,  by  the  methods  by  which  his  teachers 
rule  him.  I  do  not  mean  that  the  analogy  is  complete.  There  is  a  govern- 
ment here  that  goes  beyond  the  consent  of  the  governed  ;  there  may  be  now 
and  then  an  ill-conditioned  mind  that  is  not  impressed  by  the  consideration 
with  which  he  is  treated,  and  that  mistakes  Christian  courtesy  for  weakness. 
Such  a  man  must  be  gratified  by  an  exhibition  of  force  ;  but  it  need  not  be 
the  thunderbolt, —  there  are  quiet  forces  equally  effective  ;  it  may  be  inti- 
mated to  him  that  the  evidence  of  his  call  to  the  ministry  is  not  judged  to 
be  sufficient  to  warrant  the  continuance  of  his  studies.  At  all  costs  it  must 
be  understood  that  there  are  "powers  that  be, "  and  that  these  powers  are 
"  ordained  of  God."  But  still  I  insist  that  this  disciplinary  aspect  of  Semi- 
nary government  should  seldom  be  visible.  Into  all  the  relations  of  Faculty 


ITS   IDEA    AND    ITS    REQUISITES.  311 

«,nd  students  the  social  element  should  enter.  There  should  be  an  intimacy 
of  acquaintance,  a  readiness  on  the  one  hand  to  ask,  and  on  the  other  hand 
to  give,  counsel  and  help,  that  is  unknown  in  lower  and  secular  schools. 
There  are  other  types  of  influence  —  the  purely  and  severely  intellectual, 
the  mandatory  and  arrogant  —  but  they  do  not  belong  to  an  institution  for 
the  training  of  pastors,  where  the  inner  impulse  to  all  duty  is  the  spirit  of 
Christ.  I  would  make  this  institution  a  training-school  in  Christian  love, 
for  it  is  this  alone  that  can  make  the  work  of  the  ministry  successful. 

Such  a  spirit  as  this  can  be  maintained  only  by  constant  efforts  and  expe- 
dients, on  the  part  of  professors  and  students  alike.  The  Professor's  house 
and  study  should  be  not  unknown  to  the  student.  There  is  a  social  culture 
and  tact  which  is  of  the  greatest  value  to  the  pastor,  and  for  lack  of  which 
many  able  men  fail  to  retain  their  influence  over  their  churches.  The  stu- 
dent who  comes  from  obscure  surroundings  has  often  had  but  the  smallest 
opportunity  to  acquire  this  proper  knowledge  of  the  world.  Anything  that 
will  make  it  easier  for  professors  to  invite  students  to  their  homes,  and  to 
introduce  them  to  their  families,  will  be  of  inestimable  benefit.  For  the 
average  student,  away  from  his  own  home,  and  associating  constantly  with 
men  like  himself,  there  are  temptations  to  a  disregard  of  the  conventional 
proprieties,  which  will  be  greatly  lessened  by  insight  into  pleasant  house- 
hold life  from  time  to  time  through  his  course  of  study.  The  monotony  of 
an  unvarying  routine  will  be  informed  with  a  new  life  and  spirit  by  reason 
of  the  change.  There  is  much  that  the  Christian  men  and  women  of  our 
city  churches  may  do,  in  this  way,  for  our  coming  ministry.  But  the  chief 
responsibility,  so  far  as  it  is  a  responsibility  at  all,  must  rest  upon  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Faculty.  Their  power  and  opportunity  are  limited, —  but  these 
might  be  greatly  increased,  if  the  provision  of  Professor's  houses  could  bring 
them  close  together,  and  thus  enable  them  easily  to  combine  their  efforts. 
The  glimpses  of  home-life  and  of  pleasant  society  thus  rendered  possible, 
would  repay  a  large  expenditure,  by  furnishing  a  needed  preparation  for  the 
sudden  entrance  into  social  relations  with  his  church,  which  so  often  forms 
the  ordeal  of  the  young  minister. 

This  leads  me  to  say  that  the  proper  place  for  the  Theological  Seminary 
is  the  large  city,  for  there  these  influences  of  association  are  most  varied  and 
strong.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  among  his  many  half-truths  and  perversions 
of  the  truth,  has  suggested  one  thought  which  none  will  be  disposed  to  deny, 
namely,  that  other  things  being  equal,  the  rapidity  and  degree  of  intellectual 
progress  is  proportioned  to  the  variety  of  environment.  It  is  indeed  the  old 
truth  in  new  dress  —  Experience  is  the  best  teacher.  The  young  man  who 
is  thrust  into  a  variety  of  positions,  and  is  compelled  to  adapt  himself  to 
them  as  they  come,  will  have  a  command  of  his  resources  and  an  education 
of  his  powers,  such  as  cannot  belong  to  the  mere  novice.  For  this  reason 
the  Theological  Seminary  ought  to  be  where  the  currents  of  life  are  strong, 
and  where  much  can  be  seen  of  things  and  of  men.  The  country  village  will 
do  for  the  Academy,  but  the  College  belongs  to  the  town,  and  the  Theologi- 
cal Seminary  to  the  city.  Let  the  boy  be  secluded,  while  his  habits  and 
principles  are  still  forming ;  but,  when  he  has  got  his  growth,  let  him  see 
something  of  the  world  in  which  he  is  to  live  and  struggle.  The  knowledge 
he  thus  acquires  will  prepare  him  for  the  conflicts  that  are  before  him  in  the 


312  EDUCATION-   FOR  THE   MINISTRY  I 

future.  Particularly  is  it  desirable  that  the  young  man  who  is  to  be  a  leader 
of  Christ's  people  should,  by  personal  acquaintance  with  well-organized 
and  thoroughly  aggressive  churches,  and  by  personal  observation  of  excel- 
lent examples  of  preaching,  be  stimulated  to  emulate  their  virtues  in  the 
instruction  and  pastoral  care  of  his  own  flock.  I  count  this  knowledge  of 
Christian  life  in  a  large  city  as  one  of  the  social  influences  which  most  tend 
to  broaden  the  mind  and  heart  of  the  young  preacher. 

This  room,  with  its  church-like  appointments,  witnesses  that  there  is  a 
yet  deeper  need  in  Seminary  life  than  the  social  one  which  I  have  mentioned. 
It  is  well  to  provide  the  means  of  intercourse  with  society  —  but  it  is  beyond 
all  account  more  essential  to  provide  means  of  intercourse  with  God.  In 
the  secluded  life  of  the  Seminary  there  will  always  be  temptations  to  an 
abstract  intellectualism.  They  need  to  be  counteracted  continually  by  devo- 
tion and  by  religious  work.  Mrs.  Stowe  once  remarked  that  the  theological 
students  that  she  had  seen  were  the  most  irreverent  of  men.  It  was,  I  think, 
the  misjudginent  of  an  acute  observer,  inferring  more  than  was  just,  from 
the  freedom  of  students'  disputations  with  each  other.  Yet  here  is  a  danger, 
against  which  we  need  continually  to  guard.  Familiarity  with  even  sacred 
things,  unqualified  by  the  spirit  of  prayer  and  of  Christian  effort  for  others, 
tends  ever  to  contempt.  And  therefore  I  would  regard  prayer  as  a  regular 
part  of  Seminary  work.  As  the  apostles  gave  themselves  to  prayer  and  to 
the  ministry  of  the  word,  so  the  theological  student  should  give  himself  to 
prayer  and  to  the  study  of  the  word.  Indeed,  Luther's  old  maxim  is  true  : 
" Bene  orasse  est  bene  studuisse," — true  praying  is  true  studying.  Cole- 
ridge could  call  prayer  the  intensest  exercise  of  the  human  understanding, 
and  it  is  certain  that,  without  it,  there  can  be  no  valuable  exercise  of  the 
human  understanding  upon  any  theme  with  which  the  preacher  or  pastor 
has  to  deal. 

I  count  the  meeting  for  prayer  in  which  professors  and  students  gather 
on  a  common  level  at  noon  of  every  day,  and  the  regular  service  with  which 
the  exercises  of  every  afternoon  are  closed,  as  an  essential  part  of  our  Semi- 
nary training.  Here  the  student  may  learn  that  his  teachers  are  something 
more  than  teachers, — that  they  have  hearts  throbbing  with  the  same  emotion 
of  love  to  Christ  which  he  himself  feels  within  him.  And  here  the  professor 
may  see  an  aspect  of  his  pupil's  life  which  he  had  not  suspected  before,  and 
may  more  wisely  and  more  sympathetically  adapt  his  instruction  to  individ- 
ual needs.  But  above  all,  the  drawing  near  to  the  Father  of  all,  and  to  Jesus 
Christ  the  head  of  the  church,  through  the  Holy  Spirit,  in  order  that  we 
may  offer  to  him  our  worship  and  supplicate  forgiveness  and  favor  for  our- 
selves and  for  mankind,  is  an  essential  to  Seminary  life.  I  make  no  doubt 
that  from  this  room,  with  its  prayers  and  its  words  of  Christian  experience 
and  exhortation,  will  be  dated  the  most  lasting  and  valuable  of  the  influences 
of  this  institution.  Here  may  the  presence  of  God  evermore  abide  !  Here 
may  Christ  manifest  himself  as  Savior  and  Lord  !  Here  may  the  Holy  Spirit 
sanctify  and  energize  the  souls  of  those  who  are  to  preach  to  men  of  sin  and 
of  salvation  ! 

Thus  I  have  sketched  the  essentials  and  the  appurtenances  of  a  properly 
organized  Theological  Seminary.  The  ideal  is  surely  not  too  high, —  all 
that  I  have  indicated,  so  far  as  material  aids  are  concerned,  has  been  already 


ITS   IDEA   AND   ITS   REQUISITES.  313 

provided  in  Seminaries  of  other  denominations.  To  put  our  own  Seminary 
in  possession  of  the  means  to  realize  the  plan  I  have  laid  before  you  would 
require  indeed  a  large  sum  of  money.  But  God  has  been  so  good  to  us  in 
the  past,  and  we  so  confidently  trust  that  this  is  his  own  cause,  that  we  cannot 
doubt  that  we  shall  see  everything  that  has  been  sketched  to-day,  provided 
for  by  his  good  Providence.  Such  an  institution  as  this  is  one  of  the  most 
permanent  things  on  earth.  Directly  connected  as  it  is  with  the  hopes  and 
progress  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  remembered  as  it  is  daily  in  the  prayers  of 
God's  elect,  he  that  gives  to  it,  gives  to  God,  and  puts  his  hand  to  a  work 
that  is  sure  to  triumph.  The  friend  who  has  given  to  us  this  beautiful  and 
commodious  building  will  have  not  only  the  comfort  of  knowing  that  he  has 
linked  himself  and  his  name  inseparably  with  the  ever  progressing  cause  of 
ministerial  education,  but  for  generations  to  come  what  he  has  done  will  be 
a  stimulus  and  incitement  to  others  to  lay  down  like  precious  gifts  at  the 
feet  of  Jesus  our  Lord.  With  all  the  other  generous  benefactions  which 
have  fallen  to  us  for  Library  and  for  endowments,  even  while  so  many 
wants  are  yet  unsupplied,  it  rouses  within  me  something  of  a  prophetic 
spirit.  I  rejoice  in  it  most  of  all  because  it  is  a  foregleam  of  the  dawn,  a 
sign  of  the  coming  of  that  final  day  when  "  the  rebuke  of  God's  people  "- 
the  poverty  and  weakness  and  contempt  under  which  his  cause  has  suffered 
—  shall  be  taken  away,  and  the  riches  of  the  world  shall  be  poured  into  the 
treasury  of  the  Redeemer.  May  God  hasten  the  day  !  And  as  a  means  of 
furthering  this  end,  we  now  proceed  in  solemn  prayer  to  dedicate  this  struc- 
ture to  the  glory  of  God  and  to  the  special  work  of  training  his  ministers. 
With  the  offering,  let  us  dedicate  ourselves.  May  he  generously  deign  ta 
accept  us  and  our  gift,  and  to  use  both  for  the  furtherance  and  triumph  of 
his  everlasting  kingdom.  "  For  of  him,  and  through  him,  and  unto  him,  are 
all  things.  To  him  be  the  glory  forever.  Amen  ! " 


XXVIII. 

TRAINING  FOR  LEADERSHIP.* 


It  is  a  pleasant  thing,  on  my  first  visit  to  Hamilton,  to  meet  with  BO  cor- 
dial a  welcome.  I  am  one  of  the  sons  of  that  wilful  daughter  of  yours  who, 
thirty-five  years  ago,  ran  away  from  home  and  set  up  a  family  of  her  own. 
These  matches  often  turn  out  better  than  was  expected.  England  is  getting 
to  be  proud  of  America,  and  Hamilton  to  be  proud  of  Rochester.  And  to- 
day, in  view  of  all  I  see  about  me — this  lovely  country,  this  noble  structure, 
these  evidences  of  comprehensive  and  far-sighted  liberality  —  I  can  truly  say 
that  Rochester  is  proud  of  Hamilton,  and  is  glad  to  trace  back  the  stream  of 
her  history  to  this  sacred  eminence,  and  through  this  to  another  that  com- 
mands us  both,  namely,  to  "  Sion  hill "  and 

"  Siloa's  brook  that  flowed 
Fast  by  the  oracle  of  God." 

In  dedicating  this  new  and  beautiful  building,  the  first  question  one  might 
well  ask  is  :  What  is  it  for  ?  I  am  not  content  with  the  obvious  and  com- 
mon-place answer,  that  it  is  designed  to  provide  facilities  for  the  education 
of  ministers  or  preachers  or  pastors  of  our  churches.  That  is  all  true  —  so 
true  that  it  fails  to  make  any  great  impression  upon  us.  There  is  one  aspect 
of  our  common  work  which  has  failed  to  receive  sufficient  recognition,  and 
which  I  would  emphasize  to-day.  Without  questioning  any  of  the  other 
ends  which  are  to  be  sought  and  attained  here,  I  wish  to  speak  of  Training 
for  Leadership  in  the  church  of  Christ,  as  an  end  which  of  itself  and  by 
itself  justifies  all  that  has  been  given  and  all  that  has  been  done  in  the  erec- 
tion of  this  noble  hall,  and  in  the  founding  and  support  of  this  whole  con- 
geries of  institutions.  My  first  proposition  is,  that  the  church  must  have 
leaders.  It  is  a  necessity  of  nature.  She  will  have  them  whether  she  wants 
them  or  not.  Love  of  power  is  an  instinct  of  human  nature  —  an  innocent 
and  proper  instinct.  Men  seek  to  acquire  power  over  others,  and  ought  to 
seek  it, —  for  how  else  can  they  better  the  world  ?  Christ  had  this  love  of 
power,  and  Satan  was  very  artful  in  appealing  to  it  when  he  offered  him  all 
the  kingdoms  of  this  world  and  the  glory  of  them.  The  evil  lay,  not  in 
seeking  power,  but  in  seeking  it  at  times  and  in  ways  opposed  to  the  will  of 
the  Father.  So  the  Christian  is  not  to  give  up  his  will,  but  to  have  more 
will ;  not  to  be  devoid  of  ambition,  but  to  have  a  holy  ambition ;  not  to 
renounce  power,  but  to  seek  power  and  use  power  for  God.  "  Seekest  thou 
great  things  for  thyself  ?  Seek  them  not."  But  then,  "  Covet  earnestly  the 
best  gifts  " —  gifts  of  government  and  leadership,  among  the  rest.  Christ  is 
the  great  Leader,  Captain,  Shepherd.  We  may  well  desire  to  be  shepherds, 


*An  address  delivered  at  the  dedication  of  the  Theological  Hall,  Hamilton,  N.  Y. 
June  16, 1886. 

314 


TRAINING    FOE   LEADERSHIP.  315 

captains,  leaders,  under  him.  And  so  the  New  Testament  recognizes  men 
who  are  "over"  others  in  the  Lord,  praises  the  elders  that  "rule  well," 
gives  to  pastors  the  title  of  "bishops"  or  "overseers,"  and  exhorts  the 
churches  to  "submit"  to  them  and  to  "follow"  them. 

Now  I  am  as  good  a  Congregational  ist  in  church  government  as  any  of 
you,  and  if  it  were  necessary  I  could  put  in  as  many  qualifications  of  this 
doctrine  as  any  of  you  could.  We  have  only  "one  Master,"  and  "all  we 
are  brethren."  While  the  government  of  the  church  as  respects  the  divine 
source  of  the  authority  is  an  absolute  monarchy,  as  respects  the  ascertain- 
ment and  interpretation  of  God's  will  it  is  an  absolute  democracy.  No  man 
therefore  has  any  business  to  lord  it  over  God's  heritage.  Jesus  says  :  "I 
am  among  you  as  one  that  serveth  ;  "  "he  that  would  be  chief  among  you, 
let  him  be  your  servant. "  Preeminence  is  to  be  preeminence  only  in  service. 
But  nothing  of  all  this  is  inconsistent  with  leadership  in  the  church  of  Christ, 
—  for  this  leadership  is  nothing  but  moral  suasion,  the  natural  influence  of 
strong  character  and  sagacious  planning,  the  irresistible  force  of  the  mind 
and  heart  and  will  which  the  Holy  Spirit  has  informed  and  energized.  You 
cannot  prevent  such  leadership,  even  among  the  Plymouth  Brethren,  with 
all  their  fear  that  church  organizations  will  become  machines  and  that  pas- 
tors will  become  bishops.  Human  nature  craves  human  leadership.  It  never 
will  be  satisfied  with  an  abstract  and  distant  God  to  worship.  It  must  have 
a  kingdom  with  a  Son  of  man  for  King,  and  an  army  in  which  the  chosen 
representatives  of  this  Son  of  man  are  lieutenants  and  leaders.  So  we  are 
bidden  to  seek  out  and  set  apart  men  for  this  sacred  service,  and  it  will  be 
a  great  day  for  the  church  when  she  feels  her  need  of  men  like  Paul  and 
Augustine  and  Luther  and  Wesley,  and  prays  mightily  to  God  to  raise  up  a 
multitude  of  such  to  be  leaders  of  his  people. 

My  second  proposition  is,  that  these  leaders  must  be  trained.  If  men  are 
to  be  leaders,  then  they  must  be  able  to  lead.  They  must  themselves  be  in 
advance  of  those  who  are  to  follow.  Of  course  I  believe  in  natural  gifts  and 
endowments.  Blood  is  thicker  than  water.  The  sons  of  ministers,  other 
things  being  equal,  make  better  ministers  than  their  fathers  were.  They 
belong  in  the  ministry,  and  I  claim  them  for  the  Lord  Jesus.  I  have  no 
sympathy  with  the  idea  that  the  church  must  take  up  with  what  is  left,  after 
law  and  medicine  and  mining  and  journalism  have  had  their  pick.  Pray 
God  that  more  able  and  enthusiastic  and  persuasive  and  faithful  men  may 
be  born.  But  it  is  not  enough  to  be  born.  Nature  is  something,  but  nur- 
ture is  something  more.  These  men  who  are  to  go  before  their  fellows  in 
knowledge  and  zeal,  in  enterprise  and  devotion,  must  be  trained  for  their 
work.  Birth  did  a  great  deal  for  Paul,  but  he  never  would  have  been  the 
apostle  to  the  Gentiles,  if  he  had  not  had  the  Rabbinic  schools,  and  Gam- 
aliel for  a  teacher.  Knowledge  of  the  world,  variety  of  environment, 
contact  with  broad  minds,  social  culture,  all  these  go  to  make  up  the  differ- 
ence between  a  Peter  and  a  Paul. 

I  insist  upon  it  that  men  can  be  trained  for  leadership, — that  is,  natural 
gifts  can  be  improved.  Confidence  may  be  aquired,  methods  can  be  taught. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  training  for  leadership  outside  the  schools.  Lead- 
ership is  in  large  part  a  matter  of  will,  of  determination,  of  habit,  of  example. 
The  young  man  sees  others  bravely  striding  to  the  frout,  and  he  says  :  "  By 


316  TRAINING    FOR   LEADERSHIP. 

God's  grace  I  can  do  the  same."  Difficulty  trains  men.  Exigency  draws 
out  their  powers.  Success  in  a  small  field  prepares  them  for  success  in  a 
greater.  Even  here  in  this  world,  he  that  has  been  faithful  over  a  few  things 
is  made  ruler  over  many  things.  I  know  that  God  needs  men  of  different 
sorts  in  his  ministry,  and  that  he  calls  men  of  many  sorts.  The  little  coun- 
try village  needs  a  pastor, —  and  God  raises  up  a  man  to  fill  that  particular 
place.  He  needs  a  broad,  flexible,  magnetic  personality  for  the  great  city, 
—  and  he  provides  such  a  one  for  that  place.  He  needs  energy,  enterprise, 
intense  devotion,  the  martyr-spirit  in  a  foreign  field, — and  the  man  for  that 
is  forthcoming.  But  I  protest  against  the  notion  that  there  is  a  hard  and 
and  fast  line  that  separates  these  various  fields  —  a  great  gulf  fixed  between 
them,  so  that  no  man  can  pass.  I  rather  hold  that  honest  work  in  the  one 
may  train  one  for  work  in  another.  And  it  is  not  a  sin  but  a  duty  to  fill  the 
largest  place  we  can,  to  reach  the  greatest  number  and  the  highest  class  of 
minds,  to  exert  the  strongest  and  most  permanent  influence  for  God.  If  I 
can  hew  down  two  trees  for  God,  and  yet  content  myself  with  felling  one, 
I  am  responsible  to  God  for  the  two.  And  if  by  hard  work  I  can  prepare 
myself  for  the  larger  service,  if  by  severe  training  I  can  double  my  influence, 
then  training  is  a  duty.  The  world  is  perishing  meantime,  you  say  ?  Yes, 
but  it  is  not  perishing  for  lack  of  foolish  preaching.  If  God  had  wanted 
you  in  the  ministry  before  this,  he  would  have  had  you  born  earlier.  If 
he  has  waited  for  your  appearance  till  1886,  he  can  wait  till  you  know 
something  of  the  truth  you  are  to  preach,  even  if  it  takes  till  1896  for  you 
to  learn  it. 

I  have  only  one  other  proposition,  this  namely,  that  training  for  leader- 
ship is  the  peculiar  duty  of  our  Seminaries.  By  this  I  mean,  that  we  fail 
in  our  proper  purpose,  if  we  do  not  make  the  training  of  leaders  a  determin- 
ing idea  in  our  work.  We  cannot  educate  the  whole  church  of  Christ,  nor 
all  the  ministers  of  the  church.  If  we  should  attempt  it,  we  should  simply 
be  swamped  by  a  mass  of  material  we  could  not  manage,  and  the  very 
heterogeneous  character  of  that  mass  would  put  the  gravest  difficulty  in  the 
way  of  effectively  teaching  anything.  The  Theological  Seminary  never 
yet  has  trained,  and  for  generations  to  come  it  will  not  train,  even  the  major- 
ity of  our  ministers,  and  it  is  not  our  duty  to  turn  it  into  a  theological 
Kindergarten  in  order  that  it  may  do  this.  It  is  not  our  business  to  cover 
the  whole  field  of  education,  even  in  the  case  of  those  whom  we  do  teach. 
We  cannot  give  instruction  in  all  the  departments  of  human  knowledge. 
We  cannot  teach  the  elements  of  English.  We  cannot  teach  the  elements 
of  Greek.  We  ought  not  to  teach  even  the  elements  of  Hebrew.  The  ele- 
ments of  English  belong  to  the  common  school ;  the  elements  of  Greek 
belong  to  the  Academy ;  the  elements  of  Hebrew  properly  belong  to  the 
college, —  and  it  was  once  an  honor  to  Madison  University  that  she,  almost 
alone  of  the  colleges,  recognized  this  fact.  The  Theological  Seminary  is  not 
a  common  school,  nor  an  academy,  nor  a  college,  and  we  need  practically  to 
insist  upon  this,  if  we  intend  to  train  the  leaders  of  religious  thought  and 
life  for  the  coming  generation.  Let  us  insist  upon  it  that  the  men  who  enter 
our  Seminaries  shall,  as  a  condition  of  admission,  give  evidence  either  that 
they  have  had  the  drill  of  the  common  school,  the  academy  and  the  college, 
or  that  they  have  pursued  studies  which  fit  them  to  do  efficient  work  in  the 
same  classes  with  common  school,  academy  and  college  graduates. 


TRAINING    FOR   LEADERSHIP.  317 

But  now,  granting  that  we  have  the  right  men  to  teach,  and  that  we  do 
not  attempt  to  teach  everything,  how  may  we  best  arrange  our  Seminary 
work  so  as  to  train  men  for  leadership  ?  I  reply  that  we  must  first  give  men 
faith  —  something  to  believe,  and  then  belief  in  that  something, —  belief  in 
its  importance,  belief  in  its  right  to  rule,  and  belief  in  the  God  who  has 
power  to  make  it  rule.  You  never  can  lead  other  people  unless  you  are 
thoroughly  persuaded  yourself ;  no  doubts,  no  fears, — because  you  know  that 
you  have  truth  and  God  upon  your  side.  And  so  the  teaching  of  doctrinal 
and  ethical  truth  is  the  first  way  in  which  the  Theological  Seminary  can 
make  men  leaders.  But  there  is  a  right  way  and  a  wrong  way  of  teaching 
that  truth, —  the  one  way  will  help  men  to  be  leaders,  and  the  other  will  not. 
There  is  the  critical,  the  polemic,  the  apologetic  way, —  a  way  that  makes  a 
insin  sharp-scented  for  heresy,  eager  for  theological  warfare,  interested  in 
doctrine  because  of  its  purely  intellectual  and  speculative  aspect, —  and  I 
wish  to  say  with  all  emphasis  that  the  merely  speculative  and  closet  theolo- 
gian will  never  be  a  leader  of  men.  He  is  too  narrow.  He  has  mastered 
the  truth,  but  the  truth  has  never  mastered  him.  There  is  a  broader  sort  of 
study — study  with  the  heart  as  well  as  with  the  intellect,  study  that  fills 
the  soul  with  truth,  and  makes  it  seem  a  priceless  possession  which  it  would 
be  cowardice  and  sin  not  to  give  to  others,  so  that  it  may  make  them  free  as 
it  has  made  us  free.  It  is  the  constructive  and  not  the  destructive  habit  of 
mind  that  we  need  to  cultivate,  the  spirit  of  the  propagandist,  in  the  best 
sense  of  that  word,  by  which  I  mean  the  spirit  that  merges  self  in  the  truth, 
until  it  has  but  one  end  in  life  —  to  bring  men  to  the  knowledge  and  obedi- 
ence of  the  truth. 

But  even  this  does  not  exhaust  the  list  of  our  responsibilities  and  duties 
in  the  Seminary.  Men  who  are  merely  possessed  of  the  truth,  and  eager  for 
its  triumph,  may  be  fanatics  —  with  no  ability  to  adapt  it  to  the  actual  wants 
and  conditions  of  men.  If  we  would  make  men  leaders,  therefore,  we  must 
make  our  courses  of  study  excel  on  the  practical  as  well  as  on  the  theoreti- 
cal side.  The  men  who  teach  in  the  Theological  Seminary  should,  where  this 
is  possible,  be  men  who  have  had  not  only  practical  experience  as  pastors, 
but  practical  success  as  pastors.  There  should  be  constant  practice  in  Sun- 
day school  and  mission  work  in  connection  with  the  scholastic  duties  of  the 
Institution,  and  at  least  occasional  preaching  should  be  encouraged,  in  order 
that  the  student  may  have  continually  in  view  the  end  to  which  he  is  to 
address  his  labors.  He  must  learn  to  bring  himself,  and  so  to  bring  the 
truth,  in  contact  with  men.  All  true  leadership  is  simply  leading  individual 
men.  You  cannot  lead  men  in  the  mass.  You  cannot  lead  men  by  preach- 
ing alone.  They  will  not  believe  that  you  care  for  them,  unless  you  come 
to  them  privately  and  personally  ;  and  you  cannot  get  other  Christians  to 
go  after  them,  unless  you  set  the  example  of  going  after  them  yourself.  If 
I  might  be  permitted  to  speak  of  my  own  experience,  I  would  say  that  the 
critical  points  in  my  history  as  a  minister  have  been,  not  so  much  the  times 
of  preparation  for  sermons,  as  the  times  when  after  long  struggle  I  brought 
myself  to  go  to  individual  men  and  talk  to  them  about  their  souls ;  or  when 
I  took  my  life  in  my  hand  to  remonstrate  with  some  erring  Christian  ;  or 
when  I  summoned  up  all  my  energies  to  ask  some  man  of  wealth  for  money 
for  God's  cause.  And  I  think  that  the  power  to  do  this  work  is  largely  the 


318  TRAINING   FOR   LEADERSHIP. 

result  of  the  example  of  Christian  instructors  and  teachers.  I  appeal  to  you 
who  are  before  me,  if  the  words  of  private  counsel  which  your  teachers  spoke 
to  you  in  your  youth  did  not  do  more  for  you  than  their  formal  instructions 
in  the  class-room.  My  dear  brethren  who  teach  in  Theological  Seminaries, 
let  us  appreciate  this  power  that  we  have  of  private  and  personal  influence 
upon  our  students.  We  can  teach  them  best  how  to  lead  others,  only  by 
showing  them  that  we  are  leaders  ourselves.  We  can  give  to  men  who 
thought  they  never  could  do  this  work,  the  confidence  that  God  can  make 
them  mighty,  first  of  all  to  lead  others  to  Christ,  and  then  to  lead  them  into 
the  paths  of  Christian  obedience  and  service.  Let  there  be  such  a  spirit  of 
intellectual  and  religious  life  in  these  institutions,  that  the  men  who  go  out 
of  them  shall  feel  that  they  are  not  only  bound  to  conquer  circumstances 
and  to  lead  men,  but  that  with  the  help  of  God's  Holy  Spirit  they  can  do 
it  and  will  do  it. 

West  Point  is  an  institution  where  not  the  whole  army  is  taught,  nor  yet 
all  the  officers  of  the  army,  but  a  few  who  can  be  fitted  by  natural  powers 
and  severe  discipline  to  lead  the  rest.  Training  for  leadership  is  the  central 
idea  of  the  Military  Academy.  Training  for  leadership  should  be  the 
central  idea  of  the  Theological  Seminary.  Do  you  say  that  I  narrow  down 
unduly  the  range  of  Seminary  work  and  of  Seminary  influence  ?  I  answer, 
I  divide  only  to  conquer.  I  would  insist  on  the  highest  and  widest  culture 
at  the  top,  only  that  the  whole  body  of  the  ministry  who  have  not  enjoyed 
such  advantages,  may  be  stimulated  to  secure  them.  Education  is  not  like 
vapor  that  rises,  but  like  water  that  runs  downward,  from  its  source.  Make 
the  demands  of  the  professional  school  greater,  and  the  colleges  will  be 
forced  to  meet  them,  even  as  the  growing  demands  of  the  colleges  have  to 
be  met  by  our  preparatory  schools.  I  should  be  glad  if  this  occasion  could 
be  improved  by  us  who  represent  the  theological  schools  of  our  denomina- 
tion, so  as  to  secure  unity  of  action  in  maintaining  the  efficiency,  and 
advancing  the  standard  of  our  common  work.  But  I  remember  what  hap- 
pened to  that  wise  man  among  the  Maories  ©f  New  Zealand.  The  mission- 
ary asked  the  chief,  why  it  was  that  the  tribe  had  put  him  to  death.  And 
the  reply  was  simply  :  "  He  gave  us  so  much  good  advice,  that  we  had  to." 
While  I  wish  all  good  things  to  all  the  Seminaries  represented  here,  and 
especially  to  the  Hamilton  Theological  Seminary  which  so  hospitably  enter- 
tains us,  I  remember  the  fate  of  that  heathen  sage,  and  take  my  seat  before 
a  worse  thing  happens  to  me. 


XXIX. 

ARE  OUR  COLLEGES  CHRISTIAN T 


The  opening  sermon  of  the  recent  General  Assembly  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church,  delivered  by  its  retiring  moderator,  Dr.  Herrick  Johnson,  was 
chiefly  devoted  to  setting  forth  the  dearth  of  candidates  for  the  ministrv. 
Many  startling  facts  were  adduced,  drawn  mainly  from  the  statistics  of  his 
own  church,  but  all  tending  to  show  that,  while  there  is  a  constantly  increas- 
ing demand  for  men,  there  is  a  constantly  diminishing  supply.  He  compares 
the  two  decades  — 1850-60  and  1870-80.  During  the  first  decade,  twelve 
colleges  furnished  in  the  aggregate  5,011  graduates,  of  whom  1,486,  or  29 J 
per  cent.,  entered  the  ministry.  During  the  last  decade,  these  same  colleges 
furnished  in  the  aggregate  5,034  graduates,  of  whom  963,  or  only  19  per 
cent. ,  entered  the  ministry.  Dr.  Johnson  predicts  a  ministerial  famine,  if 
this  state  of  things  is  suffered  to  continue. 

Other  denominations,  besides  the  Presbyterians,  have  observed  like  facts 
within  their  own  borders,  and  have  felt  a  similar  alarm.  With  greater  or 
less  degrees  of  emphasis,  Episcopalians,  Methodists,  Congregationalists  and 
Baptists,  and  in  our  own  denomination  Drs.  Hovey  and  Elder  especially, 
have  called  attention  to  the  danger,  and  have  sought  to  trace  it  to  its  sources. 
Dr.  Herrick  Johnson  rather  summarily  dismisses  some  of  the  common 
explanations,  such  as  the  trials  and  inadequate  support  of  the  ministry,  the 
brilliant  inducements  held  out  by  other  callings,  the  intellectual  demands 
made  upon  the  modern  preacher,  and  the  lack  of  sufficient  provision  for 
college  education.  With  regard  to  this  last,  he  asserts  that  the  colleges  have 
more  students,  but  fewer  candidates.  He  very  correctly  ascribes  the  evil 
mainly  to  the  merely  secular  and  business  view  of  the  ministry  which  has 
come  to  obtain  in  our  churches,  and  which  has  so  largely  supplanted  the 
older  and  truer  view  of  the  ministry  as  a  gift  of  God,  for  which  the  churches 
are  dependent  upon  God,  and  for  which  they  ought  continually  to  pray. 

If  I  were  in  any  respect  to  criticise  so  excellent  a  presentation  of  the  sub- 
ject as  Dr.  Johnson  has  given  us,  I  should  do  so  upon  the  ground  of  its 
incompleteness.  I  should  describe  this  secular  view  of  the  ministry  as 
merely  one  mark  of  our  age  —  an  age  of  physical  research  and  invention,  of 
materialistic  philosophy,  and  of  worldly  thought  and  ambition  ;  and  the 
recollection  that  the  pendulum  of  thought  is  never  stationary  would  furnish 
me  with  the  basis  for  a  prediction  that  we  shall  soon  see,  if  indeed  we  are 
not  already  seeing,  signs  of  a  swing  in  the  opposite  direction  of  an  idealistic 
and  spiritual  method  of  thought  and  action.  I  should  also  call  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  evil  spirit  of  the  present  age  has  to  a  considerable  extent 

*  Printed  in  the  Examiner,  July  19, 1883. 

319 


320  ARE   OUR   COLLEGES   CHRISTIAN? 

succeeded  in  infecting  our  colleges,  and  that  one  important  means  of  intro- 
ducing the  better  day  will  be  the  bringing  back  of  these  institutions  of 
learning  to  the  spirit  and  methods  of  their  founders.  I  am  persuaded  that, 
when  our  colleges  become  truly  Christian,  we  shall  have  no  lack  of  students 
for  the  ministry. 

It  is  for  a  brief  consideration  of  this  last  division  of  the  subject,  that  what 
I  have  thus  far  said  has  prepared  the  way.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  our 
colleges  —  and  by  our  colleges  I  mean  simply  our  higher  denominational 
schools — were  intended  to  be  Christian,  in  some  more  definite  and  palpable 
sense  than  that  in  which  a  college  established  and  supported  by  the  State 
can  be  said  to  be  Christian ;  in  some  more  definite  and  palpable  sense  than 
that  in  which  the  State  itself  can  be  said  to  be  Christian.  What  is  a  Chris- 
tian college,  and  what  are  its  aims  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  a  Christian  college 
is  an  institution  established  and  endowed  by  Christian  people  —  people  who 
believe  in  Christ  as  God  and  Savior, —  to  promote  the  kingdom  of  Christ  by 
training  young  men's  highest  powers,  intellectual,  social  and  religious,  for 
the  service  of  Christ  in  the  Church  or  in  the  State.  That  is  not  in  the  sense 
of  the  founders  a  Christian  college,  in  which  Christianity  is  something 
merely  tacit  and  nominal.  That  only  is  a  Christian  college,  in  which  Chris- 
tianity is  the  confessed  and  formative  principle  of  its  whole  organization, 
method  and  life.  That  only  is  a  Christian  college,  which  aims,  by  a  truly 
liberal  and  Christian  culture,  to  bring  young  men  to  Christ,  to  teach  them 
of  Christ,  and  to  train  them  for  Christ. 

Let  me  analyze  this  idea,  and  separate  the  various  elements  that  go  to 
make  it  up.  In  a  properly  Christian  college,  first  of  all,  it  would  seem  that 
all  the  instructors  should  be  actively  Christian  men.  Theoretical  belief  is 
not  enough.  Christian  profession  is  not  enough.  Mere  technical  mastery 
of  a  given  department  of  knowledge,  even  when  supplemented  by  ability  to 
communicate,  is  only  half  of  a  true  teacher's  stock  in  trade.  The  other  half 
is  a  certain  mass  of  manhood.  Personality  counts  for  as  much  as  instruc- 
tion,—  indeed,  no  true  instruction  is  possible  without  a  vigorous  personality. 
It  is  the  man  that  teaches,  quite  as  much  as  his  words.  Now,  in  a  Christian 
college,  this  manhood  should  be  Christian  manhood  ;  this  personality  should 
be  Christian  personality.  I  know  of  no  way  of  testing  the  tree  but  by  its 
fruits.  In  every  teacher  of  a  Christian  college,  theoretical  belief  in  Christ 
as  Savior  and  God,  should  be  accompanied  by  practical  devotion  to  the 
service  of  Christ,  and  by  active  cooperation  with  Christ's  appointed  means 
—  the  ministry  and  the  church. 

In  the  second  place,  a  Christian  college  should  give  actual  Christian 
instruction, —  in  the  word  of  God,  the  greatest  classic  ;  in  the  story  of  the 
church,  the  greatest  history;  in  the  doctrines  of  the  Bible,  the  greatest 
science  ;  in  Christian  ethics,  the  noblest  morality.  Why  should  the  Chris- 
tian Scriptures  be  the  only  great  master-piece  of  literature  unrepresented  in 
the  college  curriculum  ?  Why  should  Christian  Theology  be  the  only  great 
science  the  elements  of  which  are  not  taught  in  a  college  course  ?  There 
are  many  ways  of  teaching  religion,  and  I  care  not  which  of  them  is  chosen ; 
I  only  claim  that  religion  should  be  systematically  taught.  Some  of  the 
greatest  lawyers  and  statesmen  of  New  England,  in  the  last  generation, 
ascribed  their  first  understanding  of  the  principles  of  government  and  law 


ARE   OUR    COLLEGES    CHRISTIAN?  321 

to  the  doctrinal  sermons  of  President  Dwight,  to  which,  they  listened  when 
they  were  students  at  Yale.  So  long  as  the  truth  about  God  is  the  founda- 
tion of  all  other  truth,  it  should  form  a  fundamental  part  of  the  instruction 
of  a  Christian  college. 

The  third  requisite  to  a  Christian  college  is,  that  its  discipline  and  instruc- 
tion should  be  pervaded  with  a  Christian  spirit.  It  is  hard  to  put  it  into 
any  form  of  words,  but  every  one  must  see  that  only  that  college  can  be 
distinctively  Christian  in  which  high  moral  standards  are  insisted  upon,  in 
which  sobriety  and  purity,  honesty  and  honor  are  required  as  conditions  of 
membership  in  the  institution, — and  required  of  teachers  and  students  alike. 
The  influence  of  a  single  teacher  who  is  known  to  be  intemperate  or  unmoral, 
will  destroy  the  force  of  all  the  formal  instruction  in  ethics  which  such  an 
institution  can  furnish,  and  will  serve  as  an  example  and  excuse  for  the  worst 
excesses  on  the  part  of  the  students.  The  unreprehended  practice  of  arts  of 
deception  in  the  recitation-room  saps  the  very  life  of  character,  and  the 
student  who  is  lost  to  truth  soon  becomes  lost  to  shame.  The  spirit  of 
Christian  courtesy  and  brotherhood  —  the  docile  and  receptive  mind  and 
manner  on  the  part  of  the  students,  the  friendly  and  communicative  temper 
on  the  part  of  those  who  teach  —  this  social  and  mutually  helpful  spirit  must 
be  characteristic  of  the  college,  or  it  ceases  to  be  Christian.  "  Dumb,  driven 
cattle  "  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  rough  task-master  on  the  other,  may  despoil 
it  of  all  that  makes  it  worthy  of  the  name. 

Last  of  all,  the  Christian  college  should  have  for  its  one  great  aim  to  make 
its  students  servants  of  Christ  —  ministers  of  Christ  or  helpers  of  his  church. 
It  need  not  make  all  its  students  preachers  —  it  should  aim  to  make  every 
soul  of  them  a  Christian.  It  should  teach  that  life  is  thrown  away  unless 
spent  in  the  service  of  the  King.  Not  natural  or  political  science  first  in 
importance,  nor  public  honors  most  to  be  sought  for,  but  the  service  of 
Christ,  the  truth  of  Christ,  the  favor  of  Christ  —  these  are  the  most  noble, 
the  most  beneficent,  the  most  satisfying.  And  then  this  teaching  should  be 
supplemented  by  personal  work,  on  the  part  of  teachers  and  Christian  stu- 
dents alike,  for  the  conversion  of  souls.  Amherst  and  Oberlin  have  shown 
how  mighty  an  influence  may  be  exerted  by  a  few  determined  and  devoted 
Christian  men,  when  banded  together  in  a  college  faculty,  to  infuse  their 
own  spirit  into  a  multitude  of  Christian  students,  and  to  draw  the  great  mass 
of  the  unconverted  members  of  the  college  to  Christ.  The  college  prayer- 
meeting  should  be  as  regular  a  resort  of  the  Professor  as  is  his  lecture-room. 
And  the  effort,  by  all  manner  of  social  and  friendly  intercourse,  to  effect  the 
salvation  of  his  pupils,  should  seem  more  important  to  him  than  to  secure  a 
high  record  of  scholarship, —  although  I  am  persuaded  that  the  latter  will  be 
greatly  furthered  by  the  former. 

I  have  thus  set  forth  what  seem  to  me  the  requisites  of  a  Christian  col- 
lege. It  is  interesting  to  know  that  in  the  Gymnasia  of  Germany  —  which 
most  nearly  of  the  German  schools  answer  to  our  colleges,  differing  from 
them  mainly  in  carrying  their  studies  no  further  than  to  the  end  of  our 
Junior  year  —  most  of  the  branches  usually  pursued  in  our  Theological 
Seminaries  are  taught  in  an  elementary  though  systematic  form,  and  are 
taught  to  all.  The  Bible  is  studied  from  end  to  end ;  Hebrew  is  taught  as 
well  as  Greek ;  church  history  and  dogmatics  form  a  part  of  the  regular 
21 


322  ARE   OUR   COLLEGES   CHRISTIAN  ? 

course.  And  all  this  in  institutions  supported  by  the  State,  and  by  no  means 
as  a  part  of  a  training  for  the  ministry,  but  as  necessarily  belonging  to  the 
liberal  culture  which  every  educated  citizen  should  possess.  Something  like 
this  was  designed  by  the  founders  of  our  colleges.  A  knowledge  of  Hebrew 
and  of  Christian  doctrine  was  once  thought  indispensable  to  a  liberal  train- 
ing. Can  any  one  doubt  that  such  a  scheme  comes  nearer  to  the  idea  of  a 
Christian  education  than  many  of  the  schemes  of  instruction  which  now 
obtain  in  our  so-called  Christian  colleges  ? 

It  is  simple  truth,  though  it  may  be  unwelcome  truth,  that  many  of  our 
colleges  have  ceased  to  be  Christian,  and  that  others  are  in  danger  of  follow- 
ing their  example.  The  spirit  of  indifferentisni  and  agnosticism  has  invaded 
our  temples  of  learning,  until  institutions  originally  dedicated  to  Christ  and 
his  church  aspire  to  give  a  secular  rather  than  a  religious  training.  Now  if 
this  were  merely  the  throwing  off  of  a  narrow  denoininationalism,  we  might 
have  sympathy  with  it.  I  want  no  denominational  college,  in  the  sense  of  a 
machine  for  the  propagation  of  the  tenets  of  a  particular  denomination  —  a 
school  for  teaching  a  peculiar  sort  of  ecclesiology.  But  the  true  denomina- 
tional college  —  the  college  of  which  a  particular  body  of  Christians  takes 
charge,  in  which  it  has  pride,  to  which  it  gives  its  sous,  its  contributions 
and  its  prayers,  and  from  which  it  looks  for  its  leaders  and  teachers  —  the 
college  which  opens  its  doors  freely  to  men  of  every  creed,  but  which  says 
to  all :  "No  training  is  truly  liberal  which  is  not  truly  Christian  ;  such  train- 
ing, and  no  other,  we  offer  you  " —  such  colleges  as  these  are  an  indispensable 
need  of  our  time,  and  all  our  education  will  play  into  the  hands  of  unbelief, 
immorality  and  anarchy,  when  such  colleges  as  these  are  lost  to  us. 

The  denominational  college  that  is  ashamed  of  Christ  had  better  die.  It 
will  die,  so  far  as  its  power  for  good  is  concerned.  There  can  be  no  neu- 
trality, and  the  intellectual  activity  that  ceases  to  be  Christian  will  soon 
become  hostile  to  Christianity.  It  will  die,  so  far  as  its  support  is  concerned, 
for  the  Christian  men,  who  took  interest  in  it  as  a  helper  to  the  kingdom  of 
Christ,  will  leave  it  when  it  ceases  to  be  distinctively  religious,  and  will  send 
their  sons  either  to  other  denominational  colleges  that  are  faithful  to  their 
trust,  or  to  the  larger  and  better  endowed  colleges  of  the  State.  A  truly 
Christian  college  will  appeal  to  the  most  sacred  feelings  and  convictions  of 
Christian  people ;  will  draw  forth  their  most  generous  gifts ;  will  attract 
from  all  parts  of  the  land  the  sons  of  the  land's  best  and  noblest  men.  Such 
a  college  will  be  a  light  and  a  joy,  not  only  to  all  the  land,  but  to  the  whole 
earth.  But  if  our  denominational  colleges  are  to  be  no  more  Christian  than 
our  State  colleges,  then  the  sooner  they  cease  to  be,  the  better ;  for  the  only 
valid  argument  for  their  separate  and  continued  existence  is  that  they  alone 
can  be  pronouncedly  and  effectively  Christian. 

While  I  recognize  with  gratitude  the  progress  which  our  colleges  have 
made  in  certain  literary  and  scientific  directions,  I  urge,  in  this  one  respect 
of  their  Christian  character,  a  return  to  the  methods  of  the  past,  and  a  care- 
ful watching  of  their  tendencies  for  the  future.  A  great  work  has  been 
done ;  but  the  times  in  which  we  live  demand  a  new  faithfulness  to  Christ  in 
our  systems  of  education.  The  compromising,  secular  spirit,  if  admitted  to 
control,  will  prove  the  ruin  of  the  cause  which  these  institutions  were  estab- 
lished to  further.  Not  in  such  ways  have  our  past  triumphs  been  won.. 


ARE   OUR   COLLEGES   CHRISTIAN  ?  323 

When  I  looked  .the  other  day,  at  Saratoga,  upon  the  hundred  and  ten  men 
from  the  University  and  the  Theological  Seminary  at  Rochester,  who  had 
gathered  for  a  brief  hour  to  recount  their  common  experiences,  and  to  express 
their  gratitude  to  the  institutions  that  had  sent  them  forth,  I  thanked  God  and 
took  courage.  And  when  that  body  of  men,  who  have  certainly  infused  into 
our  denomination  a  new  spirit  and  impulse  of  Christian  service,  commissioned 
me  to  convey  to  Presidents  Anderson  and  Robinson  their  deep  sense  of  the 
inestimable  benefits  they  had  received  from  their  teachings  and  from  their 
example,  I  said  to  myself:  "The  school-master  is  abroad.  The  Christian 
schoolmaster  is  not  dead.  The  Christian  college  still  lives.  Let  us,  with 
God's  help,  make  it  all  that  its  name  imports  —  all  that  it  ought  to  be." 


XXX. 

NEW  TESTAMENT  INTERPRETATION.* 


My  dear  brother,  after  a  protracted  course  of  study,  and  after  some 
preliminary  work  in  which  you  have  tested  your  strength,  you  have  been 
honored  by  the  call  of  our  oldest  Theological  Seminary  to  be  one  of  its 
corps  of  instructors,  and  by  the  ordination  of  this  church  and  council  to  be 
a  recognized  minister  of  Jesus  Christ.  Between  your  election  as  teacher, 
and  your  setting  apart  as  minister,  there  is  a  very  natural  connection.  The 
work  you  are  to  do  in  expounding  the  New  Testament  is  in  itself  a  preaching 
of  the  gospel,  and  ordination  to  that  work,  after  careful  examination  by  the 
representatives  of  the  churches,  is  by  just  so  much  the  more  proper  and 
important,  as  the  teaching  of  the  teachers  is  a  more  responsible  and  difficult 
service  than  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  to  an  ordinary  congregation.  We 
need  guarantees  that  the  man  intrusted  with  such  responsibilities  knows  the 
truth  which  he  proposes  to  teach,  believes  in  its  divine  authority,  has  some 
sense  of  a  call  of  God  to  interpret  it,  and  some  assurance  of  the  aid  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  in  his  work.  With  regard  to  all  of  these  matters,  this  after- 
noon's examination  has  laid  to  rest  all  doubts  in  the  mind  of  either  church 
or  council,  and  we  have  proceeded  to  publish  to  the  world  our  vote  setting 
you  apart  to  the  gospel  ministry,  with  an  unusual  conviction  that  in  so 
doing  we  are  only  recognizing  and  ratifying  what  God  has  done  before  us. 
I  congratulate  you  upon  the  new  light  that  is  thus  thrown  upon  your  own 
path  and  your  own  duty ;  upon  the  practical  settlement  of  all  questions  with 
regard  to  your  vocation  and  place  of  labor  ;  and  upon  the  manifest  wisdom 
of  God  that  has  guided  you,  when  blind,  by  a  way  that  you  knew  not,  and 
has  led  you  at  length  to  this  opportunity  of  exceeding  usefulness  and  of 
permanent  influence  upon  the  ministry  and  the  churches  of  Jesus  Christ. 

The  task  has  been  assigned  me,  by  the  council,  of  giving  to  you  a  charge 
with  regard  to  the  duties,  the  methods,  and  the  spirit,  of  your  new  work. 
I  take  pleasure  in  doing  this,  because  I  have  known  you  so  well,  and  have 
such  confidence  that  you  will  be  faithful.  But  the  charge  must  be  a  peculiar 
charge.  It  will  not  be  the  ordinary  charge  to  one  who  is  to  be  pastor  of  a 
church,  for  you  are  not  called  to  be  a  pastor.  It  will  not  deal  with  the 
merely  common-place  and  superficial  duties  of  your  vocation,  for  these  are 
patent  to  you  already.  It  will  not  be  dogmatic  or  assertatory,  for  no  inde- 
pendent mind  can  be  benefited  by  a  substitution  of  the  oracles  of  man  for 
the  oracles  of  God.  I  shall  only  attempt,  in  the  brief  time  allotted  me,  to 
mention  certain  modern  requisites  to  success  in  the  department  of  teaching 


*  A  Charge  to  the  Candidate,  at  the  Ordination  of  Mr.  Ernest  D.  Burton,  Acting 
Professor-elect  in  Newton  Theological  Institution ;  Rochester,  June  22, 1883. 


XEW   TESTAMENT   INTERPRETATION.  325 

to  which  you  are  to  devote  yourself  —  the  department  of  New  Testament 
Language  and  Interpretation. 

My  first  suggestion  is,  that  you  teach  thoroughly.  I  do  not  now  speak 
of  mere  accuracy  in  the  matter  of  Greek  forms,  or  of  precise  methods  of 
statement  in  explaining  them.  I  use  the  word  thorough  in  its  etymological 
sense.  That  is  thorough,  which  goes  through  a  subject  —  goes  to  the  bottom 
of  it.  Modern  scholarship  is  instinct  with  this  spirit.  It  cannot  tolerate  a 
mere  half-truth,  when  the  whole  truth  is  attainable.  It  cannot  tolerate 
dogmatism  upon  a  narrow  basis  of  investigation.  You  will  find  students 
who  will  expect  of  you  thorough  work,  and  who  will  give  you  their  confi- 
dence, only  as  you  show  that  you  have  done  thorough  work  before  forming 
your  opinions.  There  are  certain  questions  of  grammar,  like  the  telic  use 
of  iva  or  the  meaning  of  the  aorist ;  questions  of  chronology,  like  the  date 
of  the  Savior's  birth,  or  the  definition  of  the  feast  in  John's  fifth  chapter  ; 
questions  as  to  the  origin  and  date  of  the  gospels  ;  questions  as  to  relative 
value  of  manuscript  authorities  ;  and  these  are  questions  upon  which  weighty 
results  hang,  and  yet  questions  difficult  to  settle.  The  teacher  of  New 
Testament  Greek  must  have  an  opinion  upon  them  —  an  opinion  of  his  own. 
But  his  opinion  will  be  of  little  value  to  himself,  or  to  his  classes,  unless  it 
has  been  formed  by  prolonged  and  original  investigation.  On  some  of  these 
questions,  at  least,  he  must  show  that  he  has  formed  such  opinions,  and  has 
formed  them  in  a  safe  way.  This  cannot  be  done  all  at  once.  No  one  has 
a  right  to  expect  a  new  teacher  to  have  personally  settled,  at  the  very  start, 
all  the  difficult  questions  of  exegesis  and  theology.  He  must  make  his 
strong  points,  teach  with  emphasis  what  he  knows,  and  for  the  rest  refer  to 
text-books  written  by  others,  or  induce  the  student  to  investigate  for  himself. 
But  though  time  is  required,  and  long  study  goes  to  the  solution  of  the  more 
important  problems,  it  is  still  possible  for  the  teacher,  year  by  year,  to 
master  one  difficulty  after  another,  and  at  last  to  give  his  teaching  something 
like  completeness  and  organic  unity.  As  a  help  to  this,  let  me  urge  you 
always,  and  from  the  very  beginning,  to  have  on  your  hands  and  before  your 
eyes  some  one  point  of  investigation  of  fundamental  importance,  upon 
which  you  are  turning  your  most  concentrated  and  continuous  thought,  with 
a  view  to  putting  the  results  into  compact  and  written  form.  Nothing  is 
more  valuable  to  the  teacher  than  to  hold  himself  to  the  not  infrequent,  and 
somewhat  regular,  publication  of  articles  upon  special  topics  in  his  depart- 
ment. The  prospect  of  a  wider  audience  than  that  of  the  lecture-room,  and 
of  being  judged  by  his  peers,  will  stimulate  him  to  harder  work  than  he 
would  otherwise  be  apt  to  do.  Thoroughness  and  depth  are  not  so  easy 
as  superficiality.  But  they  are  essential  to  good  teaching,  and  the  true 
teacher  will  not  content  himself  without  knowing  more,  about  certain  vital 
points  of  his  subject,  than  is  known  by  any  other  man  in  the  world. 

But  there  is  a  second  characteristic  of  good  teaching,  that  I  would  have 
you  cultivate.  I  mean  breadth  It  is  as  important  as  depth.  It  is  quite 
possible  for  the  expounder  of  Scripture  to  be  so  minute  and  microscopic,  in 
his  examination  of  a  passage,  that  all  sense  of  its  general  scope  and  power 
vanishes  from  the  mind  of  the  pupil.  While  instances  of  absolutely  exhaust- 
ive investigation  are  given,  and  given  in  sufficient  number  to  teach  the 
student  a  method  and  to  put  within  him  an  impulse,  the  time  given  to 


326  NEW   TESTAMENT   INTERPRETATION. 

exegetical  study  in  our  Seminaries  is  all  too  brief  to  permit  the  teacher  to 
go  over  any  large  portion  of  Scripture  in  this  way.  Beading  considerable 
sections  of  the  New  Testament,  whole  Gospels  and  whole  Epistles,  at  a  rate 
which  the  minute  exegete  would  regard  as  very  rapid,  and  reading  them 
mainly  with  a  view  to  their  broad  general  sweep  of  meaning,  is  just  as 
important  as  the  careful  and  exhaustive  study  of  a  few  important  passages. 
You  are  well  aware  that  English  exegesis  has  passed  through  several  stages, 
such  as  the  'homiletical  stage  represented  by  Matthew  Henry,  the  gram- 
matical stage  represented  by  Ellicott,  and  the  historical  stage  represented 
by  Lightfoot.  I  think  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  Lightf oot's  Commentaries 
mark  a  great  advance  in  the  characteristic  I  am  commending,  namely,  that 
of  breadth.  More  attention  is  paid  to  introduction,  to  analysis  of  the  portion 
of  Scripture  under  treatment,  to  context,  to  the  historical  setting.  Matthew 
Arnold's  dictum,  that  the  Scriptures  must  be  interpreted  as  literature,  has  a 
certain  truth  in  it,  and  a  truth  that  must  not  be  neglected.  But  how  plain 
it  is,  that  this  broad  treatment  of  the  New  Testament  writings  is  safe  and  valu- 
able only  in  the  hands  of  a  broad  man.  Much  material  is  accessible  to  him 
in  the  voluminous  literature  of  his  subject  both  in  English  and  in  German, 
and  of  the  German  instruments  of  investigation  he  cannot  long  afford  to  be 
ignorant.  A  mind  of  philosophical  tendencies,  that  by  a  sort  of  necessity 
reduces  scattered  facts  to  order  and  expresses  results  in  a  lucid  and  articu- 
late way  —  such  a  mind  is  one  of  the  greatest  elements  of  success  in  this 
broad  sort  of  teaching,  and  such  a  mind  we  credit  you  with  possessing. 
But  there  are  many  other  helps  to  breadth.  You  must  give  yourself  to  a 
wide  range  of  reading.  All  history,  all  science,  all  master-pieces  of  human 
genius  in  painting  and  sculpture,  in  epic  and  tragic  poetry,  in  eloquence  and 
state-craft  and  invention,  can  help  the  interpretation  of  the  word  of  God, 
—  for  these  things  help  us  to  know  man,  man's  thoughts,  man's  language, 
man's  ways, — and,  as  man  was  made  in  the  image  of  God,  we  may  find  in  these 
things,  as  in  a  concave  mirror,  a  faint  and  miniature  reflection  of  the  divine. 
But  this  is  not  enough.  The  mere  book- worm  cannot  be  a  good  interpreter. 
The  teacher  of  the  New  Testament  must  be  a  full  man,  with  social  sympa- 
thies, in  with  the  life  of  his  times,  knowing  something  by  personal  observa- 
tion of  its  currents  of  opinion,  mixing  with  cultivated  people  and  getting 
stimulus  from  their  talk,  interesting  himself,  and  so  far  as  possible  partici- 
pating, in  the  political  and  the  denominational  movements  of  the  day  in 
which  he  lives.  All  this  I  say  to  you  with  the  more  emphasis,  from  the  fact 
that  you  go  to  your  work  with  no  preliminary  experience  in  the  pastoral 
office  and  no  great  practice  in  preaching.  Avail  yourself  of  all  opportunities 
to  preach  which  you  can  use  consistently  with  your  main  duty  of  teaching. 
Mingle  with  men.  It  will  not  hurt  your  work,  but  further  it.  It  will  give 
you  illustrations  for  your  class-room.  It  will  put  life  and  reality  into  your 
expositions  of  Paul  and  John. 

I  exhort  you,  in  the  third  place,  to  boldness.  Natural  modesty  is  an 
admirable  thing, — but  when  it  becomes  self  depreciation  and  timidity  it  may 
hinder  much  good.  I  would  have  you  bold  in  your  thinking.  Biblical 
interpreters  have  for  ages  followed  one  another  like  a  flock  of  sheep.  No 
one  conversant  with  the  commentaries,  has  failed  to  note  how  certain  early 
and  sometimes  perverse  opinions  have  repeated  themselves,  often  in  similar 


NEW   TESTAMENT   INTERPRETATION.  327 

forms  of  words,  from  generation  to  generation.  It  is  a  sort  of  visiting  the 
sins  of  the  fathers  upon  the  children,  which  should  be  a  warning  to  us. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  the  right  of  private  judgment,  and  most  men  recog- 
nize it.  They  do  not  so  often  recognize  the  duty  of  private  judgment.  It 
is  particularly  necessary  that  a  teacher  of  exegesis  should  form  in  his  pupils 
the  habit  of  investigating  and  of  deciding  the  meaning  of  the  word  of  God 
for  themselves.  To  stereotype  certain  traditional  interpretations,  and  to 
transmit  to  posterity  a  number  of  lifeless  copies  of  them,  might  have  seemed 
a  worthy  work  to  the  mediaeval  scholastic,  but  it  ought  not  to  seem  a  worthy 
work  to  us.  But  if  the  teacher  is  to  make  his  pupils  independent,  he  must 
be  independent  himself.  He  must  come  to  the  conclusion,  with  all  proper 
humility,  that  with  the  help  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  he  has  a  right  to  his  own 
opinion,  and  that,  in  a  matter  of  interpretation,  his  opinion  is  as  good  as  any- 
body's—  at  any  rate  is  the  only  opinion  which  he  can  safely  utter  and  act 
UJK  >n.  It  is  a  great  epoch  in  one's  history  —  and  it  is  often  marked  by  great 
struggle  and  prostration  before  God  —  when  a  teacher  resolves  that,  come 
what  will,  he  will  follow  the  light  he  has,  and  will  stand  for  what  he  thinks 
to  be  the  truth.  Then  only,  he  begins  to  be  a  living  force  in  the  world  of 
thought.  Then  only,  his  real  powers  begin  to  manifest  themselves.  If 
Christian  teachers  had  always  refused  to  say  things,  simply  because  others 
had  said  them,  and  had  set  themselves  to  publish  the  truth  of  Scripture  as 
God  made  it  known  to  them,  the  whole  circle  of  theological  sciences  would 
have  been  lifted  to  a  higher  plane  than  that  upon  which  they  stand  to-day, 

—  and  I  venture  to  say  that  no  seminary  of  our  denomination  would  deprive 
its  teachers  of  this  independence.     It  is  assumed  that  your  general  convic- 
tions are  in  harmony  with  those  of  the  denomination  and  of  the  Seminary 
where  you  give  instruction,  and  that,  when  they  cease  to  be  so,  you  will  as 
an  honest  man  resign  your  place.     But  this  binds  you  to  no  narrow  follow- 
ing of  other  men.     You  are  to  do  independent  work,  as  a  teacher  of  God's 
word.     And,  if  your  conclusions  should  in  any  given  case  differ  from  those 
of  your  colleagues,  you  have  the  right  to  express  your  view,  so  long  as  you 
treat  the  opposing  view  with  fairness  and  respect.     It  is  not  your  main 
business  to  teach  dogmatic  theology, — but  your  department  has  intimate  rela- 
tions to  dogmatic  theology,  and  when  you  are  asked  in  what  direction  any 
particular  passage  of  Paul's  epistles  seems  to  tend,  you  have  a  right  to  state 
what  are  to  your  own  mind  its  dogmatic  implications.     General  uniformity 
of  view  in  the  Faculty  of  a  Theological  Seminary  is  indispensable.     Division 
and  party-spirit  are  fatal  to  its  general  influence.     But  absolute  uniformity 
of  thinking  is  impossible  among  differently  constituted  men ;  and,  if  it  were 
possible,  it  would  be  a  sure  sign  of  intellectual  stagnation,  and  of  a  mechani- 
cal sort  of  faith.     Before  your  colleagues,  then,  as  before  your  pupils,  be 
yourself,  and  none  other.    Have  a  holy  trust  under  God  in  your  own  powers, 

—  you  are  set  as  a  witness  for  God  and  you  have  the  promise  of  his  Spirit. 
Kesolve  nobly  that  you  will  strike  out  your  own  course.     Let  no  man  call 
you  master.     Let  no  man  despise  your  youth.     Find  the  lines  upon  which 
you  can  best  lay  out  your  strength.     In  those  lines  do  your  own  thinking. 
And  when  you  have  by  original  and  prayerful  investigation  reached  results, 
utter  them  with  energy  of  voice  and  manner;  defend  them  against  all 
comers ;  make  your  classes  feel  the  mass  and  force  of  your  own  conviction  ; 


328  NEW   TESTAMENT   INTERPRETATION. 

stir  them  up  by  the  vividness  and  insistence  of  your  faith  ;  make  them  fight 
or  surrender.  A  teacher  who  holds  to  nothing  with  earnestness  may  seem 
to  succeed  in  his  teaching, — but  his  success  is  due  to  the  subject  and  not  to 
the  man.  In  the  hands  of  a  real  teacher,  even  a  subject  of  inferior  moment 
seems  dignified  and  important.  My  God  help  you,  by  the  boldness  of  your 
teaching,  to  make  the  New  Testament  seem  sublime. 

But  this  leads  me  to  the  last  of  my  suggestions.  It  is  this  :  Be  reverent. 
There  is  a  fairy  story  that  tells  of  a  prince  led  to  door  after  door  of  an 
enchanted  castle,  and  finding  inscribed  over  every  door  the  words  :  "  Be 
bold !"  Animated  by  the  apparent  invitation,  he  tries  each  door  succes- 
sively, and  it  opens  to  his  touch.  But  he  comes  at  last  to  a  door  over  which 
is  written  :  "  Be  not  too  bold  !"  and  to  open  that  door  is  peril  and  death. 
So  there  is  a  limit  to  all  human  wisdom  and  power  —  a  limit  to  the  knowl- 
edge possible  to  man.  There  is  a  point  where  boldness  should  cease,  even 
though  it  be  the  holy  boldness  of  the  saints,  and  we  should  fall  on  our  faces 
before  the  majesty  and  authority  of  divine  revelation.  You  will  bear  me 
witness,  that  all  thought  of  a  human  reason  that  is  the  ultimate  criterion  or 
source  of  truth  is  foreign  and  abhorrent  to  me.  In  all  that  I  have  said  with 
regard  to  thoroughness,  breadth,  boldness,  as  characteristics  of  true  teach- 
ing in  the  department  of  theology  which  you  are  to  cultivate,  I  have  taken 
it  for  granted  that  you  recognize  the  Bible  as  the  word  of  God,  inspired  in 
every  part,  the  only  and  infallible  rule  of  faith  and  practice.  Without  such 
a  sheet  anchor  as  this  faith  in  God's  word  furnishes,  the  thoroughness,, 
breadth  and  boldness  which  I  have  inculcated  would  only  be  wind  and  steam 
and  current  to  drive  your  vessel  upon  the  rocks.  And  though  I  know  that 
your  faith  is  sound,  let  me  formally  and  solemnly  remind  you  that  only 
absolute  confidence  in  that  word  of  God,  and  absorbing  love  for  it  as  the 
eternal  truth  that  is  able  to  make  us  wise  unto  salvation,  could  justify  you 
for  a  single  moment  in  entering  upon  the  great  work  to  which  you  are 
called.  Let  me  remind  you  that  the  man  who  interprets  the  Scriptures,  and 
who  studies  them  in  a  thorough  way,  has  his  peculiar  dangers  and  tempta- 
tions. He  becomes  acquainted  with  subtle  objections  and  difficulties  of 
which  the  ordinary  Christian  knows  nothing.  There  are  sprung  upon  him 
at  times  powerful  and  almost  overwhelming  assaults  of  scepticism.  And 
often  he  can  have  no  human  helper —  he  must  meet  these  attacks  alone.  At 
such  times,  if  he  be  a  merely  professed,  or  a  weak  or  sluggish,  Christian, 
his  faith,  such  as  it  is,  may  be  undermined,  honey-combed,  annihilated. 
But  if  he  be  a  strong  Christian,  full  of  love  for  God  and  for  his  word,  his 
soul  will  be  stirred  within  him  ;  the  very  ark  of  God's  covenant  will  seem  to 
be  attacked  ;  he  will  be  led  to  new  discoveries  of  its  impregnable  defenses ; 
the  result  will  be  only  new  arguments  for  the  Bible,  and  a  more  solid  con- 
viction of  its  everlasting  truth.  How  tremendous  are  the  interests  at  stake, 
when  a  teacher  of  teachers  wavers  in  his  faith  and  propagates  his  unbelief 
to  others, — each  student  whom  he  instructs  communicating  the  evil  spirit  to 
a  thousand  others,  and  they  to  other  thousands,  through  the  long  succession 
of  the  years  !  To  break  one  of  Christ's  least  commandments  and  to  teach 
men  so,  is  to  make  ourselves  the  least  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Where 
shall  they  be  found,  who  seek  to  undermine  the  foundations  of  the  kingdom 
of  God  on  earth,  by  destroying  the  faith  of  God's  elect  ? 


NEW   TESTAMENT   INTERPRETATION. 

My  brother,  I  know  that  you  realize  your  responsibility,  and  that  you  do 
not  take  to  yourself  this  office  of  teaching  the  future  ministers  of  Christ's 
churches.  God  has  put  it  upon  you,  and  I  gladly  commend  you  to  him  who 
qualifies  every  servant  of  his  for  his  work.  The  only  thing  that  can  carry 
you  through  the  arduous  task  before  you,  is  the  strength  of  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  Paul  asked:  "Who  is  sufficient  for  these  things?"  But  he 
answered  his  own  question  :  "  Truly  our  sufficiency  is  from  God,  who  hath 
made  us  able  ministers  of  the  New  Testament."  Such  an  able  minister  and 
teacher  of  the  New  Testament,  may  God  make  you  to  be  !  I  pray  that  he 
will  give  you  —  I  believe  that  he  will  give  you  —  great  joy  and  success  in 
your  work,  and  that  he  will  make  you,  according  to  the  measure  of  your 
powers,  a  means  of  enlarging  the  circle  of  Christian  knowledge,  of  fitting 
his  ministers  for  their  sacred  work,  of  drawing  the  church  nearer  to  the 
heart  of  Christ,  and  of  hastening  the  triumph  of  his  kingdom  in  the  world. 

"  And  for  the  rest,  in  weariness. 
In  disappointment  and  distress, 
When  strength  decays  and  hope  grows  dim, 
We  ever  may  recur  to  him 

Who  has  the  golden  oil  divine 
Wherewith  to  feed  our  failing  urns, — 
Who  watches  every  lamp  that  burns 

Before  his  sacred  shrine." 


XXXI. 

A  GREAT  TEACHER  OF  GREEK  EXEGESIS.* 


The  hushed  and  intense  silence  of  this  funeral-scene  is  not  without  a 
meaning.  We  recognize  by  instinct  the  limits  of  the  earthly,  and  standing 
upon  its  verge,  we  wait  for  some  voice  from  beyond  the  darkness  and  the 
shadow.  Human  words  are  well,  but  now  we  listen  for  some  word  of  God 
from  the  solemn  quietudes  and  the  eternal  spaces  into  which  our  teacher  and 
friend  has  vanished  —  some  word  that  may  tell  us  where  and  how  the  spirit 
fares  that  a  few  days  since  was  with  us,  but  now  is  not. 

How  fully  this  great  need  is  met  by  Scripture  !  As  we  wait  and  listen,  we 
too  hear  a  voice  from  heaven,  saying,  "Write,  blessed  are  the  dead  which 
die  in  the  Lord,  from  henceforth ;  yea,  saith  the  Spirit,  that  they  may 
rest  from  their  labors ;  and  their  works  do  follow  them. "  No  interval  of 
blank  unconsciousness, — no  doubt  as  to  their  felicity, —  no  interruption  of 
their  work  for  Christ.  Activity,  service, — these  have  not  ceased.  But  labor, 
with  its  painfulness  and  sighing,  its  weakness  and  fear, — this  has  ceased, 
because,  in  the  perfect  union  of  the  soul  with  its  glorified  Lord,  all  the 
imperfection  and  sin  from  which  it  springs  have  been  done  away  forever. 
Into  that  rest  of  pure,  rapturous  and  enlarged  activity,  the  freed  soul  has 
entered. 

And  shall  the  long  toil  of  the  earthly  life  go  for  nothing,  now  that  the 
soul  is  sundered  from  the  body  ?  Ah,  no  !  The  good  men  do  is  not ' '  interred 
with  their  bones. "  It  rises  clear- voiced  before  God's  throne.  It  witnesses 
to  the  reality  and  power  of  Christ's  life  in  those  who  wrought  it.  "By  their 
deeds  shall  they  be  justified,"  not  because  these  furnish  the  ground  of  their 
acceptance  and  reward,  but  because  these  deeds  make  manifest  to  the  uni- 
verse the  fact  that  "  God  was  in  them  of  a  truth." 

Nor  shall  these  good  deeds  be  lost  on  earth.  ' '  Their  works  shall  follow 
them,"  even  here.  Embalmed  in  the  memory  of  their  children  and  of  the 
church,  they  shall  continue  their  influence  of  blessing,  all  the  more  precious 
and  powerful  for  good  now  that  the  heart  that  prompted  them  is  still  and 
pulseless  in  the  dust.  And  when  the  memory  of  their  work  shall  fade  on 
earth,  and  the  last  survivors  of  those  who  knew  them  shall  be  gathered  to 
their  fathers,  God  will  not  permit  its  fruits  to  die.  No  !  no  !  There  is  a 
memory  that  never  lets  go  that  which  is  committed  to  it ;  there  is  a  hand 
that  never  ceases  to  tend  and  water  the  seeds  of  its  own  planting  ;  there  is  a 
divine  pride  and  justice  that  never  suffers  the  earthly  work  of  his  departed 
servants  to  go  unfruitful  or  unrewarded.  God  takes  up  that  work  after  the 
workers  are  dead,  and  carries  it  on.  Through  a  thousand  means  of  spoken 


*  An  Address  at  the  Funeral  of  Professor  Horatio  B.  Hackett,  D.  D.,  in  the  Second 
Baptist  Church,  Rochester,  Novembers,  1875. 

330 


A    GREAT   TEACHER    OF    GREEK    EXEGESIS.  331 

word  or  living  example,  the  influence  they  have  exerted  multiplies  as  it  goes 
down  through  the  ages.  The  works  of  the  righteous  follow  them,  ever 
increasing  in  weight  and  power  as  they  go  onward,  like  the  balls  of  moist 
snow  which  school-boys  roll  upon  the  ground  in  early  winter,  until,  in 
the  great  day  of  account,  those  who  did  them  are  amazed  at  the  surpassing 
grandeur  of  the  result,  and  gazing  at  the  vastness  of  the  harvest  which  has 
sprung  from  the  small  seeds  they  sowed,  they  call  to  the  Judge  :  "Lord, 
when  saw  we  thee  an  hungered,  or  athirst," — or  did  anything  worthy  of  such 
.abundant  fruit ! 

It  is  only  doing  our  part  in  fulfilling  the  declaration  of  Scripture,  it  is 
only  performing  a  sacred  duty  to  those  who  are  left  behind,  when  we  speak 
to-day  of  the  work  and  the  character  of  a  departed  father  and  teacher  in 
Israel.  Far  be  it  from  us  to  glorify  the  name  of  man.  The  funeral-day  is 
the  day  on  which  to  recognize  chiefly  the  sovereignty  and  grace  of  God. 
And  he  whose  mortal  remains  lie  before  us,  would  have  been  the  last  to 
desire  any  other  use  of  this  occasion.  We  will  not  deal  in  eulogy.  We  give 
only  a  brief  and  simple  memorial  of  one  whose  life  and  labors  have  become 
an  inseparable  part  of  the  history  of  Biblical  learning  in  America  and  in  the 
world,  and  we  do  this,  not  for  the  praise  of  man,  but  for  the  glory  of  God's 
grace  and  for  a  testimony  to  those  who  come  after. 

With  the  second  quarter  of  the  present  century,  there  commenced,  both 
upon  the  Continent  and  in  English-speaking  lands,  a  reaction  against  the 
rationalism  that  had  for  so  long  a  time  poisoned  and  enfeebled  the  science 
of  Scripture  interpretation.  Neander,  Tholuck  and  Winer,  in  the  several 
departments  of  history,  exegesis  and  grammar,  were  showing  the  possibility 
of  combining  a  scientific  accuracy  with  a  more  evangelical  faith, — nay,  of 
delivering  these  special  provinces  of  knowledge  from  the  despoiling  hands 
of  a  skeptical  philosophy,  by  the  very  means  of  that  believing  spirit  which 
the  so-called  philosophy  despised.  A  new  vitality  and  power  was  felt  to 
pervade  the  Scriptures.  New  confidence  was  put  in  their  accuracy  of  detail. 
The  old  apologies  for  Paul's  slip-shod  use  of  one  Greek  adjective  or  prepo- 
sition, when  he  meant  another,  were  shown  to  be  wholly  gratuitous.  And 
upon  the  basis  of  a  rigid  and  exhaustive  grammatical  and  lexical  analysis, 
the  fair  edifice  of  the  nineteenth  century  exegesis  and  theology  was  built. 

The  new  faith  in  Scripture  and  devotion  to  its  study  crossed  the  Atlantic, 
and  found  an  impersonation  in  Moses  Stuart  of  Andover.  His  incredible 
industry  and  contagious  enthusiasm  roused  in  this  country  a  new  love  for 
Biblical  studies.  One  of  his  pupils,  however,  who  drank  in,  like  a  kindred 
spirit,  his  impassioned  zeal  for  research  and  for  teaching,  went  further  than 
his  master.  Horatio  B.  Hackett  betook  himself  to  the  German  sources  of 
knowledge,  and  above  all  to  the  New  Testament  original,  felt  himself  com- 
pelled to  adopt  the  Baptist  faith  as  the  result,  and  with  an  exacter  scholar- 
ship than  that  of  Stuart,  made  himself  for  a  whole  half -century,  the  Nestor 
and  leader  of  Greek  exegesis  in  a  denomination,  which,  during  that  same 
period,  grew  from  half  the  number,  till  it  counted  a  million  and  three-quar- 
ters of  souls.  This,  as  it  seems  to  us,  was  the  significance  of  Dr.  Hackett's 
position  and  work.  Chase,  and  Conant,  and  Kendrick,  were  laboring  with 
a  like  aim  in  related  departments,  but  it  was  Dr.  Hackett,  who,  more  than 
.any  other  man,  formed  the  spirit  and  led  the  distinctive  work  of  exact  and 


332  A    GREAT   TEACHER   <  >F   GRKKK    EXEGESIS. 

believing  study  of  New  Testament  Greek  in  a  great  body  of  Christians, 
which,  partly  by  reason  of  this  same  progress  in  knowledge  and  love  of  the 
word  of  God,  raised  themselves  during  his  life-time  from  numerical  weakness 
to  numerical  power.  He  taught  the  teachers  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
Christians  throughout  the  land.  And  though  many  threads  of  human  influ- 
ence are  woven  together  in  the  fabric  of  our  denominational  progress,  we 
are  safe  in  saying  that  our  position  in  intelligence  and  influence  to-day  is 
in  large  part  the  result  of  the  life  and  work  of  Horatio  B.  Hackett. 

But  the  influence  of  his  work  extended  beyond  the  bounds  of  our  denomi- 
nation, even  as  his  sympathies  and  aims  were  broadly  Christian,  rather  than 
sectarian.  One  of  the  most  thorough  scholars  and  one  of  the  ablest  men  of 
the  Congregational  body  said  to  me  some  years'  ago,  that  he  regarded  Dr. 
Hackett  as  the  best  Biblical  scholar  that  wrote  in  the  English  language.  A 
recent  English  work  upon  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  mentions  Dr.  Hackett's 
Commentary  as  the  best  work  accessible  to  the  English  student.  Dr.  West- 
cott,  the  noted  English  writer  upon  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament,  said 
recently  in  a  private  letter,  that  he  had  discarded  the  English  edition  of  the 
Bible  Dictionary  in  order  to  replace  it  by  Dr.  Hackett's.  In  Germany,  also, 
his  works  have  been  quoted  and  commended  by  scholars  of  the  highest  rank, 
and  by  many  of  these  scholars  Dr.  Hackett  was  reckoned  as  a  correspondent 
and  friend.  No  man  could  hold  a  place  like  this,  without  influencing  the 
Christian  thought  of  the  age,  and  by  just  so  much  as  the  progress  of  the 
church  is  dependent  upon  correct  understanding  of  the  Scriptures,  by  just 
so  much  must  the  work  of  our  departed  friend  be  regarded  as  having  inti- 
mate connections  with  the  general  power  of  the  universal  church  of  Christ 
in  this  last  generation  of  the  history  of  the  world. 

This  is  much  to  say  of  the  life  and  work  of  a  scholar  whom  the  outside 
world  knows  almost  nothing  of.  But  it  is  the  Christian  estimate.  It  takes 
account  of  God's  ordination  of  conspiring  influences,  and  his  weaving  the 
thread  of  his  servant's  life  into  the  life  of  the  church  and  of  the  time. 
Providentially  and  by  his  own  deliberate  purpose  he  was  fitted  for  his  work. 
What  were  the  characteristics  of  the  teacher  and  the  man,  that  gave  him  his 
place  and  his  influence  ?  I  say  the  teacher  and  the  man, —  but  the  two  were 
one  and  inseparable.  Of  few  men  can  it  be  said,  with  equal  truth,  that  all 
there  was  of  faculty  and  energy,  even  to  the  uttermost  fancy  and  feeling,, 
was  thrown  into  the  work  appointed  him.  With  him  there  was  no  side-life, 
no  dallying  with  minor  interests.  That  face  so  grave,  benignant,  just  — 
that  form  so  proportioned,  compact,  true  —  showed,  even  in  the  most  casual 
conversation,  no  signs  of  trifling.  "One  thing  I  do,"  seemed  written  out 
in  the  very  intent  composure  of  the  man.  He  was  buried  in  his  work  of 
studying  and  interpreting  the  word  of  God.  And  to  many  and  many  a  stu- 
dent, that  example  of  a  high  intellect,  that  bent  itself  with  ever  new  avidity 
and  delight  to  exploration  of  the  treasures  of  the  Bible,  has  given  a  new  and 
inextinguishable  sense  of  the  infinite  reaches  and  the  priceless  value  of  God's 
revelation. 

He  might  have  had  this  singleness  of  aim  without  being  the  teacher  that 
he  was.  But  he  added  to  this,  certain  teacherly  qualifications  which  must 
not  be  unspoken  of  to-day  ;  and,  first  of  all,  the  discipline  and  the  habit  of 
exhaustive  investigation.  Sometime  a  man  must  gain  this,  or  he  never  makes- 


A  GREAT  TEACHER  OF  GREEK  EXEGESIS.          333 

#  scholar.  And  one  of  the  great  blessings  of  God  to  a  student,  is  the 
sight  and  contact  of  a  teacher  who  presents  in  himself  a  model  of  absolute 
thoroughness  ;  who  anatomises  his  subject  —  brain,  skeleton,  viscera  and 
heart ;  who,  like  Sir  William  Hamilton,  aims  before  writing  to  master  every 
valuable  word  that  has  been  written  upon  his  theme  since  the  world  began ; 
who  candidly  recognizes  every  difficulty  and  weighs  every  objection  ;  who 
leaves  no  stone  unturned,  if  he  may  find,  perchance,  some  new  illustration 
that  will  help  to  clear  or  impress  what  he  conceives  after  long  toil  and  inquiry 
to  be  the  truth.  Such  a  man  was  the  instructor  whom  we  knew.  He  had 
drunk  in  Greek  in  his  very  early  boyhood  ;  he  had  made  it  a  living  tongue 
to  him  by  teaching  its  classics  at  Amherst  and  Providence,  and  by  talking  it 
with  the  boatmen  of  the  Piraeus  and  the  shop-keepers  of  Athens  ;  the  rhythm 
and  grace  of  it  had  entered  into  his  brain  and  blood.  Travel  had  made  the 
scenes  of  Scripture  vivid  realities  to  him  ;  he  could  interpret  the  ninetieth 
Psalm  from  his  own  experience  in  the  solitudes  of  the  desert,  and  the  tri- 
umphal entry  of  Jesus,  in  Matthew,  from  his  own  surprise  and  exultation  as 
he  rounded  the  edge  of  Olivet,  and  caught  the  glorious  view  of  Jerusalem, 
once  the  holy,  now  the  profaned  and  desolate  city.  German,  he  learned  in 
Germany  itself ;  and  the  great  works  of  the  German  critical  scholarship,  he 
daily  used  more  constantly  and  naturally  than  English.  But  these  were 
only  the  preparations  for  his  work.  Elaborate  and  comprehensive  review  of 
all  the  important  literature  bearing  upon  the  subject  under  investigation, 
was  followed  by  cautious,  prolonged  and  original  thought,  and  in  this,  the 
penetrating  mind,  the  suspended  judgment,  the  final,  clear  decision,  showed 
him  the  master. 

This  was  the  spirit  which  he  strove  to  arouse  within  his  pupils  —  the  spirit 
of  minute,  critical,  exhaustive  Scripture  study.  Non  multa,  sed  multum. 
Not  to  go  over  all  Scripture  in  a  year,  but  to  teach  men  what  it  was  to  study 
a  few  passages  well ;  to  convince  them  that  every  phrase  had  a  meaning, 
definite  and  single  —  a  meaning  that  could  be  accurately  ascertained  and 
clearly  expressed  according  to  fixed  and  settled  laws  of  human  speech  ;  above 
all,  that  every  word  of  God  had  a  meaning  which  was  worth  all  the  study 
that  the  best-trained  mind  could  put  upon  it, — this  was  his  one  great  lesson 
to  successive  companies  of  students  for  forty  years.  If  this  had  been  the 
book-wormish  and  exaggerated  devotion  of  a  life-time  to  trifles  like  the  mark- 
ings of  diatoms,  it  would  have  merited  little  praise.  But  it  had  its  founda- 
tion and  explanation  in  a  reverent  regard  for  divine  revelation,  that  on  the 
one  hand  would  not  brook  a  mystical  importation  of  human  fancies  into  the 
sacred  text,  and  on  the  other  hand  would  not  permit  the  smallest  Greek 
article  or  conjunction  to  be  treated  as  an  idle  or  ambiguous  thing,  in  that 
word  which  "  holy  men  of  old  wrote,  as  they  were  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost. " 

Exegetical  science  has  made  steady  progress  since  Dr.  Hackett  began  to 
teach.  The  old  mystical  and  homiletical  method  that  prevailed  in  England 
fifty  years  ago,  contemporaneously  with  the  rationalistic  methods  of  Ger- 
many, has  given  place  to  a  more  thoughtful  and  just  inquiry  into  the  actual 
meaning  of  Scripture.  The  grammatical  and  lexical  method  which  suc- 
ceeded, and  the  possibilities  of  which  our  departed  friend  so  nobly  illustrated, 
has  itself  been  modified  and  broadened  by  Godet  and  Philippi,  by  Lightfoot 
and  Perowne.  We  seem  just  about  to  enter  upon  a  new  era  of  Scripture 


334          A  GREAT  TEACHER  OF  GREEK  EXEGESIS. 

comment,  in  which  the  word  of  God  is  to  be  interpreted  not  as  a  congeries 
of  parts,  but  as  an  organic  whole  with  a  living  unity.  But  historical  and 
doctrinal  interpretation,  which  Dr.  Hackett  conceived  to  belong  not  so  much 
to  his  department  as  to  that  of  theology,  presupposes  the  grammatical  and 
lexical,  and  would  be  impossible  but  for  just  such  work  as  Dr.  Hackett  did. 
How  faithful  to  that  work  he  was,  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that,  after 
forty  years  of  teaching,  he  never  went  to  his  class  without  a  new  investiga- 
tion and  revision  of  the  lesson  for  the  hour. 

One  other  most  distinguishing  characteristic  of  his,  was  his  faculty  of 
terse,  vivid  and  eloquent  exposition.  He  knew  something  of  the  heights 
and  depths  of  the  English  language,  and  he  never  failed  to  use  it,  even  in 
his  unpremeditated  talk,  with  a  curious  accuracy  and  a  delicate  sense  of 
light  and  shade,  that  invested  even  the  commonest  subjects  with  a  charm, 
and  left  in  many  hearers'  minds  the  feeling  of  an  untraversable  chasm 
between  his  culture  and  their  own,  while  it  stimulated  the  discerning  to  new 
care  of  their  common  speech.  Yet  this  was  at  a  world- wide  remove  from  all 
pedantry  or  affectation.  It  was  the  limpid  bubbling  of  a  fountain  of  sweet 
waters,  that  all  unconscious  of  itself  must  flow,  and  purely  flow,  if  it  flow  at 
all.  In  his  early  days,  he  had  drunk  deep  at  those  old  ' '  wells  of  English 
undefiled,"  that  are  so  nearly  deserted  now.  His  keen  critical  mind  detected 
and  rejected,  with  almost  chemical  alertness,  both  the  vague  and  the  rude 
in  expression.  He  knew  the  value  of  time,  and  had  learned  the  secret  of 
style.  He  cultivated  brevity  and  vigor  of  statement,  in  order  to  economize 
attention,  and  get  the  most  that  was  possible  into  the  written  paragraph  or 
into  the  passing  hour.  His  questioning,  in  the  class-room,  was  sharp  and 
rapid,  and  perfectly  unambiguous.  And  when  he  soared,  as  he  often  did, 
it  was  as  if  the  prophetic  fire  of  the  sacred  writer  he  expounded  had  flashed 
into  his  own  breast,  and  he  himself  were  caught  up  in  spirit.  It  was  no 
rhapsody  or  long  drawn  digression  that  he  indulged  in,  but  a  powerful  pic- 
turing of  the  scene  or  the  circumstances  or  the  thought  or  the  emotion,  of 
evangelist  or  apostle,  in  the  composition  of  the  very  words  under  considera- 
tion. No  man  has  lived,  in  America  at  least,  who  has  been  able  so  vividly 
to  impress  the  most  minute  and  recondite  indications  of  the  Greek  original 
upon  the  minds  of  New  Testament  students.  Again  and  again  have  his 
classes  found  themselves  gazing  at  him  with  open  mouths  —  lost  themselves 
and  he  lost  also  —  in  intense  contemplation  of  the  truth  wrapped  up  in  some 
Greek  particle  and  now  for  the  first  time  unfolded  before  them.  The  piece 
of  fire-works  unlighted,  and  the  piece  of  fire-works  burning,  are  no  more 
different,  than  Dr.  Hackett  in  his  quiet  moods,  and  Dr.  Hackett  kindled 
and  glowing  in  his  exposition  of  the  Scripture. 

During  the  war,  it  became  his  duty  to  give  the  parting  address  to  the 
graduating  class  at  Newton.  They  were  going  forth  in  a  time  of  great  needs- 
and  of  great  examples.  In  the  silence  of  his  study  Dr.  Hackett  had  followed 
our  armies,  and  his  whole  soul  was  with  the  brave  men  struggling,  wounded, 
dying,  in  the  field.  He  urged  the  graduates  to  be  men  of  like  devotion  to 
the  cause  of  God.  And,  as  he  spoke,  one  of  his  raptures  of  eloquence  came 
upon  him,  and  the  whole  assembly  were  swept  and  bowed  by  his  intense 
and  flaming  appeals.  A  man  possessed  of  such  godlike  faculty  of  speech, 
and  using  it  every  day  for  two  score  of  years  to  awaken  enthusiasm  in  the 


A  GREAT  TEACHER  OF  GREEK  EXEGESIS.          335- 

study  of  the  original  Scriptures,  is  a  very  gift  of  God  to  those  who  hear  him. 
He  has  stimulated  many  an  apathetic  soul  into  thought,  and  though  he 
would  have  called  himself  no  orator,  many  and  many  a  man  has  caught  the 
spirit  of  true  pulpit  oratory  from  him. 

When  I  add  to  these  two  a  last  characteristic,  I  feel  that  it  is  the  crown 
of  ah1, —  I  mean  his  "  modest  stillness  and  humility."  A  natural  shrinking 
from  publicity,  a  constant  consciousness  of  his  imperfections,  a  childlike 
casting  of  himself  at  the  feet  of  Christ,  his  Savior  —  these  were  so  marked 
that  they  prevented  most  people  from  knowing  him  at  all,  while  those  who 
did  know  him  knew  him  in  these  aspects  best.  His  own  low  appreciation 
of  his  work  led  him  to  regard  almost  as  pleasantry  the  praise  that  sometimes 
was  lavished  on  him.  At  other  times,  his  friends  feared  to  intrude  even  their 
gratitude  upon  a  mind  that  seemed  so  far  from  the  thought  of  self.  He  was 
always  ready  to  confess  ignorance.  Sometimes  he  timidly  confessed  it, 
when  he  knew  far  more  upon  the  subject  in  question,  than  the  person  who 
offered  to  inform  him.  With  a  peculiarly  nervous  temperament,  that  made 
him  exceedingly  sensitive  to  interruption,  and  an  absorption  of  mind  in  his 
proper  work,  that  left  but  little  time  to  think  of  matters  of  common  life,  he 
was  sometimes  perplexed  and  ruffled,  but  he  was  just  as  sensitive  to  kind- 
ness, and  there  were  times  when  he  showed  the  very  tenderness  of  a  woman. 
How  utterly  devoid  of  ostentation  or  forth-putting  or  self-seeking  he  was  ! 
With  gifts  that  made  him  at  times  a  very  prince  of  talkers,  it  was  only  at 
intervals  of  years  that  he  could  be  induced  to  speak  in  public.  He  prayed 
at  our  Chapel-service,  and  his  pupils  gained  new  views  of  sin,  when  they 
heard  Dr.  Hackett  humbling  himself  and  taking  upon  his  lips  the  words  of 
the  publican:  "God  be  merciful  to  me,  the  sinner."  They  gained  n.ew 
views  of  Christian  service,  when  they  heard  him  laying  all  his  work  as  an 
unworthy  offering  at  the  feet  of  Him  who  died  for  us.  Dear  whitened  head  ! 
how  many  lessons  it  has  taught  us  of  unselfishness  and  humility.  Thank 
God,  he  knows  now,  that  his  labor  and  his  life  were  "not  in  vain  in  the 
Lord." 

Only  this  last  summer  he  visited  his  old  haunts  in  Germany,  and  revived 
some  of  his  cherished  acquaintances  of  former  days.  He  talked  with  Miiller 
and  Tholuck.  He  brought  back  the  scissors  and  the  paper-weight  last  used 
by  Meyer,  and  presented  to  him  by  his  daughter-in-law.  The  companion- 
ship of  an  old  friend  made  the  journey  delightful.  He  returned  to  his  work 
possessed  apparently  of  a  new  vitality  and  spirit.  On  the  very  morning  that 
he  died,  he  prayed  in  his  family,  that,  if  it  were  God's  will,  the  members  of 
it  might  be  long  spared  to  each  other.  But  God's  ways  are  not  our  ways. 
Three  days  ago  he  met  his  class  in  the  lecture-room,  but  a  sudden  pain 
seized  him,  and  he  suspended  the  exercise.  He  walked  to  his  home,  and 
there,  in  his  own  bed,  in  a  short  half-hour,  he  breathed  his  life  away,  so 
softly,  that  those  who  stood  by  hardly  knew  when  he  was  gone.  It  was 
dying  without  the  long  agony  of  sickness.  Unconscious  as  he  was,  it  was 
virtually  an  instant  transportation  from  the  world  of  anxious  desire,  and, 
at  the  best,  of  unsatisfied  hopes,  to  the  joy  of  his  Lord,  and  the  untroubled 
rest  and  inconceivable  reward  of  the  faithful.  It  was  sudden  death,  but  it 
was  sudden  glory. 

With  the  family  toward  whom  he  cherished  so  tender  an  affection,  with 


-336         A  GREAT  TEACHER  OF  GREEK  EXEGESIS. 

the  members  of  this  Institution  who  so  loved  him,  with  the  great  company 
of  ministers  and  scholars  throughout  the  land  who  revered  him  as  a  teacher 
and  a  father,  there  is  mourning  to-day.  From  the  East  many  friends  of 
olden  time  have  sent  their  letters  of  condolence,  and  from  the  distant  state 
of  Indiana,  the  Convention  of  Baptists  there  assembled  unite  in  a  telegraphic 
expression  of  sympathy.  We  have  few  such  men  to  lose.  But  let  us  not 
murmur,  nor  mourn  as  those  who  are  without  hope.  God's  purpose  and 
wisdom  are  in  this  affliction, — his  will  be  done  !  God  has  blessed  the  earth 
with  his  life, — let  us  be  thankful !  God  will  care  for  his  family,  and  for  the 
Institution  to  which  he  gave  his  last  labors, —  let  us  trust  those  infinite 
resources  of  power  and  grace  that  for  a  little  time  gave  him  to  us  !  Nothing 
in  this  world  is  too  good  to  die  ;  earthly  friends  and  teachers  and  leaders 
fall ;  but  the  glorious  gospel  lives,  and  Christ  lives,  to  put  all  things,  even 
death  itself,  under  his  feet.  Ah !  the  revelation  is  better  still,  for  Christ 
himself  has  said  to  us,  "I  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life  ;  he  that  believeth 
in  me,  though  he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live  ;  and  he  that  liveth  and  believ- 
eth in  me  shall  never  die."  Let  us  not  then  talk  of  death, — it  is  life  into 
which  our  beloved  friend  has  entered.  And  since  life  to  him  meant  work,  I 
cannot  think  of  him  as  enjoying  or  as  praising  only.  That  intent  and  stu- 
dious mind  is  surely  busy  somewhere.  He  did  good  work  for  God  here, — 
but  he  will  do  better  work  for  God  there,  as  he  uses  his  now  ransomed 
powers  perfectly  and  only  for  the  glory  of  his  Redeemer.  And  so  we  lay  these 
palm-branches  upon  his  coffin,  with  the  floral  cross  and  crown.  They  are 
poor  and  mute,  yet  true  testimonies,  of  our  unending  affection  and  remem- 
brance. But  they  are  more.  They  are  symbols  of  the  cross  in  which  he 
trusted  and  of  the  joy  to  which  the  cross  has  led  him, — the  kingly  diadem 
and  the  victor's  palm  ! 


XXXII. 

CHURCH  HISTORY,  AND  ONE  WHO  TAUGHT  IT.' 


In  the  earliest  days  of  the  church,  there  was  one  who,  more  than  any  other 
human  teacher  mentioned  in  sacred  writ,  had  discovered  the  connection  and 
meaning  of  the  great  events  of  Israelitish  history.  He  had  come  to  look 
upon  the  present  as  well  as  upon  the  past  as  having  lasting  significance  only 
by  virtue  of  its  relations  to  the  divine-human  person  and  work  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  to  the  new  spiritual  life  transfused  from  him  into  the  veins  of 
an  exhausted  and  degenerate  humanity,  at  the  cost  of  the  shedding  of  his 
blood.  Only  after  Christ  had  come,  was  there  possible  a  philosophy  of 
history,  and  the  first  philosopher  of  history  was  Stephen.  Yet  the  life  of 
Stephen  ended  before  it  had  well  begun.  His  magnificent  historical  survey 
of  the  ages  before  Christ  kindled  the  anger  of  that  hostile  Jewish  tribunal ; 
by  sudden  and  unexpected  death,  he  was  taken  from  the  world  while  the 
work  he  seemed  specially  fitted  to  accomplish  was  just  entered  upon  and 
only  done  as  it  were  by  fragment  and  sample  ;  this  mournful  record  closes 
with  words  so  vivid  and  affecting  that  the  grief  of  eighteen  centuries  ago 
seems  still  to  live  and  throb  and  break  before  us  into  convulsive  weeping  : 
"And  devout  men  carried  Stephen  to  his  burial,  and  made  great  lamentation 
over  him. " 

In  memory  of  a  teacher  of  Church  History,  of  a  true  man,  and  of  a  true 
Christian,  we  who  were  honored  in  being  his  colleagues  and  friends  desire  to 
utter  a  few  simple  words  to-day,  and  so  to  testify  and  represent  the  common 
grief  of  this  whole  company  of  learned  and  devout  men  who  carry  him  to 
his  burial.  Though  it  is  forbidden  me  by  the  exigencies  of  the  occasion, 
and  the  mention  of  his  personal  qualities  has  been  assigned  to  another,  I 
find  it  hard  to  forbear  all  reference  to  these,  for  he  was  the  kindest  and 
most  gracious  soul  I  ever  knew.  He  was  also  a  Christian  man  and  a  member 
of  the  Christian  body,  whose  unsparing  faithfulness  and  self-devotion  left 
no  heard  call  of  duty  unanswered.  But  this  falls  to  his  pastor  to  say.  To 
me  it  is  appointed  simply  to  speak  of  him  as  regards  the  work  to  which  he 
had  deliberately  chosen  to  devote  his  life, —  the  work  of  investigation  and  of 
instruction  in  church  history.  As  preliminary  and  essential  to  a  proper 
estimate  of  this,  I  shall  speak  with  great  brevity  of  his  parentage,  education 
and  general  preparation  for  his  calling.  I  shall  then  describe  his  ideal  of 
that  calling,  and  the  extent  to  which  he  realised  it. 

Rabbi  Joseph  Wales  Buckland  was  born  at  Deerfield,  Oneida  county, 
N.  Y.,  on  the  16th  of  December,  1829,  so  that  his  life  covers  a  period  of  only 
forty- seven  years.  His  father  was  a  minister  of  the  gospel  of  the  Baptist 


*  An  Address  at  the  Funeral  of  Professor  R.  J.  W.  Buckland,  D.  D.,  at  the  Second 
Baptist  Church,  Rochester,  February  1, 1877. 

22  337 


338  CHURCH   HISTORY,    AND   ONE   WHO   TAUGHT   IT. 

denomination.  His  mother,  like  Hannah  and  Elizabeth  of  old,  believed 
before  his  birth  that  God  was  to  give  her  a  son  who  should  serve  him  in  the 
sacred  ministry.  During  his  infancy  and  early  childhood  this  impression 
became  conviction  in  the  minds  of  both  of  the  parents,  and,  in  token  of 
their  faith  in  God  and  of  their  consecration  of  the  child  to  this  service,  they 
changed  the  name,  which  originally  was  Smith,  and  had  been  given  in 
remembrance  of  a  young  man  who  had  studied  for  the  ministry  with  the 
father  but  had  met  an  early  death,  to  Rabbi.  That  name,  so  nearly  unheard 
of,  was  to  be  significant,  as  Hebrew  names  of  old  times  were,  and  as  modern 
names  are  not.  It  was  to  remind  the  boy  as  he  grew  —  it  was  to  remind  the 
parents  in  their  training  of  him — that  he  was  to  be  a  teacher  for  God. 
Never  did  name  serve  its  purpose  better  than  this  one.  Within  this  last 
year  he  has  mentioned  it  as  one  of  the  influences  of  childhood  and  youth, 
that  shaped  his  career  in  life.  Although  both  parents  carefully  avoided 
speaking  to  him  of  the  ministry  until  God  had  led  him  to  choose  it  of  his  own 
accord,  he  considered  his  possession  of  this  name  as  one  of  the  providential 
circumstances  which  determined  him  to  preach  the  gospel. 

Mr.  Buckland's  conversion  was  such  as  might  have  been  expected  in  the 
case  of  one  who  was  brought  up  under  the  peculiar  religious  influences 
which  surrounded  his  early  life.  His  mother  was  a  woman  superior  in 
Christian  devotion  and  attainments,  so  that  I  may  say  I  have  known  but 
one  other  person  at  all  comparable  with  her  in  this  respect.  The  Bible  was 
her  constant  theme,  and  Mr.  Buckland  has  told  me  it  was  thought  that  more 
than  one  revival  of  religion  in  the  churches  where  his  father  preached  had 
been  the  result  of  her  prayers  and  labors.  So  great  was  Mr.  Buckland's 
devotion  to  his  mother  that  I  believe  he  never  omitted  making  what  I  called 
his  yearly  pilgrimage  to  the  old  homestead,  so  long  as  her  life  and  that  of 
his  father  was  spared.  During  these  visits,  his  mother  would  gather  pas- 
sage after  passage  of  the  Scriptures,  which  she  seemed  to  have  hoarded 
up  through  the  year,  and  ply  him  with  questions  as  to  the  interpretation  of 
them.  Laughingly  he  would  retort  and  call  upon  her  for  her  own  interpre- 
tation of  these  and  other  difficult  passages,  but  so  constant  and  so  careful 
was  her  study  of  the  Bible,  that  no  minister  of  the  gospel  could  have  been 
more  ready  with  an  intelligent  interpretation  than  she.  His  father's  con- 
versations were  very  similar  to  those  of  his  mother.  The  subjects  I  have 
mentioned  were  the  all-absorbing  ones  in  the  case  of  each.  From  these 
facts  one  may  well  judge  that  there  would  naturally  be  nothing  sudden  or 
striking  in  the  conversion  of  one  brought  up  under  the  influence  of  such 
parents,  so  that  Mr.  Buckland  said  he  could  not  date  the  particular  time 
•when  he  passed  from  darkness  to  light,  but  that  it  was  a  gradual  change. 
I  think  his  parents  had  never  urged  him  to  study  for  the  ministry,  and  I 
think  he  was  not  aware,  unless  from  inference,  that  his  mother  had  had  the 
impressions  concerning  him  of  which  I  have  just  spoken. 

At  the  age  of  seventeen,  young  Buckland  entered  the  Sophomore  class  of 
Union  College,  and  though  among  the  youngest,  if  not  the  youngest  of  his 
class,  he  graduated  at  its  head.  After  he  had  left  college,  he  taught  for  more 
than  a  year  in  an  institution  for  the  blind  in  New  York  City.  Even  thus 
early  he  had  formed  a  taste  for  natural  science.  Botany  was  one  of  the 
subjects  he  taught  within  the  year  or  two  that  followed.  He  gave  instruc- 


CHURCH    HISTORY,    AND   ONE   WHO   TAUGHT   IT.  339 

tion  in  certain  noted  female  seminaries  in  the  metropolis,  and  with  such 
marked  success,  that  subsequent  propositions  looking  toward  his  acceptance 
of  the  position  of  President  of  one  of  the  great  colleges  for  women,  were 
probably  based  in  part  upon  the  tradition  of  it.  Through  all  these  years  of 
teaching  and  through  all  the  years  of  his  subsequent  preaching,  his  taste 
for  natural  science  grew.  The  microscope  was  his  recreation ;  natural 
history  was  his  delight.  He  .became  an  active  member  of  several  of  the 
important  scientific  Societies  of  New  York. 

There  is  an  intimate  connection  and  analogy  between  natural  history  and 
history  properly  so-called.  Both  give  accounts  of  organic  and  living  things. 
Growth  and  development  are  the  essential  principles  of  both.  How  it  was 
that  our  friend  was  led  to  connect  historical  studies  with  his  studies  in 
natural  history,  we  do  not  know.  It  is  certain  that  the  latter  greatly  assisted 
the  former  ;  it  may  be  that  the  one  led  to  the  other,  as  to  a  cognate  field  of 
inquiry.  But  there  was  another  relationship  of  friendship  and  sympathy 
which  must  have  had  greater  influence  still.  Young  Buckland  entered  the 
congregation  of  Dr.  William  R.  Williams,  pastor  of  the  Amity  street  church, 
—  justly  celebrated  wherever  the  Baptist  name  v  is  known  as  a  princely 
preacher  and  as  a  man  of  wide  historical  erudition.  The  friendship  of  such 
a  man,  with  the  access  he  enjoyed  to  Dr.  Williams's  large  private  library, 
if  it  did  not  originate,  did  much  to  fix  his  taste  for  history  and  to  guide 
his  subsequent  studies.  Under  the  influence  of  Dr.  Williams's  preaching, 
he  was  converted.  He  was  baptized,  and  was  recommended  to  study  for  the 
ministry.  He  pursued  a  course  of  theology  at  Union  Theological  Seminary, 
graduating  in  1855.  He  was  ordained  as  pastor  of  the  Olive  Branch  Baptist 
Church,  on  Madison  Street,  New  York  City.  After  a  year  of  service  in  this 
first  pastorate,  he  took  charge  of  the  church  in  Sing  Sing.  Here  he  spent 
seven  years,  from  1857  to  1864.  He  then  returned  to  New  York,  and  for  five 
years  was  pastor  of  the  Calvary  Baptist  Church  on  Twenty-third  Street, 
one  of  the  large  and  influential  churches  of  the  metropolis.  Through  all 
these  thirteen  years  of  ministerial  labor,  he  showed  himself  the  instructive 
preacher,  the  faithful  pastor,  the  unfailing  friend.  Members  of  these 
churches  have  given  me  testimony  within  the  few  months  past  to  the  admi- 
ration and  love  with  which  they  cherished  the  memory  of  his  ministrations. 

But  his  studies  and  natural  tastes  fitted  him  better  for  teaching  than  for 
the  work  of  the  pastorate.  History  and  science  had  gone  hand  in  hand  and 
had  led  him  onward.  He  had  made  original  investigations  into  the  history 
of  our  own  denomination,  or  of  bodies  professing  a  similar  faith  to  ours,  for 
a  considerable  period  before  and  after  the  time  of  the  Eeformation.  He 
had  been  elected  member  of  the  Historical  Society  of  New  York.  Certain 
lectures  of  his  upon  historical  themes  had  attracted  attention.  The  chair 
of  History  in  this  Seminary  was  vacant.  None  was  thought  so  fit  as  he  to 
fill  it.  He  came  to  Rochester  in  1869,  and  began  his  work.  To  that  work  he 
gave  himself  with  all  the  abandon  and  delight  of  a  boy  let  loose  in  fragrant 
fields,  after  the  hard  tasks  of  school.  Laboring  always  till  midnight —  often 
long  after  midnight  —  in  exhausting  preparation  for  the  lecture  of  the  coming 
day,  and  that,  not  for  one  week  but  for  every  week  of  the  thirty -five  included 
in  the  annual  term  of  study,  and  adding  to  this  the  almost  constant  supply 
of  some  important  pulpit  of  the  city,  he  yet  had  such  joy  and  excitement 


340  CHURCH   HISTORY,    AND   ONE   WHO   TAUGHT   IT. 

in  his  work  that  lie  seemed  to  gain  strength  rather  than  to  lose.  And  this 
unremitting  labor,  never  lightened  by  the  declination  of  calls  to  work  of 
other  sorts  that  were  constantly  pressed  upon  him,  he  kept  up  almost  to  the 
end.  His  even  temperament  and  his  iron  constitution  seemed  equal  to  any 
strain.  Few  suspected  that  he  could  overdo.  He  was  occasionally  warned 
that  no  system  could  endure  so  constant  taxing,  but  he  confidently  replied 
that  he  could  work  more  hours  in  the  day,  and  more  days  in  the  week,  and 
more  weeks  in  the  year,  than  any  man  he  ever  knew.  It  was  true, — but 
there  is  a  limit  to  all  human  strength.  Two  years  ago  he  broke,  under  the 
tension.  Organic  disease  manifested  itself,  and  though  disease  was  never 
fought  against  with  greater  energy  of  will,  disease  has  triumphed,  and  his 
work  on  earth  is  done.  This  leads  me  to  speak  of  his  ideal  of  the  work  of 
the  teacher  of  Church  History,  and  of  the  measure  of  his  attainment.  I  do 
it,  as  one  might  estimate  the  height  of  a  hill  which  he  had  never  climbed. 
It  is  evident  that  no  man  can  achieve  high  success  as  a  teacher  in  any  depart- 
ment, who  has  not  a  lofty  sense  of  the  dignity  of  his  work  and  of  his  own 
personal  vocation  thereto.  In  this  respect,  Dr.  Buckland  did  not  fall  below 
the  highest  standard.  To  him  Church  History  was  not  only  a  science  and  the 
most  comprehensive  of  sciences  —  it  was  also  the  most  important  of  all  the 
sciences.  He  felt  called  of  God  to  teach  it.  He  was  to  continue,  though 
uninspired,  the  history  of  the  kingdom  of  God  which  an  inspired  Moses  and 
an  inspired  Luke  began.  He  felt  that  knowledge  of  the  progress  of  this 
kingdom  and  of  the  conflicts  through  which  it  had  passed,  was  essential  to 
to  the  equipment  of  every  competent  preacher  of  the  gospel.  And  he  was 
set  to  give  this  knowledge  to  a  portion  of  the  rising  ministry.  He  declined, 
in  1871,  without  a  moment's  hesitation,  a  call  to  the  Presidency  of  Shurtleff 
College,  and  declined  it  upon  the  ground  that  the  teaching  of  history  was 
the  one  work  and  duty  of  his  life.  In  his  sickness,  he  could  not  be  convinced 
that  his  work  was  done.  He  felt,  through  all  the  twenty-four  months  of  his 
weakness  and  pain,  that  he  was  bound  by  the  terms  of  his  original  calling  to 
daily  and  hourly  struggle  with  the  powers  that  would  terminate  or  curtail 
the  great  work  to  which  he  had  ilevoted  himself. 

It  is  indispensable  that  the  true  teacher  have  a  lofty  idea  of  the  dignity  and 
importance  of  his  work.  It  is  yet  more  essential  that  we  have  a  correct  idea 
of  its  nature.  No  man  can  teach  history  who  conceives  of  it  as  a  record  of 
isolated  facts.  Unless  he  can  see,  in  the  epoch,  in  the  nation,  in  the  society, 
the  product  and  expression  of  internal  ideas  and  forces,  which  evolve  them- 
selves according  to  constituted  law,  he  can  understand  neither  so'ciety,  nor 
nation,  nor  epoch.  The  life  of  states  is  a  dynamic  unfolding  of  a  substantive, 
though  spiritual,  principle  inlaid  in  the  character  of  their  people.  Until 
man  is  bound  to  his  fellows  by  some  such  principle,  so  that  together  they 
can  act  as  one  body,  he  has  no  history,  nor  has  he  risen  from  savagery. 
Where  there  is  any  degree  of  civilization,  there  are  no  sudden  movements, 
no  changes  without  cause,  no  revolutions  without  age-long  preparation. 
History  is  no  rope  of  sand,  but  an  organic  whole  ;  and  that  which  furnishes 
the  chief  connecting  bond  and  the  most  powerful  motive-force  of  history  is 
the  religious  idea.  Let  me  not  go  further,  without  assuring  you  that  this 
view  of  the  nature  of  history,  with  all  its  grand  implications,  is  not  simply 
mine  —  it  was  the  guiding  principle  of  Dr.  Buckland's  studies  and  teaching. 


CHURCH    HISTORY,    AND    ONE    WHO   TAUGHT    IT.  341 

From  notes  of  his  own  lectures,  I  have  gained,  since  lie  died,  a  larger 
conception  than  otherwise  would  have  been  possible  of  the  breadth  of  his 
intended  treatment  of  history.  As  he  held  the  religious  idea  to  be  the  chief 
force,  so  he  held  the  theanthropic  life  of  Christ  to  be  the  centre  and  pivot 
around  which  all  history  groups  itself.  "The  whole  career  of  mankind " — 
these  are  his  words — "the  whole  career  of  mankind,  considered  in  its  relation 
to  that  theanthropic  life,  is  sacred  history ;  the  whole  life  of  the  world, 
treated  without  reference  to  that,  is  secular  history. "  The  history  of  the 
church  is  the  history  of  the  unfolding  of  this  new  divine  life  which,  entering 
the  world  in  Christ,  is  ever  communicating  itself,  not  without  conflict  and 
temporary  hindrance  through  human  perversity,  to  ever-widening  circles 
of  humanity.  Every  phase  and  step  of  this  history  is  to  be  examined  and 
tested  and  judged,  according  as  the  church  therein  is  faithful  to  the  laws  laid 
down  in  the  New  Testament  for  its  development.  I  know  of  no  sublimer 
conception  of  Church  History  than  this.  It  is  Neander's,  with  the  test  of 
subjective  consciousness  left  out,  and  the  test  of  Scripture  .alone  retained. 

Such  was  his  idea  of  his  work,  as  to  its  importance  and  its  nature.  But 
conception  is  one  thing,  execution  quite  another.  To  execute  a  task  like 
that  to  which  he  set  himself,  there  goes  the  power  of  original  and  exhaustive 
investigation.  Generalizations  must  be  based  upon  wide  induction  of  facts, 
and  the  gathering  of  these  facts  from  languages  ancient  and  modern,  and 
from  sources  as  common  as  the  daily  newspaper,  and  as  recondite  as  the 
stray  minutes  of  ecclesiastical  bodies  that  met  in  obscure  towns  of  England 
two  hundred  years  ago,  involves  a  linguistic  training,  an  untiring  industry, 
a  generous  comprehensiveness  of  spirit,  a  critical  acumen  in  selecting  and 
in  rejecting  material,  which  are  rarely  combined.  Dr.  Buckland  had  these, 
all  in  some  degree,  some  in  large  degree.  I  have  spoken  of  his  industry. 
The  comprehensiveness  of  his  inquiries  was  as  remarkable  as  his  industry. 
Nothing  was  too  great,  nothing  too  small,  that  bore  upon  his  theme.  The 
life  of  Christ  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  beginning  of  church  history,  as  indeed 
it  was, — he  embraced  that  in  his  treatment.  The  heathen  religions  seemed 
to  him  a  preparation  for  Christ, —  he  made  them  the  subject  of  preliminary 
lectures.  He  wished  to  extend  his  course  by  embracing  the  history  of  Israel 
from  the  beginning  to  the  coming  of  Christ.  He  brought  down  the  history 
of  the  church  to  the  present  time.  It  is  my  judgment  that  as  a  whole,  his 
treatment  of  the  history  of  modern  denominations  was  more  thorough  and 
exhaustive  than  that  of  any  teacher  of  our  day ;  of  certain  of  them  he  has 
given  a  fuller  and  better  account  than  can  be  found  in  the  works  of  their 
own  writers.  With  his  omnivorous  avidity  for  facts,  we  used  to  say  to  him 
in  pleasantry  that  he  never  would  be  satisfied  till  he  had  in  his  lectures 
carefully  traced  Church  History  back  all  the  way  from  twelve  o'clock  to-day 
to  the  formation  of  the  solar  system  according  to  the  nebular  hypothesis. 
And  what  he  learned  he  remembered,  whether  it  was  matter  of  history,  or 
of  the  natural  science  and  civil  law  which  he  had  looked  into  for  purposes 
of  recreation  or  illustration.  An  admiring  friend,  not  given  to  random 
judgments,  a  member  at  once  of  the  legal  profession  and  of  a  club  of  gentle- 
men of  scientific  tastes  to  which  Dr.  Buckland  belonged,  said  upon  a  certain 
occasion,  that  whatever  subject  might  be  treated  by  members  of  the  club, 
whether  it  were  politics,  science,  law,  or  religion,  Dr.  Buckland  always 


342  CHURCH   HISTORY,    AND   ONE   WHO  TAUGHT   IT. 

seemed  to  know  more  about  the  subject  than  the  man  who  had  specially 
investigated  it.  There  was  perhaps  something  of  designed  hyperbole  in 
the  utterance,  but  it  expresses  in  some  degree  the  estimate  formed  by  com- 
petent judges  with  regard  to  the  extent  and  range  of  his  learning. 

The  proper  execution  of  a  historian's  task  requires  a  philosophical  mind. 
I  have  said  that  Dr.  Buckland  set  out  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  work 
with  a  correct  idea  of  the  nature  of  history.  He  gathered  an  immense  mass 
of  material  of  the  most  valuable  kind.  He  felt  that  the  organizing  of  this 
material,  with  the  insight  into  principles  that  seizes  upon  salient  facts  and 
avoids  superabundance  of  detail,  was  a  work,  not  of  days  or  months,  but  of 
long  and  laborious  years.  He  had  given  his  life  to  this  work, — with  physical 
vigor  such  as  few  possess,  he  expected  a  lifetime  to  do  it  in.  His  full  set  of 
written  lectures  would  fill  two  thousand  printed  octavo  pages.  He  had  already 
done  much  in  the  way  of  condensing  and  systematizing  this  material.  The 
syllabus  of  his  lectures  which  he  printed  for  the  use  of  students,  shows  a 
consistent  plan,  a'grasp  of  materials,  a  grouping  and  unifying  mind,  which 
gave  high  promise  of  what  our  friend  might  have  done  had  God  lengthened 
out  his  life.  As  it  is,  he  had  one  thread  running  through  all  his  lectures. 
No  student  who  sat  under  his  instruction  will  ever  forget  his  idea  of  the 
church  and  of  its  development.  His  friends,  in  no  small  number,  had 
looked  upon  him  as  the  future  writer  of  that  history  of  the  Church  of  Christ 
from  a  Baptist  point  of  view,  which  has  so  long  been  a  desideratum  in  our 
denomination,  and  which  we  might  reasonably  hope  would  be  of  value  to 
Christians  of  other  names.  But  a  Providence  wiser  than  ours  has  ordered 
that  the  work  shall  be  left  incomplete.  Much  is  fragmentary,  which  unques- 
tionably would  have  been  filled  out  and  brought  into  vital  relation  to  the 
rest,  had  time  and  strength  served  him.  He  thought  he  could  not  die  until 
that  work  was  done.  Ah,  how  small  is  our  best  work,  and  how  unessential  our 
life,  to  the  purposes  of  him  whose  life-time  is  eternity  and  whose  resources 
are  infinite  !  But  God,  we  doubt  not,  took  the  will  for  the  deed,  and  as  for 
us  —  why,  the  torso  is  noble,  though  much  is  lacking  to  the  perfect  form. 
From  what  he  has  done,  we  may  conjecture  how  much  there  would  have 
been  of  true  philosophy  in  his  matured  and  finished  work. 

There  is  a  true  sense  in  which  his  work  is  not  yet  done.  Through  the 
many  students  whom  he  had  helped  to  train  for  the  ministry,  his  life  per- 
petuates itself.  And  this  is  the  last  and  crucial  test  of  an  instructor  in 
Church  History ;  does  he  impress  himself  upon  his  classes  ?  does  he  make 
true  ideas  of  history  a  part  of  them  forever  ?  I  think  we  cannot  doubt  that 
this  was  so  with  regard  to  Dr.  Buckland.  He  had  a  natural  ardor  of  mind 
and  a  gentle  dignity,  an  unfailing  flow  of  speech  and  a  readiness  to  further 
in  every  possible  way  the  inquiries  of  his  pupils,  which  together  made  him 
impressive  and  popular,  in  spite  of  that  severest  trial  of  patience  and  atten- 
tion, the  manual  labor  of  long  copying  from  dictation.  The  student  loved 
the  man  and  his  work, — and  it  is  the  man,  in  large  part,  that  makes  the 
teacher.  Subjects  for  public  essays,  where  the  student  had  his  option,  have 
been  taken  from  Church  History  as  frequently,  if  not  more  frequently,  than 
from  any  other  department  of  theological  knowledge.  He  has  left  behind 
him  no  printed  and  published  work,  but  he  has  written  many  "living 
epistles  "  that  have  gone  forth,  as  we  trust,  to  teach  and  to  bless  the  church 


CHURCH    HISTORY,    ASTD    ONE    WHO   TAUGHT   IT.  343 

and  the  world.  And  now  that  he  has  gone  from  us  to  pursue  the  themes  he 
loved  with  a  clearer  insight  and  a  wider  knowledge  than  that  of  earth,  now 
that  he  watches  the  progress  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  not  as  one  who  is 
himself  in  the  din  and  smoke  of  the  battle,  but  from  a  point  above  the 
strife  where  the  complicated  movements  of  the  combatants  are  seen  in  their 
true  meaning  and  the  chariots  of  God  are  discerned  filling  the  mountains 
round  about  his  people,  shall  we  doubt  in  our  loss  and  sorrow,  that  he  who 
gave  him  to  us  will  choose  and  point  out  one  to  take  his  mantle  and  complete 
his  work  ?  Let  us  pray  God  that  out  of  the  number  of  those  he  taught, 
there  may  be  found  one  who  shall  accept  the  truth  and  be  filled  with  a 
double  portion  of  his  spirit.  When  devout  men  carried  Stephen  to  his 
burial,  and  made  great  lamentation  over  him,  they  little  knew  that  Stephen's 
words  had  already  gone  to  the  heart  of  one  named  Saul,  and  that  those 
words  would  never  leave  him,  until  Saul  had  become  Paul,  and  the  great 
teacher  of  the  Gentiles  had  appeared  to  carry  on  the  work  which  Stephen 
left  so  incomplete.  But  whatever  may  befall,  this  we  know,  that  parting 
and  death,  disappointment  and  disaster,  all  changes  and  all  times,  all  we  do 
and  all  we  leave  undone,  is  made  to  further  the  historic  progress  and  the 
ultimate  triumph  of  the  kingdom  of  our  God. 


XXXIII. 

LEARNING  IN  THE  PROFESSOR'S  CHAIR.* 


I  have  been  asked  to  say  a  few  words  with  regard  to  Dr.  Hotchkiss  as  a 
teacher,  and  with  regard  to  his  former  connection  with  the  Rochester  Theo- 
logical Seminary.  I  little  thought  twenty-five  years  ago  when,  as  a  student 
of  the  Institution,  I  first  came  under  his  instruction,  that  the  day  would  ever 
come  that  I,  as  a  representative  of  the  Seminary,  should  officiate  at  his 
funeral.  Even  now  the  old  associations  come  over  me,  and  it  seems  unfit 
that  I,  the  scholar,  should  speak  of  him  the  teacher.  But  there  is  a  debt  of 
gratitude  I  owe  him,  and  though  I  can  but  poorly  repay  it  by  any  spoken 
words,  yet  such  as  I  have  I  gladly  give,  by  way  of  tribute  to  an  old  instructor, 
whom  each  successive  year  has  only  taught  me  the  more  to  revere  and  to 
love. 

I  shall  be  obliged  to  say  over  again  some  things  which  the  honored  Presi- 
dent of  the  University  has  said  before  me,  because  what  Dr.  Hotchkiss  was 
as  a  teacher  grew  out  of  what  he  was  as  a  scholar,  as  a  preacher,  and  as  a 
man.  Technical  learning  alone  can  never  make  a  successful  instructor  of 
the  young.  There  must  be  with  it,  and  behind  it,  a  certain  mass  of  man- 
hood, or  the  learning  will  never  win  respect,  much  less  communicate  itself, 
as  by  contagion,  to  the  pupils.  There  was  much  in  the  mental  make-up  of 
our  friend,  which  qualified  him  for  success  in  the  professor's  chair,  and 
especially  for  success  in  his  chosen  department  —  the  teaching  of  the  Bible 
in  the  original  languages.  He  was  an  ardent  lover  of  the  Bible,  and  a  pro- 
found believer  that  its  every  line  and  syllable  were  written  by  holy  men  of 
old  as  they  were  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost.  In  those  days,  we  who  were 
students  wondered  whether  he  did  not  press  too  strongly  and  exclusively 
the  divine  aspect  of  the  doctrine  of  inspiration,  and  whether  he  made  suffi- 
cient allowance  for  the  human  moulds  into  which  the  molten  gold  of  truth 
has  been  poured.  But  it  was  a  most  valuable  and  never  to  be  forgotten  les- 
son which  we  learned  from  his  intense  and  unflinching  maintenance  of  the 
divinity  of  the  Bible.  To  him  each  and  every  part  of  it  was  instinct  with 
life.  There  was  meaning  enough  in  every  word,  to  spend  an  hour  upon. 
And  every  word  had  its  practical  value,  because  it  was  a  part  of  the  larger 
word  of  God. 

I  think  that  all  his  learning  grew  out  of  this  reverence  for  the  Scriptures. 
His  studies  were  not  secular  studies.  He  did  not  give  himself  to  Syriac  and 
Arabic  merely  because  he  loved  them,  but  because  he  could  make  them  helps 
to  the  interpretation  of  the  Bible.  He  was  an  illustration  of  the  intellectual 
stimulus  and  achievement  which  come  directly  and  indirectly  from  the  gos- 


*  Remarks  at  the  Funeral  of  the  Rev.  V.  R.  Hotchkiss,  D.  D.,  in  the  First  Baptist- 
Church,  Rochester,  January  7, 1882. 

344 


LEARNING   IN   THE   PROFESSOR'S   CHAIR.  345 

pel  of  Christ.  He  loved  the  old  doctrines,  and  he  held  them  in  their  old 
forms.  The  fall  and  total  depravity  of  man,  the  substitutionary  atonement 
of  a  divine  Savior,  the  sovereign  grace  of  God  in  regeneration,  the  eternal 
doom  of  those  who  reject  Christ — these  were  to  him  indubitable  truths, 
because  the  Bible  taught  them.  And  though  his  mind  did  not  run  pre- 
dominantly to  Systematic  Theology,  yet  a  clearly  conceived,  and  at  times  a 
sharply  stated,  theology  gave  coherence  to  all  his  thinking,  and  strength  to 
all  his  utterances  as  a  teacher. 

Because  he  recognized  the  Bible  as  the  only  infallible  and  sufficient  source 
of  truth  with  regard  to  God  and  heaven,  sin  and  redemption,  he  set  himself 
from  the  beginning  of  his  ministry  to  draw  water  out  of  these  wells  of  sal- 
vation. He  knew  that  the  well  was  deep,  and  so  he  availed  himself  of  all 
grammatical,  lexical  and  exegetical  helps.  He  became  a  genuine  man  of 
learning.  I  doubt  whether  any  man  in  the  pastorate  of  any  denomination 
in  the  land  pursued  a  more  continuous  and  thorough  course  of  Biblical 
study  than  he.  And  in  our  own  denomination,  I  can  safely  say  that,  though 
some  may  have  surpassed  him  in  their  knowledge  of  history,  of  philosophy, 
or  of  theology  proper,  we  have  had  no  man  in  the  pastorate  who  was  a  more 
profound  student  of  the  Scriptures.  I  do  not  speak  simply  of  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  Greek,  of  the  Hebrew  with  its  cognate  languages,  of  oriental 
archaeology  and  customs,  geography  and  history.  I  mean  that  knowledge 
which  is  the  result  of  painstaking  and  minute  investigation  of  every  verse 
and  chapter  and  book  of  the  sacred  record  —  such  investigation  as  is  neces- 
sary to  correct  and  effective  exposition  of  the  Bible  in  public. 

In  teaching  his  classes,  therefore,  he  was  always  felt  to  be  a  full  man. 
He  would  bring  out  meanings  which  we  students  had  never  imagined  before, 
but  the  truth  of  which,  when  once  suggested,  was  self-evidencing.  Truly 
I  can  say,  that  the  hours  spent  in  his  lecture-room  were  pleasant  hours.  He 
formed  in  us  the  habit  of  searching  the  Scriptures  ;  showed  us  what  mines  of 
unsuspected  wealth  were  in  them  ;  and  withal  taught  us,  after  all  our  gram- 
matical and  textual  studies,  how  to  take  forth  the  precious  from  the  vile, 
and  to  turn  every  real  acquisition  to  practical  use.  In  this  respect  I  must 
speak  of  his  Sabbath  sermons,  as  an  unintended  but  most  helpful  means  of 
influence  over  his  students.  He  had  a  rare  way  of  gathering  up  the  results 
of  a  week's  study  of  a  miracle  or  of  a  parable,  of  a  connected  passage  of 
prophecy  or  of  a  penitential  Psalm  of  Davicl,  into  a  compact,  well-organized 
and  intensely  interesting  expository  discourse.  I  doubt  whether  this  country 
has  seen  a  better  expository  preacher  than  he  was  at  his  best.  I  remember 
going  out  from  the  meeting-house  after  his  sermon  on  the  Transfiguration, 
almost  carried  beyond  myself  by  the  variety  of  new  knowledge,  the  grandeur 
of  description,  and  the  wealth  of  practical  application  he  had  given  us  from 
that  well-worn  narrative.  Many  an  earnest  effort  to  study  the  Scriptures 
with  thoroughness,  and  many  an  attempt,  however  imperfect,  to  follow  in 
his  line  of  expository  preaching,  were,  in  my  own  case  and  in  the  case  of 
others,  the  result  of  his  example. 

He  had  doubtless  his  limitations.  He  was  not  —  no  man  can  be  —  equally 
conversant  with  all  departments  of  knowledge.  But  Dr.  Hotchkiss  came  as 
near  knowing  something  about  everything,  and  everything  about  something, 
as  any  man  I  have  met.  He  was  not  preeminently  a  philosopher, — but  he 


346  LEARNING   IN   THE   PROFESSOR'S   CHAIR. 

could  talk  with  you  about  Kaut  and  Hamilton.  He  was  not  mainly  a  student 
of  the  Fathers, — but  he  could  give  you  new  information  about  Hegesippus 
and  Origen.  He  was  not  given  to  political  economy, — but  he  could  argue 
the  question  of  protection  and  free  trade.  He  was  not  a  devotee  of  Early 
English, —  but  he  had  read  Piers  Plowman,  and  he  knew  his  Chaucer.  He 
was  not  a  recluse.  He  was  a  sagacious  observer  of  current  events.  He  was 
a  companion  almost  unequalled  in  his  power  to  instruct  and  entertain. 
Nervous  of  temperament,  easily  disturbed  on  account  of  this  physical  pecu- 
liarity, he  was  yet,  with  friends,  one  of  the  most  genial  of  men.  The  Min- 
ister's Conference,  of  Buffalo,  have  given  expression  to  their  sense  of 
bereavement,  in  the  loss  of  one  -who  was  their  wisest  counsellor,  their  most 
erudite  scholar,  and  their  most  venerated  and  beloved  friend. 

All  these  peculiarities  made  his  instruction  of  his  classes  something 
unique.  His  quick,  nervous  manner,  the  readiness  with  which  emotion 
would  master  the  voice,  the  sharpness  with  which  he  would  reprove  captious 
questioning,  the  genuine  devotion  to  the  sacred  text  which  shone  through 
all  his  utterances — these  first  challenged  attention,  then  attracted  interest, 
finally  won  sympathy  and  confidence,  till  his  classes  came  to  be  fellow- 
students  with  him,  or  rather,  like  a  family  group — he  the  father,  and  they 
the  children  sitting  at  his  feet  to  learn.  For  eleven  years  he  did  this  work 
in  the  Seminary,  and,  when  it  ceased  in  1865,  scores  of  Baptist  ministers 
were  preaching,  and  have  been  preaching  ever  since,  with  something  of  the 
matter  he  had  given  them,  and  with  something  of  the  spirit  they  had  caught 
from  him. 

If  there  was  anything  he  loved  next  to  the  Bible,  it  was  the  Bible-lands. 
I  never  can  forget  the  ardor  with  which  he  would  expatiate  upon  the  scenes 
of  Palestine  and  of  the  Desert.  Twice  he  went  to  the  East,  and  five  times 
he  traversed  the  Holy  Land  from  end  to  end.  To  hear  him  tell  about  the 
red  cliffs  of  Sinai,  or  about  Jacob's  well,  where  Jesus  taught  the  woman  of 
Samaria,  or  about  Jerusalem,  "beautiful  for  situation,  on  the  sides  of  the 
north,  the  city  of  the  great  King,"  was  almost  to  see  the  sights  yourself. 
To  see  those  sights  he  traveled,  in  the  fall  of  the  year,  with  a  single  Arab 
guide,  under  circumstances  that  involved  no  little  hardship.  But  it  was  the 
delight  of  his  life.  And  now  that  he  is  gone,  I  think  with  pleasure,  and  I 
know  that  his  children  and  his  friends  will  think  with  pleasure,  that  he  has 
entered  the  gates  of  that  city  that  hath  foundations,  the  heavenly  Jerusalem, 
and  has  become  an  inhabitant  forever  of  that  Holy  Land  of  which  the  earthly 
is  but  the  faint  type  and  symbol, — 

"  A  land  upon  whose  blissful  shore 

There  falls  no  shadow,  rests  no  stain ; 
There  those  who  meet  shall  part  no  more, 
And  those  long  parted  meet  again." 

There  the  deep  meanings  of  the  book  of  God  are  opened  to  his  illumined 
sight,  and  Christ  speaks  to  him  no  more  in  parables,  but  shows  him  plainly 
-of  the  Father.  We  do  not  need  to  pray  for  the  repose  of  his  soul,  for  the 
perfect  peace  of  Christ  is  now  his.  He  has  served  his  generation  by  the 
will  of  God,  and  now  he  rests  from  his  labors,  and  his  works  do  follow  him. 


XXXIV. 

THE  DEATH  OF  THE  PRESIDENT.' 


It  was  the  old  story  of  a  suppressed  rebellion  planting  its  last  revengeful 
sting.  Abner,  the  captain  of  Saul's  host  had  been  beaten  in  battle  and  had 
taken  to  flight.  Three  brothers  from  the  army  of  Israel  had  pursued  him. 
As  Asahel,  the  fleetest  of  them,  without  armor,  pressed  upon  him,  Abner 
smote  him  with  his  spear.  Asahel's  very  strength  and  swiftness  and  noble 
daring  had  brought  him  to  his  death.  The  enemies  of  David  and  of  stable 
government  gave  the  good  cause  a  temporary  check  by  striking  down  one 
of  its  most  hopeful  champions.  It  was  no  wonder  that  all  the  people  that 
saw  that  bloody  deed,  or  looked  upon  the  mangled  corpse  of  the  brave 
soldier,  were  so  moved  with  grief  and  indignation  that  they  stood  still. 

Twice,  in  like  manner,  this  whole  nation  has  stood  still  over  the  bodies  of 
its  chosen  and  beloved  chief-magistrates,  smitten  in  the  hour  of  greatest 
fame  and  promise,  and  smitten  by  the  hand  of  the  assassin.  Once  when 
Abraham  Lincoln, —  the  great  civil  war  concluded,  emancipation  an  accom- 
plished fact,  the  whole  North  full  of  gratitude  and  reverence  for  the  sturdi- 
ness  of  that  homely,  humane  trust  in  the  people  and  in  God  that  had  led 
him  safely  through, — fell  a  martyr  to  liberty.  How  well  I  remember  looking 
down  from  a  window  in  Broadway  upon  that  mighty  funeral  procession 
stretching  up  and  down  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  the  muffled  drums 
and  the  draperies  of  woe  with  which  our  great  War-President  was  carried 
through  the  country  to  his  tomb.  But  sadder  yet,  seemed  to  me  the  other 
night  those  mournful  bells  that  waked  us  only  to  tell  that  the  brave  spirit 
of  our  last  President  had  passed  forever  from  the  world.  Lincoln's  work 
seemed  to  have  been  accomplished.  The  whole  land  wept  for  him  as  for  a 
benefactor.  Garfield  had  just  entered  upon  his  term  of  service,  and  his 
work  as  President  had  just  begun.  As  with  Asahel  in  the  Scripture  narra- 
tive, a  thousand  hopes  lie  buried  with  him  —  hopes  that  held  on  in  spite  of 
disappointment,  hopes  fostered  by  the  quiet  courage  of  the  long  struggle 
against  death,  hopes  based  upon  the  new  independence  and  influence  which 
this  very  agony  and  trial  would  have  given  him.  When  I  heard  the  tolling 
of  those  midnight  bells,  it  seemed  to  me  like  a  voice  of  God  calling  the 
nation  to  solemn  thought  and  prayer.  Now,  if  never  before,  we  may  hear 
what  God  the  Lord  will  speak.  Surely  it  becomes  us,  like  the  Israelites  of 
old,  in  the  presence  of  our  dead,  to  stand  still. 

First  of  all,  we  may  stand  still  in  appreciative  remembrance  of  the  life 


*  A  Sermon  on  the  death  of  President  Garfield,  preached  at  the  Central  Presbyterian 
Church,  Rochester,  Sunday  morning-,  September  25, 1881,  on  the  text,  2  Samuel,  2  :  23  — 
*'  And  it  came  to  pass  that  as  many  as  came  to  the  place  where  Asahel  fell  down  and 
<iied,  stood  stili." 

347 


348  THE  DEATH  OF  THE  PRESIDENT. 

and  character  of  the  departed.  President  Garfield  was  a  man  of  whom 
we  have  very  many  reasons  as  a  people  to  be  proud.  He  was  a  noble 
example  of  what  is  almost  distinctively  American,  the  rise  of  native  ability 
and  energy  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  positions  in  the  social  scale.  Left 
fatherless  at  an  early  age  but  under  the  tutelage  of  a  mother  of  intrepid 
spirit,  his  hard  work  in  the  fields  only  develops  a  rugged  constitution,  his 
narrow  opportunities  for  schooling  rouse  an  eager  thirst  for  knowledge,  the 
bullying  of  larger  boys  stimulates  a  just  assertion  of  his  rights.  He  becomes 
conscious  of  power,  first  as  a  student,  then  as  a  teacher,  finally  as  a  public 
speaker.  He  has  a  manly,  healthy,  sound  spirit ;  and  he  makes  his  way  by 
rapid  strides  through  a  college  course,  into  active  work  as  a  professor,  and 
finally  to  the  head  of  the  institution  where  he  got  his  first  taste  of  a  liberal 
training.  He  has  convictions,  and  a  manly  way  of  propagating  his  opinions, 
that  wins  the  hearts  of  his  pupils.  Without  being  ordained  to  the  ministry 
of  the  gospel,  he  naturally  drifts  into  preaching.  He  defends  Christianity 
against  spiritualism  and  infidelity.  He  advocates  Free  Soil  doctrine  in  the 
contest  with  slavery.  At  twenty-eight,  he  is  State  Senator  of  Ohio.  At 
thirty,  he  is  Brigadier-General  in  the  Army.  Eosecranz  at  first  distrusts  him , 
as  a  preacher  who  has  gone  into  politics,  just  as  Cameron  afterwards  declares 
that  a  broken-down  preacher  has  no  right  to  be  nominated  for  the  Presidency. 
But  there  is  no  break-down  about  the  preacher,  after  all.  Chickamauga  makes 
him  Major-General.  Then  he  is  needed  in  Congress,  and  to  Congress  he 
goes.  There  for  eighteen  years  he  holds  a  place  second  to  none,  for  consist- 
ent and  intelligent  defense  of  sound  principles  in  legislation  and  in  politics. 
As  Chairman,  first  of  the  Committee  on  Military  Affairs,  then  of  the  Com- 
mittees on  Banking  and  Currency  and  on  Appropriations,  he  presents  to  the 
House  of  Representatives  and  to  the  country  as  valuable  a  body  of  opinion 
on  great  questions  of  political  economy  and  administration  as  has  come 
from  any  statesman  in  our  history  except  Alexander  Hamilton  and  Daniel 
Webster. 

Many  of  those  before  me  remember  that  most  admirable  address  in  which, 
three  years  ago,  he  advocated  in  our  City  Hall  the  endangered  cause  of  a 
sound  currency.  That  speech,  so  simple  yet  so  powerful,  so  free  from  all 
appeals  to  pr  ejudice,  so  full  of  calm  and  convincing  reasoning,  was  enough 
to  show  to  an  en  emy  of  our  institutions  the  wonderful  educating  power  of  a 
political  campaign  under  our  system  of  government,  and  the  certainty  that 
with  proper  instruction  the  people  could  be  trusted  to  decide  aright.  He 
ha  d  made  the  subject  of  finance  his  study  for  years,  and  one  of  his  speeches 
in  Congress  begins  :  "  Mr.  Speaker, —  I  remember  that  on  the  monument  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,  where  her  glories  were  recited  and  her  honors  summed 
up,  among  the  last  and  the  highest,  recorded  as  the  climax  of  her  honors, 
was  this,  that  she  restored  the  money  of  her  kingdom  to  its  just  value. 
And  when  this  House  shall  have  done  its  work  —  when  it  shall  have  brought 
back  values  to  their  proper  standard, —  it  will  deserve  a  monument."  The 
House  of  Representatives  and  the  nation  combined  did  that  very  thing. 
James  A.  Garfield  had  much  to  do  with  setting  that  tide  of  public  opinion 
that  repressed  corrupt  silver  legislation,  that  compelled  a  return  to  specie 
payments,  and  that  branded  as  fraud  all  edging  toward  a  repudiation  of  our 
public  debt, —  and  for  this,  if  for  nothing  else,  he  deserves  a  monument. 


THE    DEATH    OF   THE    PRESIDENT.  349 

From  that  influential  position  in  Congress  he  was  suddenly  raised  to  the 
chief-magistracy  of  this  great  nation,  and  before  time  was  given  him  for 
the  full  development  of  his  policy,  he  has  been  now,  as  suddenly,  taken 
from  us.  The  purity  of  his  private  life,  the  warmth  of  his  family  affections, 
his  love  for  wife  and  children  and  for  the  good  old  mother  who  tended  and 
trained  him  when  a  boy,  will  stand  side  by  side  with  George  Washington's, 
as  examples  to  a  nation.  The  success  which  crowned  a  just  ambition,  the 
rising  by  right  methods  to  the  highest  place  of  power,  the  scholarship  and 
genuine  mastery  of  public  questions  by  which  he  achieved  his  honors,  above 
all  the  high  moral  tone  of  his  public  life,  will  be  an  inspiration  forever  to 
American  youth.  I  trust  that  to  all  this  he  joined  the  virtues  of  the  true 
Christian.  In  his  early  days,  and  during  the  war,  he  knew  what  it  was  to 
pray.  He  was  always  faithful  to  his  church  in  its  outward  observances. 
When  the  fatal  shot  struck  him  down,  it  was  God's  will  to  which  he  submit- 
ted himself,  whether  that  will  was  life  or  death.  The  cares  of  office  and  the 
pressure  of  political  life  may  have  dulled  his  early  religious  feelings  and 
made  his  devotions  less  earnest  than  once  they  were  wont  to  be.  I  could 
have  wished  to  hear  from  that  sick-room  plain  recognitions  of  God's  pres- 
ence, voices  of  prayer  to  him  who  could  save  him  from  death,  utterances  of 
trust  in  Christ  alone,  as  his  soul  prepared  to  go  forth  alone  into  the  great 
darkness.  But  though  these  things  are  withheld  from  us,  we  look  to  the 
total  record  of  his  life  and  feel  that  the  spirit  of  it  was  Christian.  We  can 
more  easily  explain  the  unmurmuring  fortitude  of  those  weeks  of  suffering, 
if  we  assume  that  a  stronger  than  human  arm  sustained  him.  And  now 
that  he  is  gone,  we  feel  that  death  glorifies  him  ;  we  take  the  nobility  and 
high  purpose  of  his  life,  as  we  did  in  the  case  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  as  signs 
of  an  inner  life  that  men  could  not  see  ;  we  leave  him  reverently  and  hope- 
fully with  God,  trusting  that  he  has  entered  upon  rest  and  reward,  and 
waiting  for  the  revelations  of  that  day  when  the  secrets  of  all  hearts  shall 
be  revealed. 

I  call  you  now,  in  the  second  place,  to  stand  still  in  grateful  recogni- 
tion of  the  alleviating  circumstances  with  which  divine  Providence  has 
attended  our  sorrow.  For,  if  we  are  Christians  at  all,  we  must  recognize  a 
divine  Providence  in  all  such  events  as  these.  Let  us  call  it  a  permissive 
Providence,  for  none  of  us  would  hold  that  God  by  any  act  of  his  inspired 
the  murderous  intent  or  aimed  the  shot  of  the  assassin.  But  what  God  does 
not  work  he  may  foresee  and  permit,  while  yet  the  acts  of  his  creatures  are 
free,  guilty,  and  punishable.  God  does  not  always  deem  it  best  to  prevent 
man's  wickedness  from  pursuing  its  chosen  course  and  so  revealing  its  real 
nature.  So  there  is  no  crime  of  man  which  God  has  not  foreknown  and 
provided  for  —  not  one  that  he  has  not  arranged  to  control  and  overrule  for 
good.  God  might  have  palsied  the  hand  of  Guiteau,  but  it  was  his  plan 
rather  to  make  that  very  wrath  of  man  turn  to  his  praise.  God  made  the 
treachery  of  Judas  the  means  of  the  world's  redemption.  And  so,  through- 
out human  history,  God  makes  human  passion  and  wickedness,  in  spite  of 
themselves,  to  bring  about  his  purposes  of  good.  His  voice  calls  to  us  to- 
day :  "  Be  still  and  know  that  I  am  God,"  and  assures  us  that  even  these 
crimes  and  sorrows  are  among  the  "all  things  that  work  together  for  good." 

Will  it  impose  too  great  a  burden  upon  your  faith  if  I  go  further,  and  say 


350  THE   DEATH   OF   THE   PRESIDENT. 

that  we  are  bound  also  to  believe  that,  in  this  sad  event,  over  which  a  whole 
people  are  mourning,  God  has  answered  our  prayers  ?  This  ought  not  to 
perplex  us,  but  I  know  how  often  it  does  perplex  us.  I  can  see  good  from 
this  calamity  from  the  new  lesson  it  is  teaching  us  with  regard  to  the  true 
nature  of  answers  to  prayer.  I  fear  there  is  an  enthusiastic  and  unscriptural 
notion  in  many  minds,  the  notion  that  a  great  desire  for  a  specific  blessing 
is  proof  that  that  blessing  will  certainly  be  granted  us  when  we  ask  it  of 
God.  The  Bible  should  have  taught  us  better.  Did  not  Christ  our  Lord 
pray  :  "  If  it  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass  from  me."  Yet  his  Father's  will 
was  that  he  should  drink  that  cup.  Were  not  all  of  Christ's  prayers  answered  ? 
Was  not  that  very  prayer  answered  ?  We  get  the  secret  of  all  in  the  last 
words  of  that  same  prayer  :  "  Nevertheless,  not  as  I  will,  but  as  thou  wilt." 
So  "  Thy  will  be  done  "  is  the  essence  of  all  true  prayer.  When  God  sees  it 
best  for  us  to  give  just  what  we  ask,  he  gives  it ;  when  he  sees  it  best  for  us 
not  to  give,  he  gives,  not  what  we  ask,  but  what  we  ought  to  ask.  In  either 
case,  prayer  is  answered  ;  blessing  comes  to  us  that  never  would  have  come, 
if  prayer  had  not  gone  before  ;  the  very  prayers  we  offer  are  links  arranged 
by  God  between  his  decree  and  its  fulfilment.  Prayer  is  answered,  whether 
we  receive  what  we  expect  or  not ;  and  let  us  be  sure  that  blessing  will  come 
to  this  nation  as  the  result  of  the  multitudinous  petitions  that  have  risen 
before  God's  throne  —  blessing  larger  and  better  than  we  in  our  poor  wis- 
dom are  able  to  conceive. 

Some  blessings  we  can  already  see.  Great  sorrows  like  this  make  a  whole 
people  one.  They  educate  our  youth  to  patriotism.  The  solemnities  of 
this  day  and  of  the  morrow  will  cause  a  love  of  country  and  a  sense  of  its 
greatness  to  thrill  the  soul  of  many  a  boy  and  girl  that  never  felt  it  before. 
One  of  the  earliest  of  my  recollections  is  the  draping  of  the  church,  and  the 
memorial  sermon,  and  the  funeral  procession,  when  William  Henry  Harrison 
died.  I  believe  I  have  never  ceased  to  feel  the  influence  of  that  service. 
How  much  more  deep  and  all-pervading  is  the  grief  of  this  hour !  The 
telegraph  and  the  press  have  brought  a  whole  nation  to  stand  as  watchers 
by  one  bedside,  aye,  have  made  a  whole  nation  parts  of  one  family.  A  bond 
of  sympathy  has  been  established  that  makes  all  classes  one.  Such  things 
as  these  make  a  nation  strong,  teach  it  the  dignity  and  worth  of  national 
life,  prepare  it  to  resist  attack  from  without,  nerve  it  to  put  down  the  evils 
that  threaten  from  within.  There  may  be  dangers  in  our  civil  system  with 
which  our  late  President  would  have  been  too  weak  to  grapple.  His  death 
may  do  more  than  his  life, —  it  may  rouse  within  this  people  an  unappeas- 
able determination  to  bring  them  to  an  end.  But  this  feeling  is  wider  than 
the  nation.  It  has  overspread  the  world.  There  probably  has  never  been 
a  death — never  an  event  of  any  kind  —  that  has  awakened  such  quick  and 
world- wide  sorrow.  Methinks  it  is  the  prophecy  of  that  coming  day  when 
tfye  whole  race  of  man  shall  become  conscious  of  its  organic  unity ;  when 
one  impulse  of  love  and  loyalty  shall  pervade  every  human  heart ;  when  all 
shall  grieve  and  all  rejoice  together  ;  when  total  humanity  shall  be  like  one 
great  organ  of  many  stops  and  keys,  all  vibrating  to  one  grand  harmony 
under  the  mighty  constraining  breath  of  the  one  Spirit  of  God. 

We  have  had  time,  too,  to  prepare  us  for  this  calamity.  Had  death 
instantly  followed  the  murderous  shot,  there  would  have  been  stirred  far 


THE    DEATH    OF   THE    PRESIDENT.  351 

more  of  partizan  passion.  It  would  have  seemed  almost  the  fruit  of  a  con- 
spiracy. We  know  better  now.  No  fear  now  disturbs  us  that  our  govern- 
ment is  to  become  like  that  of  Russia  or  of  Turkey  —  a  ' '  despotism  tempered 
by  assassination. "  There  is  no  nihilism  abroad  in  the  land.  The  deed  is 
not  significant  of  anarchy.  When  the  bells  sounded  out  on  Monday  night, 
no  one's  blood  ran  cold  with  the  thought  that  revolution  was  to  follow. 
Other  lands,  in  other  days,  have  not  felt  safe  as  we.  How  great  God's  gift 
to  us,  that  the  change  from  one  ruler  to  another  creates  not  the  slightest  jar 
in  the  great  system  !  In  language  like  that  which  Tacitus  used  of  the  Roman 
state,  so  we  may  say  :  Presidents  are  mortal,  but  the  Republic  is  eternal. 
The  very  contemptuous  silence  with  which  the  weak  miscreant  who  did  this 
dreadful  deed  has  been  regarded,  shows,  far  better  than  words,  how  little 
significance  belongs  to  him  and  to  his  individual  purpose.  With  him  let 
justice  have  her  way.  Let  him  be  an  example  to  all  coming  time  of  the 
abhorrence  and  the  condemnation  and  the  punishment  that  belong  to  the 
murderer  of  the  head  of  a  nation.  And  yet  the  greatest  crime  of  human 
history  was  the  murder  of  Christ,  and  Christ  abhorred  that  crime  as  only 
one  possessed  of  divine  holiness  could.  And  Christ  prayed  for  his  mur- 
derers. The  penitent  thief  died  by  crucifixion,  but  the  penitent  thief  was 
saved  in  answer  to  Christ's  prayer.  My  friends,  justice  and  pity  are  not 
incompatible.  It  is  only  the  man  who  hates  iniquity  that  can  truly  pray. 
He  who  most  surely  dooms  the  unrepentant  transgressor  to  death  can  most 
truly  love  his  soul.  I  am  reminded  of  Mr.  Finney's  answer  to  the  question 
what  he  would  do  if  the  only  way  to  save  a  fugitive  slave  from  being  taken 
back  to  bondage  was  to  shoot  the  master  who  was  attempting  to  play  the 
part  of  the  kidnapper.  ' '  I  would  kill  him, "  said  Mr.  Finney, — ' '  but  I  would 
love  him  with  all  my  heart. "  So  we  may  hate  the  crime  of  Guiteau  and  with 
one  voice  demand  that  he  be  hanged  between  heaven  and  earth,  but  we  may 
also,  and  at  the  same  time,  pray  that  God  may  have  mercy  on  his  souL 

I  trust  this  calamity  will  teach  us  also  our  dependence  as  a  nation  upon 
God.  We  have  not  prayed  enough  for  our  rulers.  It  is  a  pleasing  part  of 
the  English  Church  service  that  there  never  fails  a  petition  for  the  Queen, 
that  God  may  endue  her  with  his  best  gifts  for  the  discharge  of  her  high 
office,  and  may  grant  her  in  health  and  wealth  long  to  live.  Let  us  never 
forget  our  President.  And  then  let  us  so  reform  our  system  of  choosing 
Vice-Presidents  that  we  shall  practically  answer  our  own  prayers.  To  make 
the  nomination  for  Vice-President  a  mere  matter  of  conciliation  to  a  defeated 
faction,  in  the  hope  that  the  result  will  be  of  no  significance,  is  simply  to 
tempt  Providence,  and  to  hazard  the  most  important  interests  of  the  country. 
In  almost  every  case  where  the  Vice-President  has  succeeded  to  office  since 
the  adoption  of  our  Constitution,  the  consequences  have  been  a  most  sud- 
den and  violent  change  of  policy  in  the  administration,  an  unsettling  of 
public  confidence  in  the  stability  of  the  government,  and  a  rousing  of  polit- 
ical passions  which  have  blocked  the  wheels  of  legislation.  The  inadvertent 
defects  of  our  political  system  can  be  revealed  only  in  such  times  as  these. 
God  may  teach  us  our  needs  by  this  very  trial.  May  we  depend  upon  him 
and  seek  his  wisdom. 

But  all  these  thoughts  only  lead  me  on  to  what,  in  my  judgment,  is  the 
great  lesson  of  the  hour.  I  would  have  you,  therefore,  in  the  third  place, 


352  THE   DEATH    OF  THE   PKESIDENT. 

stand  still  in  penitent  contemplation  of  the  special  sin  of  this  people  which 
has  been  at  least  the  indirect  cause  of  President  Garfield's  death.  When  I 
speak  of  a  special  wickedness  among  us  which  has  virtually  aimed  the  pistol 
that  killed  our  President,  I  am  not  inconsistent  with  what  I  said  a  moment 
ago.  I  do  not  charge  this  crime  upon  any  band  of  conscious  conspirators. 
But  there  is  an  evil  among  us,  a  general  tendency  in  our  government,  a 
method  in  our  politics,  which  I  brand  as  the  guilty  cause  of  this  atrocious 
murder.  That  I  may  not  seem  to  you  to  be  dealing  in  mere  figures  of  speech, 
let  me  quote  you  a  sentence  from  General  Garfield's  speech  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  on  the  day  after  the  assassination  of  President  Lincoln. 
"It  was  no  one  man,"  he  said,  "it  was  no  one  man  that  killed  Abraham 
Lincoln ;  it  was  the  spirit  of  treason  and  slavery,  inspired  with  despairing 
hate,  that  struck  him  down."  As  General  Garfield  then  charged  Lincoln's 
assassination  to  the  system  of  slavery,  so  I  now  charge  Garfield's  own  assassi- 
nation to  the  spoils-system,  which  beginning  with  Aaron  Burr,  Andrew  Jack- 
son and  Martin  Van  Buren,  has  degraded  our  whole  political  life  into  a  selfish 
struggle  for  office,  and  which  proclaims  as  its  motto  the  principle  that  to  the 
victor  in  this  struggle  belong  the  spoils  of  the  enemy. 

Years  ago,  in  my  first  visit  to  England,  I  was  hospitably  entertained  at  the 
house  of  the  Postmaster  of  Oxford.  He  was  a  dissenter  of  one  of  the  straitest 
sects.  He  was  personally  obnoxious  to  the  dignitaries  of  the  University, 
and  of  the  Church  to  whom  Oxford  is  an  earthly  Paradise.  He  was  a  liberal 
in  politics,  while  the  administration  in  power  was  Tory.  Yet,  in  spite  of 
these  disadvantages,  he  held  on  in  his  office,  and  had  held  on  through  all 
changes  of  government  for  more  than  twenty  years.  How  do  I  explain  it  ? 
Simply  in  this  way  :  He  was  a  capable  and  faithful  public  officer  ;  he  admin- 
istered the  business  of  his  office  on  economical  business  principles  ;  he  knew 
his  work  as  Postmaster  better  than  any  one  else  ;  and  no  government,  Tory 
or  Liberal,  thought  for  a  moment  of  removing  him.  Would  the  Oxford 
public  have  been  better  served,  if  every  four  years  had  witnessed  a  change  ; 
if  each  time  some  new  incumbent  had  had  to  learn  the  trade ;  if  these  suc- 
cessive Postmasters  had  been  put  there,  not  so  much  to  secure  the  expeditious 
delivery  of  the  mails,  as  to  manage  caucuses  and  to  secure  votes  for  the  party  ; 
if  the  tenure  of  office  had  been  absolutely  dependent  on  the  retention  of  that 
party  in  power  ? 

And  yet  these  last  hypotheses  represent  the  real  state  of  our  public  ser- 
vice. Offices  are  distributed  as  tokens  of  private  friendship  or  rewards  of 
political  service ;  insecurity  of  tenure  renders  the  administration  of  these 
trusts  inefficient,  and  leads  directly  to  efforts  to  make  the  most  out  of  the 
positions  while  they  last ;  the  absence  of  proper  tests  of  character  and  com- 
petency permits  the  crowding  of  these  places  with  men  whose  only  merit  is 
that  they  know  how  to  manage  the  machine  and  keep  the  body  of  voters 
subservient  to  the  will  of  a  limited  number  of  party  managers.  In  the  New 
York  Custom  House,  where  the  government  levies  duties  every  year  on  mer- 
chandise worth  a  thousand  millions  of  dollars,  an  office  where  long  experience, 
thorough  competency  and  the  most  scrupulous  honesty  would  seem  to  be 
most  pressing  needs,  Collector  Schell,  in  1858,  removed  389  out  of  690  offi- 
cials ;  Collector  Barney  removed  525  out  of  702  ;  and  in  1866  Collector 
Smythe  removed  830  out  of  903.  Who  can  compute  the  distress  of  these 


THE   DEATH    OF   THE    PRESIDENT.  353 

officials  at  a  change  in  the  administration  !  For  many  of  them  change  is 
ruin.  They  adopt  corrupt  methods  to  retain  their  positions,  or  they  feather 
their  nests  before  the  time  of  change  is  upon  them.  The  New  York  Custom 
House  is  but  the  type  of  some  six  thousand  offices  to  which  the  United  States 
Senate  has  the  right  of  confirmation ;  of  100,000  subordinates  of  all  ranks 
and  names,  through  whom  the  President  executes  the  laws  ;  of  250,000  offi- 
cials, national,  state  and  municipal,  throughout  the  land.  The  interest  which 
all  these  have  in  elections  is,  not  public  interest,  but  selfish  interest.  This 
personal  interest  makes  every  political  campaign  a  battle,  not  of  reason  or 
principle,  not  of  intelligence  or  discussion,  but  a  life  and  death  fight  for 
place,  for  perquisites,  for  subsistence,  for  spoils.  Because  everything  is  at 
stake  for  them,  this  vast  body  can  organize,  so  that  the  few  can  govern  the 
many  ;  men  of  character  are  driven  out  of  politics  ;  democracy  becomes  a 
cheat  and  a  lie  ;  and  the  lowest  rule.  The  result  is  such  inefficiency  and 
extravagance,  such  dishonesty  and  defalcation,  that  it  costs  us  three  times  as 
much  proportionally  to  collect  our  revenue  as  it  does  in  France,  four  times 
as  much  as  it  does  in  Germany,  and  five  times  as  much  as  it  does  in  England. 

The  system  of  spoils  has  overwhelmed  the  Executive  and  his  Cabinet. 
Three-quarters  of  the  time  of  the  President  is  consumed  in  listening  to  claims 
for  office.  Out  of  720  calls  upon  a  single  Cabinet  officer,  710  had  to  do  with 
applications  for  place.  In  1872,  General  Garfield,  then  in  Congress,  uttered 
these  words  :  "For  many  years  Presidents  of  the  United  States  have  been  cry- 
ing out  in  their  agony  to  be  relieved  of  the  unconstitutional,  crushing,  irresist- 
ible pressure  brought  to  bear  upon  them  by  the  entire  body  of  that  party 
in  the  legislative  department  which  elected  them."  By  the  so-called  cour- 
tesy of  the  Senate,  that  body  has  usurped  executive  functions,  while  by 
working  for  office-seekers  the  House  has  made  it  well  nigh  impossible  to 
devote  proper  time  to  the  public  business.  It  is  a  system  that  inspires  every 
excitable  voter  with  the  belief  that  he  too  has  a  right  to  a  share  in  the  spoils 
of  his  party.  It  is  a  system  that  invites  Guiteau  to  the  Capital,  and  then 
maddens  him  by  delays.  It  is  a  system  that  turns  public  office  into  public 
plunder,  and  that  transforms  the  citizen's  reverence  for  the  Chief-magistrate 
into  murderous  hatred,  and  that  wings  the  bullet  to  his  heart  as  the  swiftest 
means  of  bringing  about  a  new  deal. 

Into  these  last  few  moments  I  have  condensed  the  substance  of  a  most 
able  and  stirring  article  in  the  last  Princeton  Review  by  Dorman  B.  Eaton, 
Esq. ,  of  New  York.  But  there  is  much  more  to  be  said,  than  has  been  said 
by  Mr.  Eaton.  I  have  come  here  to-day  to  utter  the  whole  truth  as  I  believe 
it  needs  to  be  uttered.  I  must  say  to  you  that  there  can  be  no  more  impres- 
sive illustration  of  the  all-encompassing  grasp  of  this  gigantic  evil  than  the 
official  history  of  our  departed  Chief-magistrate.  With  a  Congressional 
record  that  was  unimpeachable  behind  him,  with  many  an  utterance  in 
which  he  had  pointed  out  the  need  of  reform  and  had  marked  out  the  path 
to  be  followed,  General  Garfield  hardly  found  himself  the  nominee  of  the 
Republican  Party,  before  he  felt  the  need  of  conciliating  that  powerful 
machine  which  by  its  opposition  or  its  indifference  might  frustrate  his  elec- 
tion. The  result  was  a  letter  of  acceptance  in  which  ambiguities  took  the 
place  of  clear  statement,  and  the  concession  was  made  that  Members  of  Con- 
gress have  a  right  to  be  heard  with  regard  to  the  appointments  in  their 


354  THE   DEATH   OF   THE   PRESIDENT. 

districts.  He  entered  upon  his  high  office,  and  we  have  now  to  mourn  that 
the  vast  majority  of  the  time  he  had  to  give  to  his  country  was  given,  under 
compulsion,  to  listening  to  the  vast  horde  of  office-seekers,  who  besieged 
him  at  the  White  House  and  urged  their  claims  to  a  share  in  the  distribution 
of  the  spoils.  With  a  still  lingering  notion  that  official  place  might  properly 
be  made  a  reward  for  private  or  party  service,  he  was  led,  in  violation  of  his 
own  expressed  principle  that  no  public  servant  should  be  removed  before 
the  expiration  of  his  term,  except  for  malfeasance  in  office,  to  transfer  the 
Collector  of  the  Port  of  New  York  to  a  position  of  lower  rank  and  to  put  in 
his  place  one  whose  chief  claim  was  that  he  had  been  a  strong  opponent  of 
another  wing  of  the  party  and  an  influential  advocate  of  his  own  nomination. 
I  do  not  believe  that  these  inconsistencies  indicated  the  set  purpose  and 
temper  of  his  mind.  I  trust  that,  had  he  lived,  he  would  have  risen  superior 
to  the  malign  influences  that  wrere  about  him,  and  that  a  healthy  moral 
nature  would  have  overcome  this  worse  than  malarious  poison  that  infects 
our  political  atmosphere.  Still  we  must  be  true  to  facts  and  to  God.  With 
what  we  may  acknowledge  to  be  good  intents  and  plans  for  the  future,  even 
President  Garfield  allowed  himself  to  take  wrong  steps  at  the  beginning  of 
his  presidential  career  —  steps  which  it  would  have  cost  many  political  friend- 
ships and  much  of  moral  courage  to  retrace. 

I  recognize  in  general  the  principle,  "  nil  de  mortuis  nisi  bonum."  But 
the  crisis  upon  us  is  too  terrible  to  permit  a  public  teacher  to  mince  his 
words.  An  apotheosis  of  President  Garfield  is  not  the  best  service  to  his 
memory,  nor  to  the  country  which  he  loved  and- sought  to  serve.  It  will 
not  detract  from  our  sorrow,  to  acknowledge  that  he  was  human  and  that  he 
erred.  We  need  to  acknowledge  the  fact,  because  only  in  the  light  of  it  can 
we  see  how  deeply-rooted  is  the  evil  we  are  called  to  combat.  It  is  with 
Presidents  as  it  is  with  Popes.  Before  their  accession,  they  are  not  uncom- 
monly reformers.  Once  in  office,  they  find  themselves  not  so  much  engineers 
as  passengers,  on  a  moving  train  whose  direction  and  momentum  apparently 
require  more  than  mortal  energy  to  change.  They  find  that  there  is  a 
machine  ;  that  well  nigh  all  their  advisers  and  associates  belong  to  it ;  that 
its  instinctive  and  almost  resistless  movement  is  in  traditional  directions  and 
after  traditional  methods.  Presidents  and  Popes  were  intended  to  lead,  — 
but  alas,  it  is  so  much  easier  to  follow  !  They  are  like  Laocoon  and  his  sons 
in  the  folds  of  the  serpents, — they  writhe,  but  they  succumb.  This  is  what 
every  President  has  done  thus  far  —  even  President  Hayes.  All  have  more 
or  less  recognized  and  yielded  to  the  doctrine  that  positions  of  trust  under 
government  may  properly  be  made  the  means  of  controlling  a  party,  of 
propitiating  enemies,  of  rewarding  friends. 

I  deem  it  time  to  say  these  things,  because  the  American  people  will  never 
listen  if  they  will  not  listen  now.  If  this  time  passes  by  and  the  warning 
voice  is  unheard,  it  may  take  years  of  yet  deeper  corruption  and  of  more 
selfish  partizanship,  to  open  the  eyes  of  the  nation.  For  it  is  the  nation  — 
it  is  we  ourselves  —  who  are  at  fault.  The  trouble  with  both  President  Hayes 
and  President  Garfield  was,  not  that  they  had  not  sound  convictions,  but  that 
they  feared  the  people  were  not  sufficiently  in  earnest  to  support  them. 
How  sad  now  seems  the  end  of  our  President's  career  !  Killed  by  the  very 
spirit  which  he  was  willing  to  some  extent  to  conciliate  !  The  bullet  of 


THE    DEATH    OF   THE    PRESIDENT.  355 

Guiteau  was  not  the  work  of  a  few  politicians  disappointed  in  their  greedy 
clamor  for  place, —  but  it  was  indirectly  the  result  of  a  system  which  we  all 
have  fostered,  when  we  ought  to  have  lifted  up  our  voices  and  our  hands 
against  it.  Well  was  it  said,  a  short  time  ago,  that  the  American  people  has 
as  yet  but  a  superficial  interest  in  the  reform  of  our  civil  service.  We  have 
not  done  our  duty  in  protesting  against  this  prostitution  of  our  public  ser- 
vice to  the  base  uses  of  a  horde  of  machine  politicians.  Guiteau,  with  his 
passionate  clamor  to  be  fed  out  of  the  public  crib,  is  but  the  type  of  a  spirit 
that  has  been  all-pervasive  among  us  —  the  spirit  that  would  use  the  public 
service  for  private  gain, — and  therefore  for  that  bullet  of  Guiteau  we  our- 
selves are  more  or  less  responsible,  and  for  it  ought  to  repent  before  Almighty 
God. 

We  hoped  for  future  public  utterances  and  acts  on  the  part  of  our  dead 
President  which  would  show  his  heart  still  right  on  this  great  subject,  and 
which  would  lead  the  way  to  the  complete  wiping-out  of  the  accursed  evil. 
Ami  the  worst  forebodings  which  many  of  us  have  had  with  regard  to  the 
incoming  administration  have  arisen  from  the  fact  that  the  new  President 
has  hitherto  seemed,  not  from  compulsion  but  from  choice,  to  adopt  the 
aims  and  to  use  the  methods  of  the  stock  politician.  Did  ever  any  ruler  of 
men  so  need  the  prayers  of  the  good  as  Chester  A.  Arthur  does  to-day  ? 
We  have  tried  to  hope  that  these  last  months  may  have  taught  him  wisdom  ; 
may  have  led  him  to  see  that  there  were  certain  moral  forces  at  work  in  this 
nation  whose  existence  he  had  not  counted  on  before  ;  may  have  led  him 
to  look  with  incipient  distrust  upon  the  counselors  whom  he  has  hitherto 
followed.  But  in  estimating  the  probabilities  of  the  future,  I  have  been 
unable  to  forget  that  President  Arthur  owes  his  political  being  to  a  stronger 
man  than  he  —  a  man  who  is  the  very  representative  and  embodiment  of  the 
system  we  abhor.  By  all  rules  of  political  honor,  or  rather  dishonor,  he  is 
bound  to  exalt  his  creator, —  and  his  creator  is  Roscoe  Conkling.  As  Vice- 
President  of  the  United  States  he  soiled  his  great  office  by  lobbying  at  Albany 
for  his  chief,  when  that  chief  was  squabbling  for  the  Senatorship  he  had 
thrown  away.  Let  the  President  now  appoint  Mr.  Coukling  his  Secretary 
of  State,  let  the  broken  machine  be  rehabilitated,  let  all  the  arts  that  both 
know  so  well  how  to  use  be  employed  to  strengthen  and  consolidate  it,  let 
the  offices  be  packed  with  men  pledged  to  advance  its  interests,  let  news- 
papers and  politicians  and  people  who  prefer  the  semblance  of  power  and 
success  to  principle  and  the  public  good,  all  join  in  hallelujahs  to  the  ability, 
the  force,  and  the  thoroughly  American  character  of  the  new  administration, 
and  we  shall  see  a  perpetuation  of  this  spoils-system  and  a  further  lease  of 
power  given  to  its  defenders  and  advocates  such  as  will  bind  an  honest  but 
too  submissive  nation  in  chains  for  another  twenty  years. 

Nowhere,  except  in  the  Arabian  Nights,  where  the  barber  becomes  Grand 
Vizier,  do  I  remember  so  sudden,  unmerited,  and  dizzying  an  elevation  as 
that  by  which  the  former  Collector  of  the  Port  of  New  York  has  first  become 
Vice-President,  and  then  President  of  the  United  States,  If  President 
Arthur  has  only  been  taught  wisdom  by  the  outburst  of  public  feeling  that 
followed  the  shot  of  the  assassin  ;  if  he  will  only  cut  himself  loose  from 
association  with  the  set  of  professional  politicians  whose  methods  have 
roused  such  abhorrence  among  thinking  and  patriotic  men  ;  if  he  will  only 


356  THE   DEATH   OF   THE   PRESIDENT. 

remember  that  it  is  for  no  goodness  that  there  is  in  him  that  he  has  been  put 
in  this  place  of  responsibility  and  power,  and  that  respect  for  his  adminis- 
tration will  be  wholly  dependent  upon  his  good  behavior,  he  may  yet  furnish 
reason  to  think  that  the  death  of  President  Garfield  was  not  an  unrelieved 
calamity.  But  if  Providence  has  otherwise  ordered,  and  it  is  our  lot  to 
have  the  spoils-system  in  its  worst  features  revived;  to  see  wholesale 
changes  in  our  public  offices  for  the  mere  sake  of  perpetuating  thp  power 
of  a  few  and  of  rewarding  personal  services  at  the  polls  ;  to  experience  a 
still  further  degradation  of  our  civil  service  in  the  line  of  inflaming  party 
passion,  of  making  our  elections  mere  squabbles  for  spoils,  of  turning  our 
legislatures  into  mere  assemblies  for  the  ratification  of  the  decrees  of  the 
managers  of  the  machine, — still  we  will  not  despair  of  the  Bepublic,  but  will 
believe  it  simply  the  will  of  Providence  that  the  evil  should  grow  ripe  before 
its  fall,  that  its  monstrosity  should  become  so  hateful  as  to  rouse  universal 
opposition,  that  like  slavery  it  should  meet  its  doom  in  the  very  act  of  sub- 
jugating all  things  to  its  sway.  The  accession  of  President  Arthur  should 
be  the  signal,  not  for  blind  acquiesecnce  in  the  inevitable,  if  that  inevitable 
be  the  extension  and  deepening  of  corruption  in  our  politics, —  it  should  be 
the  signal  for  united  determination  on  the  part  of  all  Christians  and  all 
patriots,  all  thinking  and  good  men  of  whatever  party  or  name,  that  our 
civil  service  shall  be  reformed,  and  that  the  accursed  system  of  spoils  shall 
be  done  away  forever  from  our  politics. 

I  am  not  unmindful  that  every  incoming  Executive  is  entitled  to  the  sup- 
port and  confidence  of  the  nation  until  he  has  proved  himself  unworthy. 
That  confidence  and  support  we  should  render  him  on  his  entrance  upon 
his  duties,  and  just  so  long  as  he  remains  faithful  to  his  trust.  May  God 
enlighten  and  keep  him  !  May  God  lift  him  up  above  low  partizanship,  and 
enable  him  to  live  for  his  country  and  for  the  future  !  There  are  many 
things  to  encourage  the  hope  that  he  will  do  so.  He  is  the  son  of  Christian 
parents.  His  father  was  a  Baptist  minister.  He  has  at  least  the  ordinary 
respect  for  religion  and  for  morality.  His  private  life  is  above  reproach. 
The  letter  in  which  he  accepted  the  nomination  for  the  Vice-Presidency, 
and  the  brief  address  which  accompanied  the  final  taking  of  the  oath  of 
office  as  President,  will  compare  favorably  with  the  utterances  of  General 
Garfield  under  similar  circumstances.  Above  all,  his  modest  and  serious 
bearing  during  the  weeks  of  suspense  that  have  intervened  between  the 
shot  of  the  assassin  and  the  death  of  the  late  President,  have  drawn  to  him 
a  popular  sympathy  and  have  awakened  a  general  hopefulness  which  will 
prove  most  valuable  helps  in  the  adoption  and  carrying  out  of  a  truly  states- 
manlike policy.  The  country  waits  with  patience  and  with  good  will  to 
second  and  further  every  step  in  the  direction  of  wise  administration.  If 
he  shall  devote  himself  to  the  reform  of  abuses,  if  he  shall  choose  men  of 
principle  for  his  advisers,  if  he  shall  conduct  the  government  upon  business 
methods,  if  he  shall  scorn  to  be  the  servant  of  a  selfish  clique,  if  he  shall 
rise  to  the  dignity  of  a  true  President,  then  every  Christian  and  every  honest 
man  will  applaud  him  and  award  him  a  lofty  place  among  the  great  men  of 
history.  We  pray  most  devoutly  that  he  may  know  and  seize  his  opportu- 
nity. But  if,  with  all  these  motives  and  influences  to  favor  a  right  course, 
he  shall  pursue  the  wrong ;  if  he  shall  put  himself  under  the  control  of  an 


THE  DEATH  OF  THE  PRESIDENT.  357 

unscrupulous  faction  ;  if  he  shall  set  himself  to  turn  back  the  current  that 
has  been  running  more  and  more  strongly  toward  reform  in  our  civil  service  ; 
if  he  shall  use  the  vast  patronage  of  his  office  to  raise  up  a  new  army  of  place- 
holders devoted  to  his  personal  interests  and  bent  upon  the  consolidation 
and  perpetuation  of  their  ill-used  power, — then  we  utter  to  him  a  voice  of 
warning  ;  we  assure  him  of  indignation  and  wrath,  tribulation  and  anguish  ; 
of  implacable  hostility  on  the  part  of  the  intelligence  and  virtue  of  the 
land  ;  of  opposition  to  his  administration  shown  by  all  legal  and  constitu- 
tional means  ;  of  political  ruin  to  himself  and  to  his  party  ;  of  everlasting 
fame  as  a  betrayer  of  his  country.  Like  the  king  of  Babylon,  he  stands  at 
the  parting  of  the  way.  Two  roads  diverge  from  the  spot  which  his  feet 
now  tread.  May  God  save  him  from  choosing  the  wrong  course  !  May  God 
give  him  grace  to  choose  the  right ! 

So  let  us  all  stand  still,  in  appreciative  remembrance  of  the  life  and  char- 
acter of  the  departed  ;  in  grateful  recognition  of  the  alleviating  circum- 
stances with  which  divine  Providence  has  attended  our  sorrow  ;  in  penitent 
contemplation  of  the  special  sin  of  this  people  which  has  been  the  indirect 
cause  of  President  Garfield's  death.  I  suppose  that  if  all  those  soldiers 
of  Israel  stood  still,  and  looked  at  the  dead  body  of  Asahel,  then  each  one 
individually  must  have  stood  still.  Have  we  done  this  to-day?  Have  I 
individually  —  have  you,  each  of  you  and  singly — stood  still,  in  reverence,  in 
gratitude,  in  penitence  ?  Ah,  these  general  reflections  will  be  of  little  use, 
unless  we  make  them  personal  to  ourselves.  Let  us  hear  what  God  the 
Lord  will  speak  to  us.  The  life  and  character  of  General  Garfield  were 
gifts  of  God  to  you  and  me ;  you  and  I  need  to  render  thanks  for  many 
mercies  which  accompany  this  cup  of  sorrow  ;  above  all,  you  and  I  need  to 
humble  ourselves  for  our  sins,  and  to  address  ourselves  to  the  duty  of  the 
hour.  There  is  a  mighty  feeling  abroad  in  the  land  —  a  feeling  strong 
enough  and  deep  enough,  if  only  organized  into  practical  action,  to 
remove  from  us  the  transgressions  which  have  provoked  God's  anger  and 
have  endangered  the  safety  of  the  nation.  God  will  be  with  us,  if  we  are 
but  true  to  him.  If  we  will  only  stand  still,  in  fixed  resolve  to  return  to 
God  and  to  the  old  paths  of  honesty  and  truth,  we  may  also  stand  still  and 
see  the  salvation  of  God, —  and,  as  for  those  enemies  of  our  peace,  we  shall 
see  them  no  more  again  forever. 


XXXV. 

THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  AND  ITS  COMING.* 


The  ancient  world  was  full  of  unconscious  prophecies  of  Christ.  Long 
before  the  "Desire  of  all  nations  "  had  come,  philosophy  was  waiting  to  lay 
her  unsolved  problems  before  the  mighty  Prophet,  and  the  polytheistic  relig- 
ions were  seeking  for  the  Priest  who  could  give  atoning  efficacy  to  their 
sacrifices.  And  not  less  was  it  true  that  all  the  political  systems  of  the  earth, 
confessing  their  own  poverty  and  imperfection,  were  standing  in  silent  expec- 
tation of  his  advent  who  was  King  by  right  divine.  All  kingdoms  that 
preceded  his,  were  in  some  sort  types  and  prefigurations  of  the  coming 
kingdom  of  God.  The  very  end  for  which  the  Jewish  kingdom  existed 
under  David  and  Solomon,  was  to  fix  in  the  mind  of  a  select  people  the  idea 
of  a  monarchy  grander  far  in  unity,  strength  and  splendor.  And  the  vast 
world-empires  of  Chaldsea,  Greece  and  Home,  were  they  of  no  use  or  value 
to  the  humanity  that  bore  their  heavy  burdens  ?  Let  us  not  so  deny  the 
providential  ordering  of  history.  These  were  but  the  vain  attempts  of  human 
nature  to  anticipate  God's  great  plan  of  universal  dominion  —  attempts  per- 
mitted by  God  to  prepare  mankind  for  the  kingdom  of  his  Son.  Yes,  all 
the  self-deifying  schemes  of  world-wide  conquest  which  Nebuchadnezzar, 
Alexander  and  Augustus  ever  formed  were  but  dim  prefigurations  of  the 
coming  reign  of  Christ.  These  men  were  but  the  representatives  of  univer- 
sal longings  and  aspirations.  Rome  would  never  have  grasped  at  the  empire 
of  the  world,  had  there  not  been  an  answering  instinct  of  monarchy  in  the 
world's  great  heart, — her  name  among  the  nations  and  her  gigantic  sway 
rested  upon  that  deep  principle  of  human  nature  which  moves  the  race  to 
seek  blindly  for  the  restoration  of  its  primal  unity, — her  magic  influence  over 
all  lands  and  the  terror  of  her  imperial  decrees  would  never  have  been  pos- 
sible, had  she  not  been  the  specious  counterfeit  of  another  world- wide  king- 
dom of  spiritual  influences  and  of  living  dependence  upon  an  invisible  head. 

Rome  was  not  herself  the  kingdom  for  which  the  nations  longed.  She  was 
rather  the  great  dragon  of  the  Revelation,  seeking  to  devour  the  feeble  child 
who  was  the  true  hope  of  the  world.  But  though  the  dragon's  material 
supremacy  was  represented  by  the  seven  crowns  upon  its  seven  heads,  and 
its  control  over  the  world's  spiritual  lights  and  rulers  by  the  third  part  of 
the  stars  of  heaven  which  were  carried  off  by  the  sweep  of  its  tail,  yet  this 
feeble  child,  seemingly  so  easy  a  prey,  was  to  escape  its  jaws  and,  nourished 
secretly  by  God,  was  at  length  to  rule  the  nations  with  a  rod  of  iron  —  so  to 
rule  as  to  break  their  hostility  and  to  bring  them  into  willing  subjection  to 
its  government  and  laws.  The  coming  of  Christ  has  antiquated  the  notion 


*A  Sermon  before  the  Judson  Society  of  Missionary  Inquiry,  Brown  University 
Providence,  R.  I.,  August  31, 18H9. 

358 


THE    KINGDOM    OF   GOD    AND    ITS    COMING.  359 

of  any  universal  monarchy  except  his  own.  It  is  already  dimly  seen  that 
the  sublime  ambition  of  reducing  the  whole  earth  under  one  head,  and  fusing 
its  heterogeneous  populations  into  one  great  empire,  is  hopeless  of  accom- 
plishment except  by  the  hands  of  him  who  adds  to  all  human  perfections 
the  power  and  wisdom  of  a  God. 

The  Psalms,  in  their  language  of  magnificent  metaphor,  speak  of  the 
governments  of  the  world  as  the  "great  mountains,"  and  of  warlike,  oppres- 
sive, robbing  states  as  "mountains  of  prey," — and  who  would  deny  that  the 
ancient  mountains  that  lift  their  white  heads  above  the  clouds  and  plant  their 
feet  at  the  centre  of  the  earth,  watching  in  moveless  majesty  the  dawning 
and  death  of  the  centuries,  are  apt  emblems  of  those  dynasties  that  have 
ruled  the  race  for  ages  ?  But  when  the  prophetic  Scriptures  would  describe 
the  kingdom  of  Christ,  the  figure  is  immeasurably  expanded  and  exalted. 
That  kingdom  is  a  mountain  also,  but  a  mountain  that  grows  from  the  small- 
est beginnings  to  an  inconceivable  greatness.  First  a  stone  cut  out  of  the 
hillside  without  any  agency  of  man  and  by  the  invisible  hand  of  God,  it  rolls 
onward,  increasing  as  it  goes,  until  it  crushes  into  dust  the  images  men  have 
ImiH  to  take  its  place,  and  becomes  a  great  mountain  that  not  only  overtops 
and  swallows  up  every  mountain  of  the  world,  but  fills  at  last  the  whole  circuit 
of  the  earth.  In  such  grand  symbolic  language  does  inspiration  set  forth 
to  us  the  truth  that  Christ  shall  reign  until  all  enemies  shall  be  put  beneath 
his  feet,  all  humanity  shall  be  united  in  him  as  its  head,  and  his  universal 
monarchy  shall  embrace  earth  as  well  as  heaven . 

I  address  this  evening  a  society  of  young  men  whose  organization  derives 
dignity  and  worth  from  its  connection  with  this  kingdom  of  God.  It  seeks 
by  inquiry  into  the  condition  of  the  world,  and  the  forces  which  God  has 
prepared  to  subdue  it,  to  determine  the  truest  direction  and  methods  of 
coming  efforts  for  the  advancement  of  Christ's  cause.  These  early  days  of 
preparation  for  the  work  of  life  may  well  be  spent  in  such  inquiry,  and  the 
name  that  is  emblazoned  on  your  banner,  the  name  of  the  greatest  modern 
missionary  laborer,  may  well  serve  for  your  example  and  inspiration.  I 
bring  to  you,  therefore,  to  stimulate  your  search  for  truth  and  point  to  you 
the  way  of  duty,  this  prayer  and  promise  of  Christ.  There  is  no  sentence 
in  the  book  of  inspiration  which  more  clearly  expresses  the  ultimate  aim  of 
God,  and  thus  the  great  end  of  life  for  us.  It  constitutes  the  dominant 
thought  of  the  Lord's  prayer  —  the  thought  indeed  that  meets  us  at  the  very 
threshold  of  it.  When  he  who  was  the  type  and  model  of  humanity  left  a 
type  and  model  for  men's  prayers,  he  began,  not  with  the  expression  of  human 
wants,  but  with  petitions  for  God's  glory, —  not  first,  "give  us  this  day  our 
daily  bread,  forgive  us  our  trespasses,  lead  us  not  into  temptation," — but 
"hallowed  be  thy  name, —  thy  kingdom  come!"  And  this  because  the 
moment  that  prayer  "thy  kingdom  come"  is  answered,  the  satisfaction  of 
all  human  wants  is  sure.  We  cannot  then  in  any  way  so  enlarge  our  hearts 
or  prepare  us  for  our  coming  work  as  by  contemplating  this  one  petition 
into  which  all  our  human  prayers,  so  far  as  they  avail  anything,  may  be 
resolved.  May  this  contemplation  help  us  to  see  with  greater  clearness  the 
magnificence  of  God's  kingdom,  and,  so  seeing,  to  pray  and  labor  with 
stronger  heart  that  earth  may  be  reconciled  to  heaven,  and  that  both  may  be 
made  the  perfect  instrument  of  God's  sovereignty  and  revelation. 


3GO  THE   KINGDOM   OF   GOD   AND   ITS   COMING. 

First,  then,  we  ask  "  what  is  this  kingdom  ?  "  and  the  most  obvious  reply 
is  that  the  kingdom  of  God  is  a  kingdom  in  the  soul.  You  cannot  mark 
out  on  any  map  its  geographical  limits.  You  cannot  bound  it  by  mountain 
ranges,  or  measure  it  by  the  length  of  continents.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with 
any  of  the  natural  divisions  of  the  earth,  for  it  is  a  spiritual  not  an  earthly 
kingdom,  and  all  lands  are  to  come  within  its  boundaries  at  last  only  because 
all  the  souls  of  men  are  to  be  subject  to  its  dominion.  When  Nicodemus 
imagines  it  confined  to  a  chosen  land  or  people,  he  must  learn  that  neither 
one's  physical  dwelling-place  nor  connection  with  any  nation  makes  one 
partaker  of  its  rights  and  privileges.  <(  The  kingdom  of  God  is  within  you," 
says  Jesus,  and  no  protracted  pilgrimages  nor  outward  professions  nor 
priestly  manipulations  will  bring  us  into  it.  It  is  a  kingdom  of  spirits, 
whose  King  is  a  Spirit,  ruling  not  by  deputies  but  directly  by  his  spiritual 
presence  in  the  hearts  of  his  subjects.  In  earthly  kingdoms,  the  rule  is 
external,  by  written  laws,  by  subordinate  authorities.  The  King  cannot  be 
everywhere  at  once  —  he  must  delegate  his  power.  But  God  is  everywhere, 
and  needs  no  representative  or  viceroy.  The  Holy  Spirit,  whose  indwelling 
in  the  soul  is  the  evidence  of  our  naturalization  in  this  kingdom,  is  no  simple 
divine  influence  apart  from  God,  but  is  the  very  presence  of  the  King  him- 
self. This  is  the  greatness  of  human  nature,  that  the  high  and  lofty  One 
who  inhabiteth  eternity  will  make  the  soul  of  man  his  palace  and  his  temple. 

Of  this  reign  of  God  in  the  soul  and  his  constant  working  and  revelation 
there,  all  the  methods  of  his  rule  and  operation  in  nature  are  but  echoes  and 
symbols.  There  is  a  concurrence  of  God  needful  to  support  my  physical 
organism  in  every  breath  I  draw,  whether  I  sleep  or  wake.  The  Hebrew 
prophets  were  far  nearer  the  truth  than  our  rationalizing  philosophers,  when 
they  heard  God's  voice  in  the  thunder  and  saw  his  beauty  in  the  cloud-lit 
skies.  Not  only  in  the  wrathful  moods  of  nature,  when  fire  and  earthquake 
speed  forth  on  errands  of  justice,  but  in  the  broad  sweep  of  productive 
agencies  which  furnish  food  to  the  sower  and  bread  to  the  eater,  God  is 
present  —  no  passive  spectator,  but  working  hitherto  and  forever,  the  motive 
power  of  all  that  moves,  the  life  of  all  that  lives.  But  all  this  indwelling 
and  co- working  of  God  in  nature  is  only  the  rough  picture-card  by  which  he 
teaches  us  who  are  children,  how  great  and  blessed  a  thing  is  his  indwelling 
and  co-working  in  the  soul.  The  earthly  bread  by  which  he  sustains  us  is 
but  a  faint  symbol  of  the  true  Bread  that  came  down  from  heaven  to  nour- 
ish and  feed  our  souls.  The  earthly  vine  to  which  he  gives  life  that  it  may 
keep  alive  its  branches  is  but  the  faint  symbol  of  that  true  original  arche- 
typal Vine  which  has  its  roots  in  heaven,  not  on  earth,  and  to  which  all  the 
scattered,  half-withered  branches  of  humanity  are  to  be  reunited  that  they 
may  again  have  life  divine. 

And  here  is  God's  true  reign  and  kingdom,  not  in  nature.  In  nature  he 
has  never  ceased  to  reign, —  his  life  sustains  even  the  bodies  of  those  who 
sin  against  him.  But  he  has  humbled  himself  to  give  man  an  independent 
will,  by  which  he  may  cut  his  soul  loose  from  God's  spiritual  rule,  though 
he  never  can  break  the  bond  of  physical  dependence.  This  kingdom  in  the 
souls  of  earth's  revolted  millions  God  would  restore,  and  it  is  this  kingdom 
which  we  pray  may  come.  It  is  little  for  God  to  rule  in  nature,  so  long  as 
he  rules  not  in  the  heart.  For  the  soul  of  man  is  greater  and  grander,  when 


THE   KINGDOM   OF    GOD    AND   ITS   COMING.  '361 

judged  by  the  standards  of  eternity,  than  all  the  physical  universe  beside. 
Only  spiritual  existence  is  of  everlasting  significance  ;  the  soul  shall  live, 
when  the  stars  shall  fade  and  die.  Nature  is  unchanging  —  she  has  no 
capacity  for  growth  ;  but  man  has  powers  capable  of  indefinite  expansion  ; 
his  is  the  fearful  heritage  of  an  endless  progress  towards  good  or  ill.  All 
our  figurative  representations  of  the  breadth  of  his  nature,  and  the  variety 
of  his  endowments,  only  mock  the  reality.  There  are  continents  within 
him  which  no  Columbus  has  ever  yet  discovered,  and  heights  of  capacity 
which  the  eagle's  eye  hath  not  seen.  He  has  a  will  which  is  the  strongest 
thing  in  the  universe  next  to  God  —  a  will  which  measures  its  strength  too 
often  by  resisting  God  and  resisting  him  forever.  A  whole  heaven,  a  whole 
hell,  may  be  found  within  the  compass  of  that  single  soul.  And  the  majesty 
of  God,  when  throned  and  templed  in  that  single  soul,  is  greater  than  when 
he  sits  upon  the  circle  of  the  heavens  and  all  the  shining  orbs  of  his  material 
creation  weave  their  mazy  dance  beneath  his  feet. 

But  if  the  kingdom  of  God  be  ever  set  up  in  this  soul  of  man,  it  must 
be  a  kingdom  of  grace  and  not  a  kingdom  of  force.  Once  gain  a  proper 
conception  of  it  as  a  spiritual  kingdom,  and  from  that  moment  you  perceive 
that  it  is  its  essential  glory  to  exclude  all  thought  of  compulsory  obedience. 
It  is  not  so  with  earthly  governments,  even  though  they  be  the  best.  How 
often  has  the  monarch's  rule  been  little  else  than  the  sway  of  a  malig- 
nant might  like  that  of  Satan  !  During  the  reign  of  the  last  king  of  Naples, 
the  stranger  in  his  capital  observed  that  the  fortress  which  juts  out  into  that 
beautiful  bay  to  protect  the  city  from  the  attack  of  a  foreign  fleet,  instead 
of  pointing  its  guns  toward  the  sea,  had  turned  them  all  inward  upon  the 
town.  It  was  easy  for  him  to  mark  the  scowl  of  hatred  that  crossed  the 
faces  of  the  people  as  their  eyes  fell  upon  those  cannon,  so  admirably 
planted  to  sweep  with  grape  and  canister  the  principal  streets  of  the  city, 
and  if  need  be,  to  batter  down  the  houses  of  rich  and  poor  alike  with  a  rain 
of  shot  and  shell.  The  silent  mouths  of  those  great  guns  uttered  a  continual 
menace  —  they  spoke  no  language  but  that  of  threats,  and  it  was  no  wonder 
that  the  people,  when  their  time  had  come,  rose  like  Samson,  broke  the 
green  withes  with  which  tyranny  had  bound  them,  and  flung  them  to  the 
winds  forever. 

The  world  imagines  that  God's  government  maintains  its  supremacy  by 
main  force  in  like  manner,  and  that  his  law,  like  Neapolitan  cannon,  utters  only 
the  language  of  threatening  and  wrath.  But  this  is  man's  slander  and  de- 
traction of  God's  kingdom, — it  is  not  a  kingdom  of  power  and  justice  merely, 
— the  very  art  and  wisdom  of  God  consist  in  demonstrating  to  blinded  hearts 
that  it  is  a  kingdom  of  pure  and  infinite  grace.  In  what  wondrous  ways 
does  God  conduct  this  demonstration  !  Could  human  imagination  ever  have 
dreamed  in  its  wildest  flights  that  the  "eternal  Sovereign,  the  incorruptible, 
invisible,  only  God,"  would  become  man,  accept  the  limitations  of  human 
nature,  make  humanity  a  part  of  himself  forever,  in  order  that  a  race  that 
maligned  his  government  and  character  might  understand  him,  and  thus  be 
led  to  love  him  ?  Yet  this  is  the  very  thing  which  God  has  done.  The  King 
of  kings  has  come  down  from  his  place  of  power,  has  become  one  of  this 
same  sinning,  suffering  race,  has  known  in  his  own  body  what  the  pains  and 
trials  and  temptations  of  human  nature  are,  has  proved,  by  personal  contact 


362  THE   KINGDOM   OF   GOD   AND   ITS   COMING. 

with  the  sinners  and  by  endless  ministries  of  love,  how  great  is  his  sympathy 
with  their  needs,  and  then,  feeling  their  depravity  and  hatred  as  none  but 
he  who  was  holiness  and  love  could  feel  them,  has  yet  put  himself  in 
their  place  of  guilt  and  shame,  has  borne  the  dreadful  chastisement  due  to 
their  offences,  has  paid  their  debts  by  pouring  out  his  blood,  and  then  has 
lain  a  mangled  corpse  in  the  very  grave  where  all  mankind  were  doomed  to 
hopeless  burial.  And  now  this  brother-man,  having  conquered  death  for 
us,  and  having  risen  for  our  redemption,  with  a  brother's  sympathizing 
heart,  and  more  than  a  brother's  claims  to  love,  sits  upon  the  throne  of  the 
universe,  all  power  in  heaven  and  earth  being  given  into  his  hand.  Oh,  who 
<;an  mistake  God  any  longer !  As  we  gaze  upon  our  crowned  and  sceptered 
Savior,  with  the  human  tears  scarce  dry  upon  his  cheeks  and  the  brother's 
compassion  still  beaming  from  his  eye,  we  see  that  God  is  not  a  God  of 
power  and  justice  only,  but  a  God  of  infinite  self -sacrifice.  For  let  us  never 
forget  that  God  was  in  Christ,  reconciling  the  world  unto  himself, —  it  is  only 
in  Christ  that  we  can  see  or  know  the  Father.  We  have  no  other  God  and 
no  other  King  but  him  whose  character  and  government  are  revealed  in  the 
God-man,  Christ  Jesus. 

So  the  King  became  man, — but  there  is  a  greater  wonder  still  —  he  became 
man  that  men  might  become  kings.  God  took  to  himself  human  nature, 
that  human  nature  might  be  reunited  to  God.  Ah,  we  have  failed  to  see 
the  grandeur  of  the  divine  kingdom,  if  we  have  not  perceived  that  it  consists 
in  an  actual  union  with  the  life  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ.  The  submission 
which  it  seeks  is  not  the  submission  which  degrades.  Its  law  is  the  law  of 
liberty  and  love,  written  on  the  heart  by  Christ  the  King.  It  is  a  kingdom 
of  free  spirits,  whose  freedom  is  assured  and  exalted  by  partaking  of  the 
divine  nature,  and  by  receiving  evermore  the  currents  of  the  divine  life  to 
nourish  and  sustain  their  own.  More  intimate  and  indissoluble  than  the 
union  of  husband  and  wife,  or  of  the  stock  and  branches  of  the  vine,  is  the 
union  of  our  souls  with  Christ.  We  are  in  Christ  as  the  very  element  in  which 
we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,  and  Christ  is  in  us  the  very  spring  of 
all  our  life  and  activity.  The  truth  of  which  Pantheism  is  but  the  blind 
and  unhallowed  perversion — the  truth  that  God  is  all  and  in  all  —  is  not  only 
the  very  foundation  of  the  Christian  scheme,  but  in  Christianity  is  first  made 
a  matter  of  living  experience  and  consciousness. 

The  very  central  truth  of  all  theology,  and  of  all  religion,  is  the  union 
of  the  believer  with  God  in  Jesus  Christ  —  not  the  union  that  destroys  or 
confounds,  but  the  union  that  preserves  and  glorifies  the  personality  of 
God  and  the  personality  of  the  human  soul.  By  this  union,  the  subject  of 
the  divine  kingdom  comes  to  participate  in  the  character  and  blessedness 
of  God, — for  God's  righteousness,  peace  and  joy  are  his.  By  this  union 
he  comes  to  participate  in  the  divine  glory.  Even  here  he  is  a  citizen  of 
heaven,  a  son  of  God,  on  whose  brow  the  angels  see  glittering  a  crown  of 
immortality.  And  what  earthly  eye  hath  seen,  or  what  earthly  tongue  can 
tell,  the  future  majesty  and  greatness  of  those  to  whom  it  is  the  Father's  good 
pleasure  to  give  the  kingdom  !  They  are  to  sit  with  Christ  upon  his  throne 
—  they  are  to  judge  angels  — they  are  to  be  kings  and  priests  unto  God. 
They  are  to  shine  as  the  sun  in  the  kingdom  of  their  Father.  They  are  to 
have  spiritual  organisms  like  that  glorified  body  of  Christ,  which  John  saw 


THE    KINGDOM   OF   GOD    AND    ITS    COMING.  363 

on  the  Isle  of  Patmos.  Having  given  up  all  to  Christ,  they  are  to  receive 
all  things  from  him.  Having  lifted  up  the  gates  of  the  soul  to  welcome  the 
universal  Sovereign  to  supreme  dominion,  they  are  to  find  themselves  kings 
in  his  kingdom.  In  the  Apocalypse,  there  is  a  vision  of  a  woman  clothed 
with  the  sun,  with  a  crown  of  twelve  stars  upon  her  head,  and  the  moon 
beneath  her  feet.  It  is  the  symbol  of  the  church  of  Christ,  girt  about  with 
divine  and  celestial  glory,  having  heaven's  own  light  for  hers,  and  so  lifted 
up  above  the  corruption  and  darkness  of  this  lower  sphere  that  she  puts 
beneath  her  feet  all  that  earth  reckons  dazzling  and  attractive.  Such  is  the 
kingdom  of  Christ  in  the  soul  —  a  kingdom  of  inexhaustible  and  inconceiv- 
able grace. 

But  this  kingdom  of  grace  is  not  many, — it  is  one.  That  perfect  glory  of 
unity  which  has  been  imaged  forth  in  poetry  and  architecture,  in  church 
hierarchies  and  universal  empires,  finds  its  archetype  and  realization  only 
here.  It  is  not  a  kingdom  set  up  here  and  there  in  isolated  souls,  but  u 
kingdom  compact  in  organization  and  permeated  with  one  life.  It  is  the 
grandeur  of  human  government  that  it  approximates  to  the  control  of  indi- 
vidual wills,  and  to  some  degree  secures  the  subordination  of  men  to  law. 
To  hold  the  reins  of  the  fierce  and  uncertain  winds  so  that  they  obey  one's 
call,  and  speed  forth  upon  one's  errands,  would  be  something  marvelous, — 
but  to  guide  and  control  millions  of  human  wills  more  fickle  and  changeful 
than  the  winds,  making  them  all  yield  homage  to  just  law  and  reducing  their 
wild  impulses  to  order,  is  a  task  immeasurably  greater.  Only  the  divine 
kingdom  blends  all  these  diverse  elements  into  complete  and  perfect  unity. 
The  kingdom  of  God  contemplates  nothing  less  than  a  gathering  together,  in 
one  harmonious  and  blissful  society,  of  all  holy  souls  of  all  lands  and  ages. 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  the  Bible  does  not  end  with  the  gospels  and 
their  setting  forth  of  Christ's  life  and  teachings,  —  does  not  end  with  the 
Acts  of  the  Apostles  and  its  proclamation  of  salvation  to  the  nations  through 
the  crucified  and  risen  Redeemer, —  does  not  end  with  the  epistles  and  their 
profound  exposition  of  the  indwelling  of  Christ  in  his  church, —  but  ends  with 
the  Eevelation  of  St.  John,  in  which  we  see,  through  the  glass  of  prophecy, 
the  final  victory  of  the  Lamb  over  all  the  combined  hosts  of  the  world's 
opposition  and  rebellion,  and  the  gathering  of  all  the  saints  into  the  City  of 
God.  The  salvation  of  the  individual  is  not  the  great  end  of  God's  economy 
of  redemption,  but  rather  the  erection  of  a  glorious  community  of  innumer- 
able holy  souls,  bound  together  as  here  by  a  common  character  and  des- 
tiny and  life,  and  forever  united  there  in  a  closeness  of  intercourse,  a  rap- 
ture of  worship,  and  an  intensity  of  loving  activity,  compared  with  which 
the  streaming  tides  of  life  that  meet  and  mingle  in  modern  London,  or  that 
swept  through  the  forum  of  Ancient  Borne  at  the  triumphal  entries  of  her 
world-famed  victors,  were  but  mean  and  insignificant.  Not  isolation,  but 
blessed  and  endless  companionship,  is  to  be  the  law  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 

"  O  scenes  surpassing  fable,  and  yet  true ! 
Scenes  of  accomplished  bliss !  which  who  can  see, 
Though  but  in  distant  prospect,  and  not  feel 
His  soul  refreshed  with  foretaste  of  the  joy !  " 

Nor  is  the  kingdom  a  kingdom  of  this  earth  alone.  Included  in  the 
broad  design  is  the  renovation  of  this  sin-burdened  planet,  and  the  union  of 
its  life  and  history  with  those  of  other  orders  of  creation.  For  man  is  not 


3G4  THE   KINGDOM    OF    GOD    AND    ITS   COMING. 

the  sole  offspring  of  Jehovah.  The  universe  is  broad  and  full  of  glittering 
worlds.  Our  earth  is  but  a  speck  in  the  vast  expanse.  We  sometimes  won- 
der whether  the  planets  and  suns  of  the  Milky  Way  are  inhabited.  Astron- 
omy cannot  answer, — but  the  Scriptures  assure  us  that,  whether  possessed  of 
local  habitations  or  not,  there  are  in  this  universe  myriads  of  majestic  intel- 
ligences who  pass  to  and  fro  on  divine  missions,  and  are  specially  interested 
in  the  grand  drama  that  is  representing  on  the  earth.  These  principalities 
and  powers  in  heavenly  places,  these  ranks  of  unfallen  illustrious  angelic 
spirits,  bend  down  from  their  lofty  seats  and  peer  into  the  mysterious  pro- 
gress of  events  upon  this  little  globe, —  for  the  planet  where  the  King  of 
glory  bore  the  cross,  though  it  is  not  the  physical  centre,  must  yet  be  the 
spiritual  centre,  of  creation.  Milton  could  not  have  been  greatly  wrong 
when  he  represented  the  unfallen  Adam  as  blessed  with  the  converse  and 
instruction  of  angels.  Our  Savior,  we  have  reason  to  believe,  was  declaring 
not  only  his  own  glory,  but  the  normal  and  destined  glory  of  human  nature 
in  him,  when  he  asserted  that  his  disciples  should  yet  see  the  heavens 
opened,  as  they  were  in  Jacob's  dream  of  the  heavenly  ladder,  and  the 
angels  ascending  and  descending  upon  the  Son  of  man.  But  how  fallen 
are  we  from  our  first  estate  !  Still,  as  in  Eden, 

"  Millions  of  spiritual  creatures  walk  the  earth, 
Unseen,  both  when  we  wake  and  when  we  sleep,"— 

but  our  eyesight  is  not  keen  enough  to  behold  them.  The  earth  is  not  now 
a  watch-tower,  from  which  we  may  descry  the  pursuits  of  the  glorified  and 
observe  the  dealings  of  God  with  other  spheres,  but  rather  a  prison-house, 
through  whose  bars  we  get  only  dim  and  faint  glimpses  of  the  great  creation 
spread  around  us. 

"  Why  is  it,"  asks  a  late  writer  on  astronomical  discovery,  "why  is  it^ 
that  man  is  doomed  to  this  isolation  in  space,  with  no  bond  of  sympathy 
between  him  and  other  worlds  ?  Ah,  it  is  sin  that  has  made  the  earth  a 
prison,  instead  of  an  abode  of  liberty  where  we  might  hold  converse  with 
other  pure  and  glorious  spirits.  But  are  we  doomed  to  this  isolation  for- 
ever? No,  the  yearnings  of  our  own  hearts  and  the  teachings  of  revelation 
alike  assure  us  that  one  grand  aim  of  the  scheme  of  redemption  is  to  remedy 
and  perfect  the  bond  of  sympathy  that  was  broken  by  the  fall,  and  to  bring 
us  into  closer  alliance  with  all  the  various  grades  of  moral  intelligences 
throughout  the  universe.  The  great  system  is  like  a  magnificent  harp,  all 
whose  strings  are  in  tune  but  one.  That  one  string  out  of  tune  makes  a  jar 
in  the  whole.  The  whole  universe  will  feel  the  effects  of  redemption,  when 
once  this  jarring  world  is  put  in  tune  by  the  hand  of  love  and  mercy."' 
God's  kingdom  will  not  be  fully  come,  until  all  things  in  the  universe  are 
gathered  together  and  harmonized  in  Christ, — 

•'And  earth  is  changed  to  heaven,  and  heaven  to  earth,— 
One  kingdom,  joy,  and  union,  without  end." 

For  this  kingdom,  once  established,  shall  never  be  destroyed.  The 
causes  that  bring  decrepitude  and  death  to  earthly  monarchies  shall  never 
exist  there.  The  infinite  reaches  of  eternity  shall  be  the  arena  which  the 
inventive  mind  of  God  shall  fill  with  revelations,  and  histories,  and  new 
creations.  But  all  these  ages  shall  be  one.  All  dispensations  as  well  as  all 
worlds  shall  be  reconciled  in  Christ.  The  saints  shall  sing  the  song  of 


THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    AND    ITS   COMING.  365 

Moses  and  the  Lamb,  not  because  the  song  of  Moses  at  the  Red  Sea  will 
fully  express  the  rapture  of  God's  redeemed,  but  because  they  shall  see  all 
God's  great  deliverances,  from  the  days  of  Pharaoh's  overthrow  to  the  time 
of  Satan's  final  downfall,  to  be  all  parts  of  one  great  whole,  and  all  to  be 
deliverances  through  the  Lamb.  To  them  God's  incomprehensible  designs 
shall  be  unveiled, —  to  them  the  mystery  shall  be  finished.  Taking  in  the 
wide  prospect  of  God's  universal  empire,  they  shall  behold  in  God's  earliest 
dealings  with  the  race  the  seeds  and  prophecies  of  all  the  future,  and 
throughout  the  whole  course  of  history  shall  perceive  the  order  and  beauty 
of  an  infinitely  wise  and  symmetrical  plan.  Then  they  shall  see  that  there 
has  been  a  Christ  in  history,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  working  through 
history,  and  making  known  the  glories  and  perfections  of  the  one  living  and 
true  God.  The  kingdom  of  God  shall  be  the  perfect  revelation  of  himself  in 
and  to  his  creatures, —  and  therefore  it  shall  be,  not  only  a  kingdom  of  right- 
eousness, but  a  kingdom  of  eternity.  The  events  of  this  little  world  with 
all  its  wondrous  history  are  but  a  single  part,  though  they  may  be  the  initial 
or  central  part,  of  a  sublimer  unity.  The  kingdom  of  God  for  which  the 
old  Hebrews  looked  in  the  midst  of  the  ages,  is  not  a  kingdom  of  this  world 
alone,  or  of  all  present  worlds  alone,  but  a  kingdom  of  far-reaching  ages, 
including  all  past,  and  present,  and  future  worlds,  with  all  their  histories, — 
a  kingdom  not  of  space  only,  but  also  of  duration,  all-comprehending  and 
infinite.  For  unto  the  Son  hath  the  eternal  Father  said  :  "  Thy  throne,  O 
God,  is  forever  and  ever  !  "  The  kingdom  of  grace  shall  be  merged  at  last 
in  the  kingdom  of  glory, —  but  the  laying  down  of  Christ's  mediatorial 
sceptre  over  this  revolted  province  of  his  empire  shall  only  inaugurate 
the  fuller  splendors  of  that  perfected  reign  in  which  the  triune  God  shall  be 
all  in  all  to  his  creatures. 

Thus  our  thoughts  are  led  on  and  on,  as  we  contemplate  the  nature  and 
extent  of  God's  kingdom,  till  the  greatness  of  it  is  overburdening  and  our 
weak  faith  staggers,  even  amid  the  intensity  of  our  desire  for  its  coming. 
Let  us  then  betake  ourselves  to  the  prayer  which  our  Lord  has  taught  us  : 
"  Thy  kingdom  come."  That  teaches  us  three  lessons ;  first,  that  the  king- 
dom of  Christ  shall  come, —  it  is  God's  design  to  answer  that  prayer,  since 
no  such  prayer  would  ever  have  been  left  by  Christ  to  his  church,  had  it  not 
been  the  purpose  of  him  who  inspired  it  to  bring  about  its  complete  and 
perfect  fulfilment.  Secondly,  the  effectual  power  that  is  to  secure  the 
triumph  of  this  kingdom  is  not  of  man  but  of  God, — since  we  are  taught  to 
look  to  God  in  prayer  for  the  exertion  of  his  power,  through  the  agencies 
he  has  appointed,  namely,  his  word,  his  church,  and  his  Spirit.  Thirdly, 
— and  to  this  lesson  of  the  Lord's  prayer,  I  must  confine  your  thoughts  for 
the  few  remaining  moments  of  my  address — the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of 
God  has  been  made  dependent  upon  the  prayers  and  labors  of  his  people, 
—when  he  bids  us  pray  "thy  kingdom  come,"  he  intimates  that  our  prayer 
shall  ensure  a  blessing  which  otherwise  would  never  be  bestowed, —  while  he 
has  ordained  in  his  eternal  purpose  the  certain  triumph  of  his  kingdom,  he 
has  ordained  also  that  prayer  shall  be  the  intermediate  agency  through 
which  that  triumph  shall  be  secured.  That  prayer  which  is  the  voice  not 
of  the  lips  but  of  the  inner  being,  which  is  the  expression  of  the  permanent 
desires  of  the  soul,  which  carries  with  it  not  only  the  heart's  devotion  but 
the  self-sacrificing  labors  of  the  life— that  prayer  God  has  decreed  shall  be 


366  THE   KINGDOM   OF   GOD   AND   ITS   COMING. 

the  channel  through  which  all  blessing  flows  to  the  church  and  the  world. 
While  we  admire  the  greatness  of  the  divine  plans  and  the  certainty  of  their 
execution,  let  us  remember  that  we  can  be  no  idle  spectators  of  God's  work- 
ing,—  a  responsibility  rests  on  us  as  vast  as  the  interests  at  stake, — the  honor 
of  God  and  the  salvation  of  a  world  are  made  to  hang  on  the  faithfulness 
and  zeal  of  Christ's  disciples, — the  kingdom  is  near  or  far,  just  in  proportion 
to  the  love  and  faith  and  prayerful  toil  of  the  church. 

And  the  sooner  we  wake  up  to  the  fact  that  for  all  purposes  of  practical 
duty  and  privilege,  we  are  the  church  of  Christ,  the  better  it  will  be  for  us, 
and  the  better  for  the  kingdom.  There  is  a  mock-humility  that  shirks  duty 
and  stifles  faith.  Brethren  of  the  Judson  Society,  this  prayer,  "thy  king- 
dom come,"  is  our  trumpet-call  to  arms  and  to  battle  for  the  kingdom  of 
God.  Not  one  of  us  can  truly  pray  "thy  kingdom  come,"  without  giving 
himself  body  and  soul  to  that  work  in  which  he  can  best  promote  the  com- 
ing of  the  kingdom.  By  just  so  much  as  Christ  has  endowed  us  with  native 
ability  and  with  opportunities  of  culture,  by  just  so  much  are  strengthened 
his  claims  to  the  use  of  our  gifts  in  the  building-up  of  his  sovereignty  on 
earth.  In  this  day  when  autos-da-fe  have  ceased  and  papal  fulminations 
have  lost  their  terror,  in  this  day  when  the  opposition  of  Satan  is  so  exclus- 
ively intellectual,  there  is  need,  as  never  before,  of  educated  talent  in  the 
ministry  and  church  of  Christ.  To  every  young  man  entering  upon  life,  the 
question  ought  to  come  :  ' '  How  can  I  use  my  powers  for  God  and  the  sal- 
vation of  the  world  with  greatest  economy  of  force, —  how  can  I  most  surely 
make  every  faculty  and  attainment  bear  directly  upon  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  ?  "  Be  sure  that  Christ  has  portioned  out,  to  each  of  us 
who  are  his  followers,  some  share  in  the  work  he  is  accomplishing  on  earth. 
Seeking  earnestly  to  know  where  our  work  lies,  whether  in  secular  or  in 
sacred  duties,  at  home  or  abroad,  and  falling  in  with  the  plan  of  Christ  when- 
ever it  is  made  known  to  us,  we  may  have  the  assurance  and  comfort,  in  labor, 
in  suffering,  and  in  death,  that  our  lives  have  not  been  wasted  in  the  service 
of  the  world,  but  have  contributed,  however  humbly,  to  bring  about 

"  That  one  far  off  divine  event 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves." 

My  brethren,  the  greatness  and  power  of  God  and  the  majesty  of  his  king- 
dom are  revealed  to  us  not  to  give  us  excuse  for  idleness,  but  to  furnish 
incitement  to  arduous  and  self -forgetful  labor.  The  certainty  of  triumph  is 
the  greatest  stimulus  to  earnest  warfare.  The  grandest  victories  for  the  truth 
which  the  world  has  seen  have  been  gained  by  men  who  were  strong  in  the 
thought  of  God's  eternal  purposes,  and  who  found  in  Jehovah  the  motive 
power  of  their  lives.  When  the  Jewish  people  were  enslaved  under  Antioclms 
Epiphanes,  that  monster  of  successful  iniquity  —  so  enslaved  that  the  sacred 
Scriptures  were  a  forbidden  book  which  it  was  death  to  possess  or  read,  and  the 
statue  of  the  heathen  Jupiter  was  set  up  for  worship  in  the  plundered  sanctu- 
ary of  the  temple  —  the  Asamonean  family*  one  reverend  old  man  and  five 
heroic  sons,  called  upon  the  nation  to  rise  for  religion  and  freedom.  Thous- 
ands gathered  round  them  and  vowed  to  ' '  stand  for  the  Law  "  till  death.  Upon 
the  banner  which  was  borne  before  the  patriot  host  were  inscribed  those  stir- 
ring Hebrew  words  from  the  book  of  Exodus  :  Mi  Camoka  Baalim  Jehovah  ? 
* '  Who  is  like  unto  thee,  O  Lord,  among  the  gods  ?" — and  from  the  initial  letters 


THE   KINGDOM   OF   GOD   AND   ITS   COMING.  367 

of  that  inscription— "M,"  "0,"  "  B  "—  the  Maccabees  took  their  name.  The 
motto  of  their  standard  became  the  inspiration  of  their  war  for  independence. 
Trusting  as  their  ancestors  did  in  the  omnipotence  of  God,  they  were  enabled 
to  shake  off  the  yoke  of  the  oppressor  and  to  lift  the  nation  from  lethargy 
and  apostasy  to  a  religious  zeal  which  had  been  unknown  for  centuries. 
And  the  Maccabees  themselves  —  what  examples  of  splendid  devotion  to 
religion  and  country  have  they  left  to  after  ages  !  My  brethren,  God  has 
revealed  to  us  his  power  and  purpose  to  set  up  his  kingdom  for  this  same 
end  that  we,  like  that  Asamonean  family,  may  call  upon  him  for  great  and 
mighty  things,  and  then,  believing  his  word  and  promise,  may  undertake 
great  things  for  his  glory.  Let  us  combine  with  the  motto  of  the  Maccabees, 
"Who  is  like  unto  thee,  O  Lord,  among  the  gods?"  that  other  motto  of 
Paul's,  "I  can  do  all  things  through  Christ  which  strengtheneth  me,"  and 
then  let  us  go  forth  to  do  battle  for  the  kingdom  of  God. 

To  do  battle  till  we  die,  or  the  kingdom  fully  come.    No  rest  for  the  sol- 
diers of  the  cross,  till  the  enemy  is  ours.     No  halt  to  the  advancing  army, 
till  the  world  is  conquered  for  Christ.     Though  the  standard-bearers  fall, 
though  the  years  glide  by  and  yet  the  promised  end  seems  far  away,  aye, 
though  seeming  defeat  may  cloud  our  banners,  still  let  the  sacramental  host 
press  on.     For  Christ  never  dies  ;  Christ  never  desponds ;  Christ  never  is 
defeated  ;  and  the  Spirit  of  Christ  is  the  Spirit  of  the  Church.    In  the  days 
of  Queen  Elizabeth,  when  the  Jesuits  were  essaying  by  every  art  to  restore 
in  England  that  reign  of  papal  darkness  which  the  rising  sun  of  the  Refor- 
mation had  just  turned  to  day,  they  entered  into  solemn  VOWP,  that  so  long 
as  there  was  any  one  of  them  left  for  the  gallows,  the  torture,  or  the  dun- 
geon, they  would  never  cease  their  endeavors  to  set  up  the  Catholic  religion 
in  that  kingdom.     That  miscalled  Society  of  Jesus  has  left  to  the  church, 
the  true  Society  of  Jesus,  an  example  in  this  regard,  which  if  we  do  not 
follow,  we  are  false  to  our  vows,  false  to  ourselves,  false  to  humanity,  and 
false  to  Christ  our  King.    Rather  shall  we  not  follow  it,  concentrating  every 
faculty  and  power  upon  the  work  of  Christ,  and  resolving  never  for  one 
moment  to  remit  our  toil  till  his  supreme  dominion  is  set  up  in  every  human 
li«  art?    With  the  mighty  noise  of  this  conflict  of  the  ages  in  our  ears,  with 
the  looming  grandeur  of  the  throne  of  God  before  us,  with  the  vast  sweep 
of  eternity  for  our  dwelling-place,  let  us  not  give  our  lives  to  ease  or  to 
profit  or  to  human  fame,  but  to  the  end  for  which  Christ  lived,  the  end  for 
which  Christ  died — the  interests  and  the  triumph  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 
If  we  thns  live  and  thus  die,  it  will  make  little  matter  whether  our  names 
are  honored  on  earth, — we  shall  have  the  honor  that  comes  from  God,  and 
we  shall  reign  with  Christ  forever  and  ever, —  for  the  kingdom  that  comes 
from  heaven,  and  that  makes  heaven  on  earth,  shall  end  at  last  in  heaven. 
But  whether  we  be  true  subjects  or  not,  whether  we  give  our  lives  to  the 
kingdom  or  not,  the  kingdom  shall  come.     To  those  who  welcome  it  and 
labor  for  it,  it  shall  be  a  kingdom  of  eternal  blessedness  and  glory, —  but  upon 
whomsoever  this  stone  shall  fall,  it  shall  grind  him  to  powder.     Christ  will 
subdue  us  by  the  might  and  loveliness  of  his  grace  if  may  be,  but  if  not  by 
his  grace,  yet  still  he  will  subdue  us.     For  "at  the  name  of  Jesus,  every 
knee  shall  bow,  of  things  in  heaven  and  things  in  earth  and  things  under  the 
earth,  and  every  tongue  shall  confess  that  he  is  Lord,  to  the  glory  of  God 
the  Father." 


XXXVI. 

LEAVING  THE  NINETY  AND  NINE.* 


The  early  Christians  delighted  to  picture  Christ  as  the  Good  Shepherd. 
In  Tertullian's  time,  they  painted  him  thus  upon  the  cup  used  at  the  Lord's 
Supper  ;  and,  a  little  later,  they  lightened  the  gloom  of  the  Catacombs  by 
representations  of  one  who  had  snatched  the  lost  sheep  from  the  lion's  jaws, 
and  who  bore  it  back  to  the  fold  with  rejoicing.  Unlike  many  of  the  devices 
of  ecclesiastical  art,  this  one  has  full  warrant  in  Scripture.  The  text  tells 
the  story  more  pathetically  than  any  statue  or  fresco  possibly  can.  The 
one  sheep  wandering  from  the  rest,  and  unable  of  itself  to  find  its  way  back 
to  the  fold  ;  the  shepherd  taking  no  pleasure  in  the  multitude  of  his  flock 
that  feed  unharmed  about  him,  so  long  as  that  one  erring  one  is  exposed  to 
death;  the  girding  of  himself  for  his  departure,  and  the  long,  anxious 
search  over  the  dark  mountains  for  the  lost ;  the  perseverance  that  gives 
itself  no  rest  until  he  finds  it,  even  though  the  shepherd's  feet  and  hands 
are  pierced  with  bitter  thorns  along  the  way  ;  the  joy  of  the  return,  when 
he  brings  back  upon  his  shoulders  the  rescued  one,  who  even  now  has  not 
strength  enough  to  walk  alone, — these  are  features  of  the  parable  that  touch 
our  inmost  hearts.  But,  of  all  the  strokes  that  give  impressiveness  and 
pathos  to  the  picture,  I  know  of  none  so  masterly  and  so  divine  as  the  ques- 
tion :  "  Doth  he  not  leave  the  ninety  and  nine  ?  " 

There  have  been  many  interpretations  of  it.  The  ancient  expositors  saw 
in  it  an  allusion  to  that  condescension  of  the  eternal  Son  which  led  him  to 
leave  the  many  mansions  of  his  Father's  house  on  high,  with  their  myriads 
of  unfallen  intelligences,  that  he  might  quench  his  light  in  the  darkness  of 
this  little  sphere,  and  so  restore  this  one  wandering  world  to  its  true  place 
in  the  great  system  of  God.  There  were  ninety  and  nine  loyal  planets  that 
revolved  around  the  central  sun.  But  one  had  forgotten  its  allegiance,  and 
had  shot  off  like  a  comet  into  the  distant  night.  He  who  once  spoke  them 
all  into  being  now  follows,  and  from  the  very  night  of  death  recovers  the 
one  lost  world  by  passing  into  that  night  of  death  himself.  In  modern 
times,  we  have  been  accustomed  to  apply  the  parable,  not  to  the  one  world 
that  is  lost,  while  the  many  races  of  God's  great  universe  still  render  joyf  ul 
obedience,  but  to  the  one  soul  that  has  gone  astray,  and  has  become  a  prey 
to  Satan.  What  does  it  matter  to  the  tender  Shepherd  that  such  a  multi- 
tude are  safe  within  the  fold,  so  long  as  one  poor  sinner  is  involved  in  the 
misery  and  guilt  of  sin,  and  is  in  danger  of  everlasting  death  ?  To  bring  one 
such  sinner  back,  he  thinks  it  none  too  great  a  sacrifice  to  lay  down  his  life. 


*A  sermon  before  the  American  Baptist  Missionary  Union,  at  its  annual  meeting, 
Indianapolis,  May  22, 1881,  on  the  text,  Mat.  18 : 12—"  Doth  he  not  leave  the  ninety  and 
nine?" 

368 


LEAVING   THE    NINETY    AND    NINE.  369 

These  are  the  common  interpretations.  I  make  no  doubt  that  both  of 
them  are  true.  There  is  a  principle  here  that  may  have  great  variety  of 
application.  It  is  the  principle  that  the  weakest,  the  most  needy,  the  most 
miserable,  are  in  a  true  sense  nearest  to  the  Savior's  heart.  His  compassion 
is  measured  only  by  the  depth  of  man's  want.  And  so  I  bring  you  still 
another  interpretation  of  the  parable,  equally  true  with  the  others,  this, 
namely  :  That  Christ  yearns  over  the  heathen  more  than  he  does  over  the 
Christian  lands,  and  that  his  Spirit  moves  the  church  to  leave  the  ninety  and 
nine  that  are  safe  within  the  fold  of  Christendom,  and  to  go  out  after  those 
who  are  perishing  in  their  pagan  depravity  and  wretchedness,  until  she  find 
them,  and  bring  them  back  to  God. 

I  am  well  aware  that  such  an  application  as  this  runs  directly  counter  to 
the  current  of  popular  opinion  in  our  day.  Modern  objections  to  missions 
have  changed  their  form ;  but  they  are  more  subtle,  and  with  a  large  class 
of  persons  they  are  more  powerful  than  ever  before.  Christian  people  feel 
them,  even  if  they  do  not  urge  them.  We  do  not  deny  the  needs  of  the 
heathen,  nor  the  duty  of  evangelizing  the  world.  But  we  are  inclined  to 
choose  our  methods,  and  to  consult  the  natural  laws  of  civilization  and  prog- 
ress, more  than  we  consult  the  commission  of  Christ  and  the  promise  of  his 
Spirit.  We  are  bidden  to  distinguish  between  the  advancing  and  the  decay- 
ing races,  and  to  confine  our  efforts  to  those  which  still  have  stamina  and 
inherent  powers  of  growth.  What  hope,  we  are  asked,  what  hope  of  per- 
manent success  among  a  people  already  on  the  verge  of  extinction,  like  the 
North  American  Indians,  or  dying  of  their  vices,  like  the  islanders  of  the 
South  Seas  ?  Of  what  use  was  it  for  John  Eliot  to  give  his  life  to  translat- 
ing the  Bible  into  an  Indian  tongue,  when  there  does  not  now  remain  a 
single  living  Indian  who  can  read  it?  Tribes  without  a  history  are  not 
worth  the  saving,  say  the  critics.  The  stuff  is  too  soft  to  take  a  stamp,  or  to 
give  a  stamp  to  others.  The  Hottentots  of  Africa  are  of  as  little  account,  so 
far  as  mental  vigor  and  influence  upon  the  world  are  concerned,  as  the 
swarming  ants  of  one  of  their  own  ant-hills  ;  and  there  have  not  been  want- 
ing philosophers  who  could  coolly  say  that  we  should  do  with  them  just 
what  we  do  with  an  ant-hill, —  namely,  stamp  on  them,  and  stamp  them  out 
of  existence. 

This  reasoning  is  supported,  moreover,  by  an  appeal  to  apostolic  labors. 
The  first  disciples  did  not  scatter  themselves  among  the  Gentiles,  we  are 
told  :  they  were  commanded  to  tarry  at  Jerusalem,  the  central  stronghold 
of  Judaism.  Then  they  seized  upon  Antioch,  the  great  commercial  entre- 
pot between  East  and  West.  Paul  did  not  waste  his  time  in  country  towns. 
He  betook  himself  to  Ephesus  and  Corinth,  as  strategic  points  from  which 
whole  provinces  might  be  invaded  and  subdued.  He  garrisoned  the  capitals 
for  Christ,  and  trusted  that  from  them  the  gospel  would  move  upon  the 
great  outlying  regions  which  they  commanded.  In  fact,  nothing  would 
satisfy  him  but  to  preach  the  gospel  at  Rome.  He  would  make  the  masters 
of  the  world  acknowledge  the  mastership  of  Christ,  knowing  that,  when  the 
strength  of  Rome  had  enlisted  under  the  Savior's  banner,  the  weaker  nations 
would  follow  her  lead.  So  our  new  guides  would  have  us  devote  ourselves  to 
the  strong  races.  Preach  the  gospel  to  the  Caucasian,  who  has  mind  enough  to 
appreciate  it  and  force  enough  to  propagate  it.  Be  sure  not  to  underrate 
24 


370  LEAVING   THE   NINETY   AND   NINE. 

the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  and  that  special  portion  of  it  which  we  ourselves 
represent.  In  short,  American  soil  furnishes  the  proper  field  for  the  gos- 
pel. If  you  would  reach  other  nations,  you  will  find  the  best  specimens 
of  them  here.  God  has  sifted  the  races  of  the  earth  and  brought  the  elite 
of  them  all  to  our  shores.  We  can  best  evangelize  China,  by  preaching  to 
the  Chinese  in  California ;  Africa,  by  teaching  the  negroes  at  the  South  ; 
Germany,  by  missions  among  the  Germans  of  Milwaukee  and  Kansas.  Do 
your  foreign  work  at  home.  Educate  and  Christianize  yourselves  ;  and,  by 
the  same  rule,  confine  your  chief  attention  to  the  most  promising  classes 
within  your  own  borders.  Aim  at  the  talent  and  culture  of  the  land.  Let 
the  degraded  and  the  ignorant  die  out,  or  at  least  shift  for  themselves.  The 
best  way  to  pervade  a  nation  with  truth  and  righteousness,  is  to  raise  up  an 
intellectual  and  spiritual  aristocracy.  Not  a  farthing-caudle  in  myriads  of 
houses,  but  the  kindling  here  and  there  of  electric  lamps  that  shall  shine 
like  suns.  So  to  him  that  hath  shall  be  given,  and  from  him  that  hath  not 
shall  be  taken  away  even  that  which  he  hath. 

It  is,  of  course,  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  ;  but,  since  many  of  these  notions 
are  prevalent,  and  wherever  they  prevail  are  paralyzing  missionary  zeal,  it 
may  be  well  to  consider  carefully  the  grain  of  truth  that  is  in  them,  and  also 
the  deadly  error.  The  element  of  truth  is  simply  this  :  God's  providential 
arrangement  of  nations,  and  of  influential  centres  in  those  nations,  is  to  be 
consulted  in  our  evangelistic  plans.  Other  things  being  equal,  it  is  a  duty 
to  avail  ourselves  of  the  natural  currents  of  commerce  and  literature,  to 
seize  upon  political  strongholds,  and  upon  the  strong  men  who  offer  them- 
selves for  the  service  of  the  gospel.  The  field  is  the  world,  and  the  world 
includes  America  as  well  as  Hindustan.  There  are  many  sorts  of  place?,  for 
many  sorts  of  men.  Some  are  as  truly  called  to  serve  Christ  at  home  as 
others  are  to  serve  him  abroad.  There  are  talents  and  endowments  which 
distinctly  mark  men  for  work  of  teaching  and  leadership  in  this  land.  There 
are  tasks  and  impulses  which  as  distinctly  mark  men  for  pioneer  enterprises 
in  Africa,  or  for  Bible  translation  in  China.  Then,  too,  we  must  go  wherever 
we  can  go.  God  opens  the  door,  and  we  must  enter  it.  We  must  follow  in 
the  line  of  geographical  exploration,  and  tread  the  highways  of  commerce. 
We  owe  more  to  Africa,  than  we  did  before  Livingston  had  reached  Lake 
Nyassa,  and  Stanley  had  traced  the  course  of  the  Congo.  Fifty  years  ago, 
we  might  have  been  better  pardoned  for  not  attempting  missions  to  Japan, 
than  now,  when  the  ancient  wall  of  Japanese  exclusiveness  is  beaten  down. 
And  so  with  regard  to  castes  and  classes.  We  must  take  what  God  sends. 
If  he  will  not  first  give  us  access  to  the  proud  and  cultivated  Burmau, 
we  must  welcome  the  conversion  of  the  Karens.  If  the  Telugu  Brahmins 
will  not  embrace  the  gospel,  thousands  of  the  Pariahs  will.  We  must  work 
in  the  line  of  God's  providences,  remembering  that  there  is  a  supernatural 
element  in  missions,  and  a  wisdom  not  of  this  world,  which  chooses  the 
foolish  things  of  this  world  to  confound  the  wise,  and  weak  things  of  this 
world  to  confound  the  mighty,  and  base  things  of  this  world,  and  things 
which  are  not,  to  bring  to  naught  things  that  are,  that  no  flesh  should  glory 
in  his  presence. 

So  we  may  answer  objectors  to  our  plan  of  distant  work  among  races  and 
classes  that  do  not  lead  the  van  of  civilization, —  answer  them  by  saying  that 


LEAVING  THE  NINETY  AND  NINE.  371 

we  are  men  under  authority,  with  marching  orders  to  go  into  all  the  world, 
to  enter  every  open  door,  to  preach  to  every  creature  who  is  willing  to  hear, 
trusting  results  to  him  who  sends  us.  But  there  is  much  more  than  this  to 
be  said.  I  wish  to  show  not  only  that  we  must  do  this,  but  that  we  ought 
to  do  it ;  not  only  that  God  has  shut  us  up  to  this  course,  but  that  his  ways 
are  justifiable  even  to  human  reason.  In  place  of  the  policy  of  repression 
and  confinement — what  we  may  call  the  dark-lantern  theory  of  missions, 
the  keeping  of  our  light  to  ourselves,  concentration  of  effort  upon  the 
favored  and  the  strong  —  I  urge  the  leaving  of  the  ninety  and  nine,  and  the 
seeking  out  of  the  weak  and  the  lost.  And  this  for  four  reasons  :  first,  that 
this  is  the  irrepressible  instinct  of  Christian  love.  You  cannot  narrow 
down  its  regards,  if  you  would.  Love  is  not  calculating.  It  does  not  bar- 
gain for  just  so  much  success  in  its  efforts,  before  it  will  put  them  forth.  It 
does  not  graduate  itself  by  the  present  worth,  but  only  by  the  present  need, 
of  its  object.  Self-interest  and  self-gratulation  work  in  order  to  get,  love 
works  in  order  to  give.  Its  natural  impulse  is  toward  the  weakest.  The 
true  mother  will  love  most  of  all  the  child  that  is  deformed  or  blind, — ay, 
strange  to  say,  the  gleams  of  sense  that  now  and  then  cross  the  mental 
darkness  of  her  half-idiotic  boy  will  waken  thrills  of  sympathetic  and  com- 
passionate joy  in  that  mother's  heart,  that  she  never  feels  at  the  triumphs 
of  her  gifted  sons.  And  to  say  that  Christian  love  has  like  feelings  toward 
the  outcast  and  those  for  whom  no  others  care,  is  only  to  say  that  it  is  love. 
What !  let  the  illiterate  and  the  drunkard  go  their  way,  because  the  educated 
and  the  temperate  are  so  much  more  worthy  of  our  efforts  ?  Ah,  that  is 
just  what  Christian  love  cannot  do  !  The  ignorant  and  the  self-despairing 
shall  be  the  very  objects  of  the  Christian's  regard. 

That  was  a  very  safe  test  by  which  Professor  Tyndall  proposed  to  gauge 
the  results  of  prayer.  The  whole  Christian  world  were  invited  to  concen- 
trate their  petitions  upon  one  ward  of  a  certain  hospital,  while  they  left  the 
other  wards  unprayed  for.  Then  it  could  be  ascertained  whether  prayer 
accomplished  anything.  Professor  Tyndall  forgot  that  the  thought  of  that 
ward  for  which  nobody  cared  would  set  thousands  of  Christian  people  praying 
for  its  inmates,  so  that  the  proposed  test  would  test  nothing.  Paul  does  not 
graduate  his  love  for  his  converts  by  the  love  he  gets  from  them  in  return. 
He  will  love  them  the  more,  the  less  he  is  loved.  No  —  we  might  as  well 
acknowledge  it  —  Christian  love  is  very  different  from  mere  prudence.  Its 
very  essence  is  self-sacrifice.  It  lives  by  dying,  as  Christ  did.  In  fact, 
Christian  love  is  nothing  but  the  Christ  in  us,  repeating  his  disinterested 
devotion  of  himself  to  the  uplifting  of  the  fallen  and  the  rescue  of  the  lost. 

Missions  to  the  inert  and  degraded  races,  then,  are  not  a  hard  compulsion 
put  upon  the  church, — they  .are  a  carrying  out  of  the  inmost  impulse  of  the 
Christian  heart.  Morrison  thanks  God  when  he  is  sent  to  China,  because 
he  considers  it  an  answer  to  his  prayer  for  a  place  to  work  where  the  needs 
are  the  greatest,  and  where,  regarded  from  a  human  point  of  view,  there  is 
least  chance  of  success.  Is  this  wisdom  ?  Still,  I  maintain  that  it  is  ;  and 
I  urge,  as  a  second  reason  for  leaving  the  ninety  and  nine,  that  this  has 
proved  historically  to  be  the  method  of  success.  The  beginnings  of  Chris- 
tianity were  not  in  a  growing  nation,  nor  among  the  Caucasian  race.  It 
was  among  the  Semitic  stock,  and  in  an  Asiatic  land,  that  its  preparation  and 


372  LEAVING    THE   NINETY    AND    NINE. 

inception  took  place.  The  Jew  seemed  to  have  run  his  course,  and  to  have 
succumbed  to  the  common  fate  of  Orientals  —  political  despotism,  physical 
stagnation,  intellectual  bigotry.  "  Credat  Judceus  Apella"  indicated  the 
narrow  credulity  everywhere  attributed  to  him.  He  had  had  no  king  of  his 
own  race  for  five  centuries.  Home  had  put  her  foot  upon  his  neck.  The 
conquering  race  was  at  the  West.  The  Caesars  had  come,  and  the  world 
was  bowing  beneath  their  sway.  Where  shall  Christianity  inaugurate  her 
mission  ?  Surely,  it  will  be  in  the  emperor's  palace,  or  at  least  under  the 
shadow  of  the  Capitoline  Hill.  But  no,  it  is  to  a  continent  from  which  the 
rod  of  empire  has  forever  passed  away,  to  a  race  that  is  to  make  Ao  more 
figure  in  political  history,  to  a  people  enslaved  and  scattered,  to  a  town  that 
has  become  a  by-word  and  a  hissing,  that  Jesus  comes  to  begin  his  redeem- 
ing work.  He  passes  by  Rome,  and  he  begins  at  Nazareth.  He  leaves  the 
advancing,  and  he  takes  the  decaying,  race.  From  that  race  of  Jews  he 
chooses  his  apostles  —  yes,  his  chief est  apostles, —  so  that  Paul  becomes  the 
apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  and  Peter  comes  to  be  the  patron  saint  of  Borne. 
The  Jew  conquers  the  Roman ;  the  decaying  race  subdues  its  masters. 

Was  there  cold-blooded  neglect  of  the  insignificant  country  towns,  in  the 
apostolic  labors  ?  What  were  Derbe  and  Iconium  and  Lystra  but  rude, 
provincial  places,  with  a  heathenish  jargon  of  a  language  which  the  apostles 
could  not  understand  ?  Did  Paul  stop  with  Rome,  or  did  he  go,  after  his 
first  imprisonment,  to  the  regions  beyond  ?  Surely,  the  perils  of  robbers 
and  of  the  deep,  through  which  he  passed,  were  not  all  incurred  in  civilized 
lands.  And  why  is  it  that  we  know  so  little  of  the  labors  of  the  eleven, 
apostles  ?  No  answer  can  be  given  but  this :  Their  lives  were  missionary 
lives,  spent  in  comparative  obscurity  for  the  most  part,  and  the  record  of 
them  written,  not  on  earth,  but  on  high.  So  Christianity  made  its  begin- 
nings. And  so  has  been  its  subsequent  history.  Where  should  we  be,  in 
the  scale  of  civilization  or  religion  to-day,  if  Augustine,  the  Roman  abbot 
in  the  sixth  century,  had  confined  his  Christian  zeal  to  efforts  in  behalf  of 
the  ruling  race,  instead  of  undertaking  that  mission  to  Britain  and  to  those 
barbarous  English  ancestors  of  ours  ?  Thirteen  hundred  years  of  history 
have  justified  that  leaving  of  the  ninety  and  nine,  to  whom  belonged  the 
strength  and  culture  of  the  world,  and  that  seeking  after  the  sheep  that 
were  lost.  Christianity  has  recreated  that  English  race,  and  has  given  it  an 
empire  more  noble  and  spiritual  than  Rome  ever  knew.  And  now,  when 
missions  have  made  us  what  we  are,  shall  we  turn  coldly  away  from  the 
nations  which  stand  where  we  then  stood  ?  I  know  that  it  takes  time  to 
work  these  wonders.  "Providence,"  it  has  been  said,  "moves  through 
time  as  the  gods  of  Homer  moved  through  space  :  it  takes  one  step,  and 
ages  have  passed  away. "  The  gospel  can  recreate  nations,  as  well  as  indi- 
viduals ;  but  in  the  lifetime  of  a  nation,  not  in  the  lifetime  of  an  individual, 
shall  the  change  be  wrought.  Let  us  give  God  time  to  show  what  he  can 
do.  The  single  century  of  modern  missions  affords  but  small  basis  for  a 
theory  which  contradicts  nineteen  hundred  years  of  history  and  the  teaching 
of  the  whole  word  of  God. 

I  advocate  the  opposite  theory  of  missions  —  the  theory  of  leaving  the 
strong  and  going  out  after  the  weak  —  upon  the  ground,  thirdly,  that  this 
best  accords  with  the  great  doctrinal  truth  of  the  unity  and  solidarity 


LEAVING    THE    NINETY    AND    NINE.  373 

of  the  race.  God  has  made  of  one  blood  all  nations.  They  are  bound 
together  by  a  common  descent  from  the  first  Adam,  but  equally  by  a  com- 
mon relationship  to  the  second  Adam,  who  joined  himself  to  humanity  to 
save  it.  Sin  is  self -isolating,  and  ignores  this  relationship.  Christ's  spirit 
gives  us  the  feeling  of  brotherhood  once  more.  Sin  says,  "Am  I  my 
brother's  keeper  ?  "  Christ's  spirit  says,  "  I  am  a  debtor  both  to  the  Greeks 
and  to  the  barbarians."  Sin  looks  upon  mankind  as  segregated  atoms,  dis- 
connected individuals.  The  spirit  of  Christ  regards  humanity  as  an  organ- 
ism, pervaded  with  one  life.  Sin  counts  as  foreigners  and  enemies  all  who 
are  not  demonstrably  of  our  particular  family.  The  spirit  of  Christ  sees  in 
every  Greenlander  a  soul  for  which  the  Redeemer  died,  and  in  the  Malayan 
and  Patagonian,  members  of  a  common  humanity  with  ourselves  —  a 
humanity  capable  of  indefinite  progress,  and  with  such  claims  upon  our 
sympathy  and  help,  that  for  them  we  should  be  willing  to  lay  down  our 
lives.  See  what  provision  God  has  made  for  breadth,  as  well  as  for  intensity, 
in  our  missionary  zeal.  We  are  guarded  against  apathy  by  the  thought  that 
each  single  soul  has  in  it  capacities  of  infinite  expansion.  We  are  guarded 
against  narrowness  by  the  thought  that  every  such  soul  is  only  the  infini- 
tesimal part  of  a  grander  unity.  The  greatness  of  the  race  looms  up  before 
us  ;  the  mass  of  its  guilt  and  degradation  appals  us  ;  we  see  what  crushed 
the  soul  of  Christ  in  Gethsemane  and  broke  his  heart  on  Calvary.  As  we  get 
nearer  to  Christ  in  our  personal  experience,  the  sense  of  this  oneness  grows 
upon  us,  until  we  see  that  all  the  nations  together  constitute  the  humanity 
which  he  died  to  save. 

Away  then  with  that  proud  idolatry  of  race  which  would  count  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  only  as  the  elect  of  God  !  Humanity  is  greater  than  we  know.  There 
are  many  aspects  of  the  rounded  sphere.  Races  come  and  go  in  history. 
Greek  beauty  and  Roman  organization  have  had  their  day.  How  do  we 
know  that  the  constitutional  freedom  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  shall  be  more 
lasting  ?  The  newly  emerging  civilization  of  the  Sandwich  Islands,  and  the 
presence  of  the  negro  in  the  United  States  Senate  chamber,  show  that  there 
are  capacities  not  yet  developed,  nations  yet  to  come  to  the  front.  The 
Book  of  Revelation  assures  us  that  on  the  head  of  the  conquering  Christ 
there  are  to  be  many  crowns.  Many  nations  shall  call  him  Lord.  The  new 
song  of  redeemed  humanity  shall  be,  not  a  song  of  one  part  only,  which  all 
shall  sing  in  unison,  but  a  song  of  many  parts,  each  transformed  race  and 
tribe  and  kindred  and  nation  of  men  furnishing  its  peculiar  and  inimitable 
and  indispensable  element  in  the  grand  harmony.  We  have  no  more  right 
to  despair  of  a  nation,  than  we  have  to  despair  of  an  individual.  God  is  able 
to  turn  back  the  tide  of  corruption  in  a  nation,  as  well  as  in  an  individual, 
and  begin  a  new  development,  as  at  the  Reformation.  So  shall  they  "  build 
the  old  wastes  :  they  shall  rai°e  up  the  former  desolations,  and  they  shall 
repair  the  waste  cities,  ths  desolations  of  many  generations."  As  we  see  in 
every  human  soul  the  possibilities  of  kingship  and  priesthood  to  God,  so 
let  ua  see  in  every  tribe  upon  the  footstool  the  possibilities  of  an  illimitable 
progress  in  intellectual  and  spiritual  power,  and  all  tending  to  the  triumphs 
of  that  day  when  the  philosophic  mind  of  the  Orient  and  the  practical  vigor 
of  the  West  shall  in  all  their  phases  and  varieties  be  given  to  Christ.  Is  no 
other  race  valuable  but  ours  ?  Ah  !  the  race  most  desperately  sunk  in  super- 


374  LEAVING   THE    NINETY    AND    NINE. 

stition  and  idolatry  to-day  may  in  the  long  to-morrow  place  the  brightest 
crown  of  all  upon  the  brow  of  the  Eedeemer.  We  are  bound  to  leave  the 
ninety  and  nine,  and  go  out  after  the  benighted  races,  because  humanity 
everywhere  is  one,  and  the  work  of  the  church  is  nothing  less  than  to  bring 
this  whole  humanity  to  the  feet  of  its  common  Lord. 

But  I  argue  this  view,  fourthly,  from  the  poor  economical  consideration 
that,  only  as  ive  thus  in  utter  self-abandonment  seek  the  salvation  of  the 
lowest  and  ivorst  abroad,  can  we  reach  the  highest  and  the  best  in  charac- 
ter and  activity  at  home.  Here  is  the  Christian  paradox  :  "  Give,  if  you 
would  get ;  scatter,  if  you  would  increase  ;  die,  if  you  would  live."  Christ 
followed  this  rule,  leaving  heaven  for  earth,  and  conquering  through  death. 
And  he  came  to  diffuse  his  spirit  through  humanity.  He  did  not  point  to 
his  miracles  as  furnishing  the  chief  evidence  that  he  came  from  God.  The 
blind  were  made  to  see,  and  the  deaf  to  hear,  indeed  ;  demons  were  cast  out, 
and  the  dead  were  raised.  But  the  climax  was  this  :  the  poor  have  the  gos- 
pel preached  to  them.  With  a  divine  radicalism,  Christianity  goes  down  to 
the  deepest  depth  of  human  corruption  and  guilt,  and,  putting  its  mighty 
shoulders  of  love  under  the  whole  mass  of  man's  shame  and  sin,  lifts  it  up 
to  purity  and  to  God.  Christianity  works  from  below,  upward.  Only  the 
self-devotion  that  is  willing  to  give  its  efforts  in  behalf  of  the  meanest  will 
ever  succeed  in  reaching  the  noblest,  and  in  general  it  will  reach  the  influ- 
ential and  the  rich  only  after  it  has  proved  its  disinterestsdness  by  laboring 
for  the  weak  and  the  poor.  I  speak  of  course  not  of  a  mock  gospel  that 
gathers  people  of  wealth  and  fashion  into  places  of  show,  and  dignifies  its 
altar-parades  with  the  name  of  worship.  I  speak  of  the  real  conversion  of 
the  rich  to  Christ.  That,  you  may  be  sure,  never  takes  place  under  the  min- 
istry of  those  whose  aim  is  simply  to  bring  riches  into  the  church,  but  only 
as  the  result  of  labor  for  the  souls  of  men,  irrespective  of  their  temporal 
station.  And  so,  seeking  the  lost  abroad  is  the  best  means  of  stirring  up 
effort  at  home. 

I  do  not  know  when  Christ  will  come.  I  do  not  know  whether  the  preach- 
ing of  the  gospel  in  all  the  world  which  is  to  precede  his  coming  involves 
the  hearing  of  it  by  every  human  being  individually,  or  by  each  nation  in 
the  ma«s.  But  this  I  do  know, —  that  the  preaching  of  the  gospel,  which 
shall  usher  in  the  time  of  the  end,  will  be  a  heart-service,  on  the  part  of  the 
church,  which  shall  labor  by  preference  for  the  most  desolate  and  down- 
trodden j3ortions  of  mankind.  What  Christ  wants  is  the  throwing  of  our- 
selves into  the  breach, — not  the  quantitative  estimate  of  our  work,  but  the 
qualitative, —  not  how  many  have  been  won,  but  how  much  has  been  sacri- 
ficed. God  has  justified  many  an  enterprise  that  seemed  absolutely  fool- 
hardy. The  forlorn  hope  has  often  turned  the  tide  of  battle.  Do  not  think 
that  such  victories  abroad  will  ever  involve  loss  at  home.  The  reflex  influence 
of  them  upon  Christian  character  in  Christian  lands  is  worth  all  the  cost. 
The  sufferings  of  the  Judsons  at  Oung-Peu-La  have  added  heroism  to  thous- 
ands of  Christian  hearts  in  America,  that  could  have  been  stirred  in  no  other 
way  so  well.  Let  us  remember  that  our  Home  Mission  Societies  trace  their 
descent  from  the  Foreign,  and  not  the  Foreign  from  the  Home.  It  is  my 
firm  conviction  that  if  every  Christian  preacher  should  go  abroad,  and  the 
whole  Christian  church  should  precipitate  itself  upon  heathendom  as  in  the 


LEAVING   THE    NINETY    AND    NINE.  375 

days  of  the  Crusades  Europe  precipitated  itself  upon  Asia,  there  not  only 
would  be  no  ultimate  loss,  but  the  home  field  would  flourish  as  never  before, 
—  aye,  the  mighty  angel  of  the  Apocalypse  would  soon  bind  Satan,  and  the 
millennial  era  dawn.  I  counsel  no  fanaticism.  I  recognize  the  fact  that 
Providence  puts  obstacles  in  the  way  of  some,  which  it  would  be  criminal 
to  disregard.  But  the  danger  of  our  day  is  not  the  danger  of  overstrained 
enthusiasm :  it  is  the  danger  of  self-indulgence  and  of  unconscieutiousness. 
We  need  the  rousing  of  the  martyr-spirit  once  more ;  the  resurrection  of  the 
church  to  a  new  life,  of  which  we  read  in  the  twentieth  chapter  of  the  book 
of  Revelation  ;  the  choosing  of  the  hard  instead  of  the  easy  ;  the  leaving  of 
the  ninety  and  nine,  for  whom  others  will  care,  and  the  going  out  into  the 
wilderness  after  the  lost.  In  this  course  lies  the  only  safety  of  the  church  ; 
for  the  church  as  well  as  for  the  individual  it  is  true,  that  whosoever  will 
save  his  life  shall  lose  it ;  but  whosoever  will  lose  his  life  for  Christ's  sake 
shall  find  it. 

Thus  I  have  urged  upon  you  a  theory  of  missions  which  human  wisdom 
would  never  have  suggested,  but  which,  when  once  acted  upon,  proves  itself 
to  be  the  wisdom  of  God.  I  have  urged  the  undertaking  of  the  difficult, 
the  seeking  of  the  far  away,  the  rescue  of  the  tribes  and  the  men  that  are 
vile  and  ready  to  die.  I  have  urged  this  upon  the  ground  :  first,  that  Ihis 
is  the  irrepressible  instinct  of  Christian  love ;  secondly,  that  this  is  proved 
historically  to  be  the  method  of  success  ;  thirdly,  that  this  best  accords  with 
the  great  doctrinal  truth  of  the  unity  and  solidarity  of  the  race  ;  and,  fourthly, 
that  only  this  method  will  secure  the  highest  development  of  Christian  char- 
acter and  activity  at  home.  But  there  is  a  sublimer  and  more  conclusive 
reason  still, —  it  is  the  fifth  and  last  that  I  shall  mention  :  this  plan  is  the 
plan  that  gives  most  glory  to  Christ,  our  Redeemer  and  our  King.  That 
which  most  reveals  Christ  most  glorifies  him  ;  for  to  glorify  him  is  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  to  make  known  his  glory.  This  plan  of  missions  most 
glorifies  Christ,  because  it  most  closely  follows  the  method  of  his  own  work 
as  our  Redeemer  ;  it  most  absolutely  casts  itself  upon  his  power  and  prom- 
ise as  our  King.  Why  does  not  Cbrist  hasten  his  coming  and  his  kingdom  ? 
Why  do  the  isles  yet  wait  for  his  law  ?  Why  has  Calvin's  motto,  Domine, 
quousque  ? —  " O  Lord,  how  long?  "  —  been  for  so  many  centuries  the  cry 
of  the  church  ?  The  heart  of  God  yearns  over  the  apostate  race.  Surely 
there  must  be  yet  some  obstacle  to  his  bestowal  of  full  favor  upon  it.  Do 
you  say  that  the  atonement  of  Christ  removed  that  obstacle  forever  ?  Yes, 
so  far  as  to  make  it  consistent  with  his  holiness  to  give  pardon  to  the  peni- 
tent. But  he  has  power  to  make  men  penitent.  Why  does  he  not  more 
widely  and  gloriously  exert  that  power  ?  I  know  of  no  answer  but  this  :  It 
is  his  purpose  to  join  the  church  with  Christ  in  this  great  work  of  saving 
men ;  and  the  full  tide  of  grace  is  restrained,  and  God  will  not  assume  his 
full  dominion  in  the  earth,  until  his  people  shall  present  themselves  as  free- 
will offerings  to  his  service. 

Brethren,  in  our  weak  fear  of  anthropomorphic  representations  of  God, 
let  us  not  deny  that  God  has  a  heart,  and  that  that  heart  is  moved  by  the 
sacrifices  and  the  deaths  of  his  servants.  Why,  the  ungodly  world  is  moved 
by  them  !  When  it  sees  that  missionary  mother,  kneeling  on  a  heathen  strand 


376  LEAVING   THE   NINETY   AND   NINE. 

and  gazing  with  straining  eyes  upon  the  vanishing  ship  that  takes  her  chil- 
dren from  her  forever,  and  then  hears  her  cry  with  uplifted  hands,  ' '  This  I 
do  for  thee,  Lord  Jesus  !  "  there  is  something  in  that  more  than  martyr-like 
self  sacrifice  that  touches  its  heart  also.  The  proud,  hard,  cold  world  is 
made  to  feel,  when  it  sees  Christ  evidently  crucified  before  it,  in  the  uncom- 
promising and  unsparing  self-sacrifice  of  his  followers.  So  Christ,  lifted  up 
in  the  self-devotion  of  Christians,  shall  draw  all  men  unto  him.  But,  if  the 
church's  love  for  souls  touches  the  heart  even  of  the  ungodly  world,  how  it 
must  move  the  heart  of  God  !  He  sees  in  it  the  reflection  and  reproduction 
of  that  love  which  led  his  Son  to  leave  his  bosom,  and  to  endure  even  his 
forsaking.  He  sees  in  it  the  entrance  of  his  redeemed  people  upon  his  own 
divine  work  of  healing  and  salvation.  It  is  the  one  way  by  which  the  church 
can  reveal  the  mind  and  heart  of  God,  and  so  make  known  his  glory.  And 
so  the  world  shall  not  be  brought  back  to  God,  until  we  who  love  him  fill  up 
that  which  is  behind  of  the  sufferings  of  Christ,  for  his  body's  sake,  which 
is  the  church.  Thus,  suffering  with  him,  we  shall  reign  with  him,  and  shall 
be  partakers  in  his  saving  power.  So,  working  greater  spiritual  wonders  in 
the  regeneration  of  men  than  even  Christ  wrought  when  he  was  here  in  the 
flesh,  we  shall  hasten  the  coming  of  the  day  of  God. 

The  choosing  of  the  dark  places  of  the  earth  and  the  habitations  of  cruelty 
as  fields  for  missionary  effort  gives  most  glory  to  Christ,  not  only  because  it 
most  closely  follows  his  own  method  as  our  Redeemer,  but  also  because  it 
most  absolutely  casts  itself  upon  his  power  and  promise  as  our  King.  To 
go  alone  to  a  tribe  of  cannibals  ;  to  attack  single-handed  a  vast  and  hoary 
system  of  organized  idolatry  ;  "in  the  unresistible  might  of  weakness,"  to 
brave  the  violence  and  hatred  of  a  despotic  error  that  counts  a  hundred  mil- 
lions as  its  slaves, — this  is  to  testify  faith  in  a  living  and  omnipotent  Christ ; 
this  is  to  find  the  strength  for  Christian  work,  not  in  man,  but  in  Him  who 
sitteth  upon  the  throne  ;  this  is  to  make  the  method  of  our  work,  as  well  as 
our  work  itself,  contribute  to  the  glory  of  him  "  of  whom,  and  through  whom, 
and  to  whom,  are  all  things."  When  the  church  shall  give  herself  to  the 
work  of  men's  salvation,  and,  trusting  only  in  God's  power,  shall  hurl  her- 
self upon  the  stoutest  and  most  bitter  of  God's  foes,  then  God  can  have  the 
glory,  then  God  will  begin  to  work  as  the  world  has  never  seen  him  work, 
then  the  Messenger  of  the  covenant  shall  suddenly  come  to  the  defiled  and 
ruined  temple  of  humanity,  then  the  darkness  shall  give  place  to  light,  and 
the  glories  of  the  latter  day  begin  to  dawn. 

I  remember  some  years  ago  pressing  my  way  up  a  remote  and  desolate 
Swiss  valley,  till  I  reached  almost  the  boundary  of  everlasting  snow.  Grad- 
ually, the  sky  darkened,  and  a  hurricane  of  wind  and  rain  swept  down  from 
the  glaciers.  The  roaring  of  the  mountain-torrents  and  the  crashing  of  the 
storm  seemed  almost  to  betoken  the  breaking-up  of  the  foundations  of  the 
world.  It  was  as  if  night  had  suddenly  set  in,  and  as  if  we,  wrapped  in 
clouds  and  darkness,  were  being  seized  and  hurried  away  from  a  dissolving 
universe.  Then,  just  as  I  was  about  to  despair  of  safety,  the  dense  black 
veil  of  driving  cloud  and  storm  parted  in  an  instant,  and  through  the  rift 
there  shone  down  upon  me  the  vision  of  a  dazzling  mountain-peak  of  snow, 
serene  in  sunshine,  against  a  sky  of  cloudless  blue ;  around,  the  furious,. 


LEAVING   THE    NINETY   AND    NINE.  377 

hellish  rush  of  dark  and  blinding  and  contending  elements ;  above,  the 
majesty  of  a  spotless  purity,  and  the  beauty  of  an  ineffable  calm.  So  the 
power  of  God  will  be  made  known  to  the  church  and  to  the  generation  that 
seeks  his  glory  through  the  dark  path  of  self-sacrificing  devotion  to  the  fallen 
and  the  lost.  May  God  give  us  all  this  spirit,  whether  we  go  beyond  the  sea 
or  stay  with  the  ninety  and  nine  at  home  !  So  shall  the  time  come  when 
the  sign  of  the  Son  of  Man  shall  indeed  appear  in  the  heavens,  when  Christ 
shall  come  in  power  and  great  glory,  when  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  shall 
become  the  kingdoms  of  our  God  and  of  his  Christ ! 


XXXVII. 

THE  ECONOMICS  OF  MISSIONS.* 


It  is  now  three  score  years  and  ten  since  the  beginning  of  our  American 
Baptist  missionary  operations.  During  these  seventy  years,  the  executive 
work  of  our  Missionary  Union  has  been  conducted  with  an  unsurpassed 
faithfulness  and  wisdom ;  its  income  has  gradually  increased  from  a  few 
hundreds  to  over  three  hundred  thousand  dollars  yearly ;  and  greater  results 
in  the  conversion  of  men  to  God  have  attended  the  labors  of  our  mission- 
aries, than  any  other  society  can  show.  We  attribute  this,  not  to  any  devo- 
tion or  zeal  of  ours,  but  to  the  special  favor  of  God.  Yet  it  would  be 
uncandid  if  we  did  not  say  that,  in  our  judgment,  this  success  has  been  to 
some  extent  also  attributable  to  the  fact  that  our  theory  and  method  of  mis- 
sionary work  have  been,  more  nearly  than  those  of  other  denominations, 
conformed  to  the  model  set  for  us  in  the  New  Testament.  We  trust  that 
model  still,  and  we  expect  further  and  larger  successes  to  demonstrate  that 
it  comes  to  us  from  God. 

Yet  the  apparent  exigencies  of  particular  times  and  situations  endanger 
our  faithfulness,  and  tempt  us  to  ignore  this  model.  The  distance  of  the 
foreign  field,  and  our  comparative  un  familiarity  with  it,  make  us  willing  to 
accept  excuses  for  an  exceptional  conduct  of  affairs  there,  which  we  should 
not  be  willing  to  allow  at  home.  It  has  seemed  to  me  that  this  is  a  favor- 
able time  to  consider  in  a  broad  way  the  economics  of  missionary  effort,  by 
which  I  mean,  not  economics  in  the  narrow  sense  of  financial  economy  or 
saving,  but  economics  in  the  larger  etymological  sense  of  administration  or 
management, — in  other  words,  the  principles  of  Christianity,  of  our  denomi- 
national faith,  and  of  business  procedure,  which  lie  at  the  basis  of  foreign 
missionary  work,  and  by  which  it  should  be  regulated.  We  are  only  at  the 
beginning  of  that  work.  The  world  stretches  out  before  us,  waiting  for  our 
coming.  The  resources  now  at  our  disposal  are  very  small,  compared  with 
those  which  the  Spirit  of  God  will  in  the  future  move  his  church  to  give. 
It  is  a  matter  of  vast  importance  that  we  settle  now  upon  a  right  theory  in 
the  establishment  of  missions,  and  upon  right  methods  in  their  management. 
An  error  here,  though  it  may  seem  a  slight  one,  will  be  found,  like  an  error 
in  fundamental  astronomical  measurements,  to  multiply  itself  on  and  on 
indefinitely,  until  incalculable  and  irremediable  evil  finally  results. 

Let  me  begin  by  mentioning  certain  principles  which  seem  to  me  broadly 
and  distinctively  Christian.  One  is  this  :  Seek  by  preference  the  degraded 
and  the  weak.  God  has  taught  us  a  lesson  during  these  last  seventy  years, 
this  namely,  that  the  needy  are  the  most  accessible  to  the  gospel,  and  that, 
when  once  won  to  Christ,  they  make  the  best  propagators  of  it.  Chris- 


*An  address  before  the  Baptist  Congress,  Brooklyn,  Nov.  U,  1882. 

378 


THE   ECONOMICS   OF   MISSIONS.  379 

tian  economics  are  not  the  economics  of  this  world.  They  are  the  econo- 
mics of  love  and  the  economics  of  faith.  And  they  justify  themselves  by 
the  result,  for  God  is  in  them.  The  mission  to  the  Burmans,  inaugurated 
by  the  heroism  and  devotion  of  the  Judsons,  after  all  these  seventy  years 
of  labor,  has  made  but  little  inroad  upon  that  proud  and  ancient  system  of 
heathenism.  But  the  mission  to  the  Karens,  a  subject  and  almost  a  servile 
race,  has  been  blessed  more  than  any  other  mission  of  modern  times,  until 
the  Burmans  are  beginning  to  ask  what  power  this  is  that  is  lifting  their  old 
foot-balls  and  drudges  up  above  themselves.  When  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Clough 
tried  to  teach  men  of  caste,  their  progress  was  slow  and  disheartening. 
When  they  received  the  Pariahs,  the  tide  turned  and  converts  came  in  like 
a  flood.  In  England  to-day  the  greatest  successes  of  Christianity  are  found 
in  high-church  missions  to  the  degraded  classes  of  London,  and  in  the  mul- 
titudes of  conversions  that  have  followed  the  work  of  the  Salvation  Army. 
These  things,  and  not  the  preaching  of  St.  Paul's  and  the  West  End,  are 
ringing  through  the  Reviews,  challenging  the  attention  of  scientific  men, 
and  proving  that  the  gospel  is  not  dead,  but  is  still  the  power  of  God.  And 
one  of  the  noblest  signs  of  life  in  our  American  Christianity  is  the  revived 
interest  in  city  missions  that  is  felt  among  our  churches,  and  the  disposition 
to  give  liberal  support  to  evangelizing  efforts  in  the  neglected  quarters  of 
New  York.  God  bless  these  efforts,  and  make  them  a  new  demonstration  of 
the  great  principle  of  missionary  economics,  that  our  first  duty  is  to  the 
weak,  and  that  through  the  weak  we  best  reach  the  strong  ! 

Our  first  duty, —  but  not  our  only  duty.  To  say  that  we  will  give  the  gos- 
pel only  to  the  poor,  is  to  forget  that  the  rich  have  souls  as  well  as  they. 
To  say  that  the  intellectual  and  refined  are  beyond  us,  is  to  deny  the  divin- 
ity and  power  of  Christ.  God  leads  certain  detachments  of  his  army  against 
the  very  strongholds  of  the  enemy  —  strongholds  that  are  to  be  captured, 
not  by  sudden  onset,  but  by  long  siege.  A  second  important  principle  of 
missionary  economics  is  that  of  —  Persistent  reinforcement  of  missions  once 
begun, —  at  least  until  Christianity  is  embodied  in  vigorous  working 
churches.  We  must  remember  that  we  have  to  deal  with  peoples,  who, 
having  lost  the  knowledge  of  the  true  God,  have  also  lost  all  confidence  in 
man, —  peoples  who  regard  the  male  missionary  as  a  commercial  speculator 
or  a  political  emmisary,  and  the  female  unmarried  missionary  as  simply  a 
concubine.  The  very  idea  of  disinterested  love  has  never  dawned  upon  them, 
—  it  must  be  created  from  nothing, —  only  time  will  do  the  work.  Mere 
preaching  is  not  enough, — that  is  counted  as  so  much  "talk," — and  the  use 
of  language,  in  heathendom,  is  not  to  express,  but  to  conceal,  one's  meaning. 
What  is  needed  is  the  slow  demonstration  of  character,  the  exhibition  of  a 
Christian  life,  works  of  helpfulness  and  mercy,  the  gospel  embodied  in  pity 
and  love  for  the  hardened  and  the  lost.  This  at  length  moves  the  heart. 
Judson  waited  seven  years  for  his  first  convert, —  but  the  convert  came.  And 
when  a  hundred  were  gathered  in  a  Christian  church,  his  prophetic  eye  saw 
the  work  as  if  it  were  done, —  Satan  had  fallen  from  heaven.  The  very  lack 
of  individuality  among  the  heathen,  which  at  first  seems  such  a  hindrance. to 
their  conversion,  may  prove  an  ultimate  advantage, —  for,  let  movement  once 
begin,  and  the  organic  unity  of  family,  caste,  race,  will  send  impressions 
through  millions,  and  the  massing  of  their  force  will  be  irresistible.  We  bless 


380  THE    ECONOMICS    OF   MISSIONS. 

God  now  that  we  never  gave  up  the  mission  to  the  Telugus.  Let  us  never 
give  up  the  mission  to  Siam.  Let  our  second  principle  be  Reinforcement, 
but  never  surrender. 

A  third  principle, —  Evangelization  before  education  or  civilization.  The 
truth  is,  you  caunot  educate  or  civilize  to  any  good  purpose,  unless  Chris- 
tianizing has  gone  before.  The  English  missionaries  to  the  North  American 
Indians  began  by  providing  homes  for  them,  but  the  Indians  did  not  wunt 
the  homes, — they  preferred  the  filth  and  squalor  of  their  old  life.  Only 
as  Christian  influences  taught  them  their  spiritual  needs,  did  they  seek 
improvement  of  their  outward  condition.  Some  early  Telugu  missionary 
imported  a  case  of  shoes,  to  cover  the  feet  of  the  bare-footed  Hindus.  His- 
tory does  not  relate  what  became  of  them, —  but  it  is  certain  that  the  Telugus 
did  not  wear  them.  There  are  grave  difficulties  connected  with  the  plan  of 
lay-missionaries,  or  of  colonies  of  Christian  tradesmen.  Among  the  Hindus, 
caste  prohibits  the  employing  of  any  but  hereditary  mechanics  and  artisans. 
Christian  tradesmen  could  not  find  employment  enough  to  keep  them  from 
starvation.  The  English  Government  is  doing  more  to  improve  the  farm- 
ing of  the  natives,  than  any  missionary  society  possibly  could.  Experimen- 
tal farms  are  supported  and  fitted  up  with  the  best  modern  appliances ;  the 
natives  have  seen  these  in  operation  for  years  ;  and  yet,  before  the  famine 
of  1877-78,  only  seventy-five  steel  ploughs  in  all  had  been  sold  to  native 
farmers  in  the  whole  Madras  Presidency.  Nor  are  medical  missionaries  so- 
much  needed.  All  the  stations  in  the  Telugu  mission,  except  Bamapatam, 
have  near  them  a  free  medical  dispensary  and  hospital,  in  charge  either  of 
an  English  surgeon  or  of  a  competent  apothecary  ;  and,  up  to  the  close  of  the 
famine,  missionaries  not  located  in  such  stations  received  free  grants  of 
medicines  from  the  government,  on  application  through  a  Collector.  It  may 
be  doubted,  indeed,  whether  a  large  amount  of  medical  knowledge  is  not  a 
hindrance,  more  than  a  help,  to  the  work  of  the  missionary.  If  he  make  a 
pecuniary  charge  for  his  services,  his  medical  work  ceases  to  be  a  matter  of 
pure  benevolence  and  an  argument  for  Christianity  ;  if  he  gives  his  services 
gratuitously,  the  crowds  that  come  to  him  for  merely  physical  relief  prevent 
his  giving  any  proper  attention  to  the  work  of  preaching. 

The  gospel  does  not  need  education  to  precede  it,  any  more  than  it  needa 
civilization  or  general  philanthropy.  Schools  come  after  preaching,  both  in 
time  and  importance.  When  the  mind  is  waked  up  by  conversion,  there  is 
an  eager  desire  to  know  the  truth.  Individual  reformations,  like  the  great 
Reformation  in  Germany,  are  followed  by  a  mighty  quickening  of  thought, 
and  an  advance  in  intelligence.  But  education  will  not  make  men  Chris- 
tians. It  may  only  make  them  more  accomplished  and  successful  opposers 
of  the  truth.  The  merely  secular  gain  derivable  from  an  education  fur- 
nishes a  great  motive  to  heathen  young  men  to  enter  our  mission  schools. 
Once  in  these  schools,  their  sole  desire  is  to  pass  the  examinations,  and  to  fit 
themselves  for  government  service,  or  for  other  remunerative  employment. 
Mr.  Bainbridge  tells  of  a  graduate  of  the  Duff  College,  at  Calcutta,  who  could 
speak  twelve  languages,  but  who  declared  that  there  was  nothing  so  detest- 
able to  him  as  Christianity.  Our  missionaries  say  that  some  of  the  worst 
heathen  they  have  to  do  with,  the  most  sceptical,  dishonorable  and  trouble- 
some to  native  Christians,  are  those  who  have  studied  in  Mission  Schools.. 


THE    ECONOMICS   OF    MI 


The  schools  of  which  I  speak  were  not  schools  of  our  own  denomination  ; 
but,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  there  is  a  tendency  toward  mere  secular  education 
among  our  own  missions,  and  against  it  these  facts  ought  to  warn  us.  The 
third  principle  of  our  missionary  economics  should  be  :  Education  and  civ- 
ilization subsequent,  and  auxiliary,  to  the  preaching  of  the  gospel,  and 
schools  not  secular,  but  Christian. 

But  I  must  pass  to  consider  certain  principles  which  are  distinctively 
Baptist.  And  the  first  of  them  is  this  :  Converts  should  without  unneces- 
sary delay  be  gathered  into  churches  large  enough  to  give  some  sense  of 
-companionship  and  strength,  but  small  enough  to  permit  of  effective  self- 
government.  Here  there  is  great  need  of  a  uniform  method  of  procedure 
conformed  to  our  denominational  theory.  We  must  not  judge  too  harshly 
the  short-comings  of  our  missionaries  when  they  are  pressed  with  labors  con- 
nected with  a  great  revival.  But  we  may  certainly  urge  the  importance  of 
right  beginnings  in  the  evangelization  of  a  great  people,  and  no  beginnings 
are  right  which  do  not  result  in  the  formation  of  effective  working  churches. 
On  the  one  hand,  converts  should  not  be  kept  in  large  bodies,  so  scattered 
and  unwieldy  that  they  can  hardly  be  called  by  the  name  of  churches,  and 
lacking  in  proper  officers,  discipline,  and  benevolent  activities  ;  nor,  on  the 
other  hand,  should  these  converts  be  organized  into  extremely  small  bodies, 
so  weak  that  they  cannot  sustain  themselves,  and  must  soon  die  out. 

The  neglect  properly  to  organize  converts  into  churches  must  always 
increase  the  tendency  to  an  Episcopal  system  of  government.  The  repre- 
sentatives of  other  denominations  declare  indeed  that  every  missionary  is 
virtually  a  bishop,  overseeing  the  native  ministers.  "Here,"  says  Dr.  Mul- 
lens, "is  a  practical  New  Testament  Episcopate,  sprung  not  from  theory, 
but  from  circumstances  ;  an  Episcopate  forced  on  men  of  all  churches  — 
Episcopalians,  Presbyterians,  Independents,  Wesleyans,  and  Lutherans."  I 
I  do  not  find  that  he  added,  Baptists,  but  we  need  to  be  careful  lest  we  be 
classed  with  the  rest.  In  theory,  we  hold  to  a  congregational  church  gov- 
ernment. We  believe  that  the  apostles  left  no  successors  ;  that  no  minister 
has  the  right  to  exercise  lordship  over  God's  heritage  ;  that  there  is  no 
authority  on  earth  superior  to  the  body  of  believers.  And  to  these  princi- 
ples we  ought  everywhere  and  at  all  hazards  to  conform. 

There  is  great  reason  to  believe  that  the  seeming  necessity  of  ministerial 
authority  over  mission  converts  in  the  first  centuries  of  Christianity  was  one 
of  the  chief  occasions  of  the  rise  of  the  whole  hierarchical  and  papal  system. 
In  theory,  we  protest  against  every  such  perversion  of  the  ministerial  office. 
We  hold  that  Christ  is  the  only  Lord  ;  that  every  Christian  has  a  direct 
relation  to  Christ,  as  Sovereign  and  Lawgiver. 

But  it  is  certain  that  even  among  us  there  are  men  who,  whether  serving 
at  home  or  abroad,  never  overcome  their  propensity  to  look  down  upon  the 
Christians  to  whom  they  minister.  It  is  certain  that  even  among  us  there  is 
a  tendency  on  the  part  of  missionaries  to  become  bishops.  I  know  that, 
after  a  great  ingathering  of  converts,  time  is  required  to  teach  them  their 
various  duties,  and  that  such  converts  are  very  immature  and  unused  to  self 
government.  They  will  make  mistakes,  and  those  mistakes  will  sometimes 
be  attended  with  serious  loss.  But  this  is  hot  an  argument  against  Baptist 
polity,  but  an  urgent  reason  for  it.  As  Macaulay  has  said  :  "  The  remedy 


382  THE   ECONOMICS   OF    MISSIONS. 

for  the  evils  of  liberty  is  —  liberty. "  The  heathen  convert  must  learn  inde- 
pendence, by  using  his  independence.  Congregational  church  government, 
like  democratic  municipal  government,  is  itself  an  education  and  a  school. 
To  keep  converts  under  the  control  of  the  missionary,  instead  of  letting 
them  govern  themselves,  is  to  condemn  them  to  perpetual  childhood,  to 
repeat  the  error  of  Rome,  to  forsake  the  fundamental  tenet  of  Baptist  polity, 
to  endanger  the  whole  future  of  our  work. 

From  American  Baptists  who  have  had  prolonged  acquaintance  with  our 
mission  in  France,  I  have  gained  the  impression  that  the  slow  progress  of 
our  work  in  that  country  is  in  large  measure  due  to  the  lack  of  understand- 
ing, on  the  part  of  our  missionary  pastors,  of  the  meaning  and  the  working 
of  the  congregational  principle.  In  a  country  so  long  monarchical,  the 
methods  of  liberty  are  very  hard  to  learn.  The  pastor  and  the  missionary 
find  it  much  easier  to  govern  a  church  themselves,  than  to  teach  it  the  art 
of  self-government.  There  is  much  ignorance  with  regard  to  Baptist  polity. 

There  is  much  misapprehension,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  with  regard  to 
the  real  office  of  the  missionary.  The  missionary  is  not  a  bishop.  Still  less 
is  the  missionary  an  apostle.  The  missionary  is  simply  an  evangelist.  He 
has  no  authority,  except  that  which  belongs  to  every  Christian  preacher  who 
is  deputed  by  the  church  to  which  he  belongs  at  home  to  go  out  to  labor  in 
new  fields.  His  business  is  not  to  impose  his  own  law,  but  to  teach  Christ's 
law, —  not  to  govern  the  churches  he  gathers,  but  to  teach  them  to  govern 
themselves.  And  from  this  follows  the  second  Baptist  principle  in  the 
economics  of  missions.  It  is  this  :  The  churches  gathered  from  among  the 
heathen  should  at  once  be  taught  the  duty  of  self-support  and  of  self -propa- 
gation. The  missionary's  relation  to  them  is  not  a  permanent  one.  He 
thoroughly  succeeds,  only  as  he  makes  his  converts  able  to  get  along  without 
him.  You  can  test  his  work  best  by  asking,  not  how  they  do  while  he  is 
with  them,  but  how  they  do  after  he  has  left  them.  Does  he  teach  his  con- 
verts to  provide  for  themselves,  and  then  to  provide  for  others  ?  After  their 
long  centuries  of  oppression,  heathen  races  are  naturally  servile.  They  look 
up  to  the  missionary,  as  a  superior  being.  His  word  is  law.  It  is  not  well 
for  him  to  be  fellow-member  in  a  native  church.  It  is  not  well  for  him  to 
be  director  and  guide  of  any  single  church,  longer  than  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary. The  church  will  never  form  the  habit  of  self-dependence,  if  the  neces- 
sity of  it  is  delayed  too  long.  Even  the  apostles  speedily  transferred  pastoral 
duties  from  themselves  to  their  converts.  However  much  these  converts 
wished  to  retain  them,  they  hasted  away  to  regions  beyond,  commending 
the  churches  to  God  and  to  the  word  of  his  grace,  which  was  able  to  keep 
them  from  falling. 

Dr.  L.  W.  Bacon  speaks  well  of  "the  necessity  of  a  double  faith  —  the 
faith  which  lays  the  original  foundation,  and  the  faith  that  leaves  the  native 
churches  when  the  time  has  come,  to  self-direction  and  self-support,  as  Paul 
left  the  elders  at  Miletus,  though  he  knew  that  grievous  wolves  would  enter 
in,  not  sparing  the  flock."  If  there  is  any  one  thing  which  our  missionaries 
and  which  Christians  at  home  need  to  unlearn,  it  is  their  disposition  to  keep 
the  mission  churches  under  perpetual  tutelage  ;  to  distrust  the  permanency 
of  the  new  seed  of  the  divine  life  implanted  in  a  heathen's  soul ;  or,  which  is 
the  same  thing,  to  doubt  the  wisdom  of  Christ  in  instituting  a  self-governing 
church,  and  the  power  of  Christ  to  make  that  church  self-supporting. 


THE   ECONOMICS   OF   MISSIONS.  383 

No  man  ever  knows  what  he  can  do,  until  he  is  put  to  the  test.  No  man- 
hood can  exist  without  the  bearing  of  responsibility.  And  therefore  we 
ought  not  only  to  teach  our  mission  churches  from  the  outset  the  duty  of 
self-support,  but  after  a  reasonable  time  we  ought  to  withdraw  to  other  fields 
and  leave  them  to  support  themselves  or  die.  They  will  not  die,  if  we  leave 
them.  They  will  die,  of  feebleness,  if  we  do  not.  It  is  worthy  of  serious 
question  whether  our  mission  to  the  Karens  has  not  reached  a  point  where 
the  best  service  we  could  render  it  would  be  to  leave  it  to  itself.  Let  the 
Theological  Seminary  remain,  but  let  American  preachers  withdraw.  And 
with  all  the  abundant  cause  for  gratitude  among  the  Telugus,  it  is  also  a 
serious  question  whether  the  small  rate  of  increase  in  native  contributions 
during  the  past  few  years  does  not  indicate  a  lack  of  instruction  on  this 
fundamental  point,  as  well  as  over-slowness  in  organizing  the  converts  into 
self-governing  churches. 

My  brethren,  it  is  the  greatest  of  mistakes  to  do  everything  for  our  con- 
verts. They  become  convinced  that  missionaries,  and  those  who  send  them,, 
are  very  rich,  that  they  are  "their  father  and  mother,"  and  that  they  them- 
selves need  do,  and  need  give,  nothing.  Dr.  Anderson,  of  the  American 
Board,  never  wrote  a  truer  line  than  when  he  declared  that  "the  self-sup- 
porting principle,  in  all  its  applications,  needs  an  unsleeping  guardianship 
and  culture.  The  native  churches,  like  young  children,  prefer  things  to  be 
done  for  them.  A  wise  missionary,  and  the  Society  which  sustains  him,, 
should  therefore  from  the  outset  resist  the  tendency  which  most  missions 
show  to  perpetuate  the  dependent  system."  And  Dr.  Anderson  is  unques- 
tionably right.  Sooner  or  later  that  system  must  be  given  up  in  every  field 
where  missions  have  had  success.  India  must  have  its  own  type  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  of  preaching,  and  of  church  life.  China  can  never  be  evangelized 
by  a  handful  of  foreigners.  The  main  preaching  in  foreign  lands  must  be 
done  by  native  preachers  who  can  speak  with  an  idiomatic  freshness,  with  a- 
force  of  familiar  illustration,  and  with  a  sympathy  of  race  and  manners,  such 
as  no  American  can  ever  attain.  And,  therefore,  the  missionary  must  not 
simply  preach  himself, — he  must  organize  and  direct  the  labors  of  others, 
showing  them  how,  laying  the  burden  upon  them,  and  finally  leaving  them 
to  support  and  to  extend  the  gospel  that  has  saved  them,  with  the  Holy 
Spirit  for  their  only  helper  and  the  word  of  God  for  their  only  guide. 

And  now,  finally,  let  me  set  before  you  two  principles  of  missionary  econo- 
mics, which  may  properly  be  called  business  principles,  as  those  I  have 
mentioned  were  respectively  Christian  and  Baptist.  The  first  has  reference 
to  the  relations  between  the  Executive  Committee  of  the  Missionary  Union 
and  the  missionaries  whom  it  appoints  and  maintains.  This  committee- 
should  insist  that  all  applicants  for  appointment  to  the  foreign  field  should 
be  not  only  persons  of  sound  health,  of  well  balanced  mind,  and  of  proved 
practical  devotion  —  patient,  self-reliant,  successful,  in  Christian  work  at 
home  —  but  also  that  they  should  possess  something  of  linguistic  ability, 
and  that  this  ability  should  have  been  sharpened  and  developed  by  thorough 
training  in  the  schools.  The  day  has  gone  by  when  men  should  be  sent  abroad 
who  have  not  mind  enough,  nor  persistence  enough,  to  go  through  a  com- 
plete course  of  preparatory  education.  No  student  should  be  taken  from  a 
Theological  Seminary,  before  has  he  finished  his  full  three  years  of  work.  No 


.384  THE   ECONOMICS   OF   MISSIONS. 

man  who  cannot  learn  Latin  or  Greek  should  be  thought  capable  of  mastering 
the  far  more  difficult  Hindu  or  Chinese.  Those  who  are  sent,  moreover, 
should  be  personally  known  by  the  Committee.  Not  only  their  linguistic 
powers,  but  also  their  personal  peculiarities,  need  to  be  learned  by  seeing 
them  face  to  face  in  repeated  interviews.  Mistakes  with  regard  both  to  the 
appointment  of  missionaries  and  the  conduct  of  the  foreign  work  might  be 
avoided,  if  the  Committee  could  study  their  men  more  carefully  before  they 
go  out,  and  could  consult  them  more  frequently  after  they  return.  One 
of  our  oldest  and  most  faithful  missionaries  declared  that  he  had  been  in 
America  and  near  Boston  about  a  year,  and  had  not  had  an  interview  with 
the  Committee,  and  others  who  have  been  more  than  a  year  at  home  have 
had  to  solicit  the  only  interview  they  have  had. 

The  Committee  should  insist  that  the  new  men  whom  they  appoint  should 
serve  an  apprenticeship  for  one  or  two  years  under  some  experienced  mis- 
sionary, before  being  put  in  full  charge  of  independent  work.  Dr.  Jewett 
regards  this  working  under  the  direction  of  an  older  laborer  as  an  important 
qualification  for  usefulness  any  where  upon  the  foreign  field.  Even  though 
the  novice  is  to  devote  himself  to  teaching,  he  needs  to  know  what  to  teach, 
and  how  to  make  his  teaching  a  help  to  properly  evangelical  work.  This  he 
can  best  learn  by  practical  experience  in  field-work,  under  the  guidance  of 
one  who  knows  the  people,  their  colloquial  language,  and  their  common  ways. 

Missionaries  should  be  brought  home,  for  the  sake  of  health  and  contact 
with  those  who  support  them.  And  this  change  of  scene  should  be  more 
frequent,  more  regular,  and  also  more  brief,  than  it  commonly  is.  Paul's 
missionary  journeys  were  very  successful,  but  none  of  them  lasted  more 
than  four  years.  After  each  of  them  he  came  back  to  Palestine,  and  to  the 
associations  of  his  early  days.  The  British  in  India  have  learned  a  valuable 
lesson,  and  now,  in  both  the  civil  and  military  service,  at  the  end  of  eight 
years  of  work,  there  comes  a  year  of  furlough.  The  first  five  years,  of  a 
missionary's  life  are  more  trying  than  any  others.  If,  after  five  years,  every 
new  missionary  could  be  brought  home,  and  then,  after  a  year  of  vacation, 
work  in  terms  of  eight  years  at  a  time,  with  a  regularly  recurring  ninth  year 
of  rest,  he  would  generally  be  not  so  entirely  broken  as  to  be  unfit  for  a 
year  of  home  service  among  the  churches,  his  impressions  would  be  more 
fresh  and  more  easily  given  out  to  others,  his  health  would  be  more  easily 
recovered,  and  both  for  himself,  the  treasury,  and  the  cause,  it  would  be 
a  matter  of  economy  in  the  end.  A  narrow  economy  is  a  poor  sort  of 
economics,  and  a  tender  regard  for  the  health  of  those  who  risk  their  lives 
in  missionary  service  is  the  plain  duty  of  the  Board  of  Managers  of  our 
Missionary  Union. 

It  should  be  plainly  understood  that  the  Board  of  Managers,  through 
their  Executive  Committee,  have  control  of  the  missionaries  whom  they  sup- 
port, and  that,  in  cases  where  their  rules  are  disobeyed,  or  where  differences 
arise  among  the  workers  on  the  field,  a  corrective  discipline,  should  be 
exercised.  The  churches  will  support  them  in  maintaining  discipline,  and 
in  standing  by  their  just  rules,  whoever  among  their  servants  in  the  field 
may  suffer.  One  case  of  prompt  action  would  obviate  the  necessity  of  many 
others,  while  one  case  of  neglect  and  submission  renders  the  Committee 
powerless  in  all  similar  cases  that  may  arise  in  future. 


THE    ECONOMICS   OF   MISSIONS.  385 

There  will  ever  be  divergent  opinions  with  regard  to  particular  measures. 
Missionaries  will  disagree.  In  such  cases,  the  Board  must  decide.  It  can 
decide  intelligently  only  as  it  knows  the  facts.  It  is  important  that  the 
Secretary  should  personally  know  the  missions  of  which  he  is  the  chief 
superintendent,  and  the  suggestion  of  a  journey  on  his  part,  once  in  ten 
years,  in  order  that  he  may  inspect  the  mission  with  his  own  eyes,  and  may 
hear  the  missionaries  with  his  own  ears,  seems  very  wise  and  promising. 
We  load  the  Secretary  and  the  Committee  with  heavy  responsibilities.  Do 
we  give  them  sufficient  facilities  for  performing  their  work  ?  Years  ago,  a 
sad  controversy  with  regard  to  preaching  and  schools  threatened  the  pros- 
perity, if  not  the  very  existence,  of  our  principal  missions.  A  deputation 
sent  to  the  other  side  of  the  world  was  a  means,  if  not  of  harmonizing 
the  conflicting  opinions,  yet  at  least  of  determining  who  among  the  mission- 
aries could  carry  out  the  instructions  of  the  Board,  and  of  enabling  the 
great  majority  to  work  together, — and  it  proved  a  most  salutary  expedient. 
Another  great  missionary  body,  threatened  with  a  similar  evil  in  Turkey, 
has  recently  appointed  a  deputation  of  the  same  sort.  My  contention  is, 
that  what  has  hitherto  been  done  sporadically  and  infrequently,  should  be 
done  regularly  and  as  part  of  our  routine  work.  Our  Methodist  brethren 
allow  no  five  years  to  pass  without  sending  a  Bishop  around  the  world,  and 
the  advantage  that  accrues,  in  the  way  of  unity  of  plan  and  intelligent 
direction,  from  that  personal  visitation  of  the  scattered  missionary  fields,  is 
felt  to  be  richly  worth  all  the  cost. 

It  has  frequently  been  asked,  by  what  methods  the  contributions  of  the 
home  churches  may  be  made  more  prompt  and  abundant,  and  how  the  inter- 
est of  these  churches  in  missions  may  be  increased.  The  last  of  the  business 
principles,  which  I  shall  mention,  respects  the  relations  of  the  Executive 
Committee  to  the  churches  and  individuals  who  furnish  the  financial  revenue 
of  the  Union.  I  must  give  my  partial  and  qualified  adhesion  to  the  princi- 
ple of  bringing  special  churches  at  home  into  connection  with  special  fields 
abroad.  It  is  of  course  to  Christ  that  we  give  ;  it  is  the  whole  world  that 
we  seek  to  save.  But  this  does  not  forbid  —  it  rather  requires  —  that  each 
Christian  have  particular  persons  at  home  whom  he  is  striving  to  bring 
to  Christ ;  nor  does  it  forbid  that  he  should  have  some  particular  people, 
province,  mission-station,  in  which  he  is  specially  interested  abroad.  We 
want  definiteness  in  our  prayers  and  our  efforts.  Twice  as  much  money  can 
be  raised  for  a  specified  missionary  laborer  whose  needs  are  known,  as  can 
be  raised  for  the  work  in  general.  Our  brethren  of  other  denominations, 
though  slow  in  adopting  this  principle,  are  beginning  to  see  that  it  is  the 
true  principle  of  missionary  support.  The  churches  of  Oberlin,  Ohio,  with 
the  students  of  the  College,  Theological  Seminary,  and  Ladies'  Institute, 
have  formed  a  "China  Band,"  the  object  of  which  is  to  lay  hold  of  several 
central  points  in  the  great  province  of  Shansi,  and  eventually  to  build 
an  Oberlin  in  Chiua.  Shansi  is  an  inland  province  of  the  Empire,  hitherto 
almost  untouched  by  missionary  effort.  The  American  Board  of  Commis- 
sioners for  Foreign  Missions  have  given  this  province  to  the  Oberlin  Band. 
They  have  already  four  missionaries  in  the  field,  clearing  the  way,  and  three 
others  are  preparing  to  go.  Oberlin  has  taken  the  responsibility,  Oberlin 
furnishes  the  men,  Oberlin  is  to  support  the  work. 
25 


386  THE    ECONOMICS   OF   MISSIONS. 

I  am  persuaded  that  we  have  here  a  principle  of  missionary  economics 
which  is  yet  destined  to  work  a  revolution  among  us.  Not  that  our  Union 
is  in  any  way  to  cease  its  work  of  inauguration  and  superintendence, — it  is 
needed  to  unify  and  control.  All  its  present  agencies  are  none  too  many  to 
employ  in  the  work  of  collecting  funds.  It  should  still  be  held  responsible 
for  the  general  work  of  instituting  and  caring  for  our  missions.  All  mis- 
sionary moneys  should  pass  through  its  treasury.  All  local  societies  should 
be  simply  auxiliary  to  it.  Multitudes  of  individuals  and  of  churches  cannot 
take  the  responsibility  of  providing  the  entire  support  of  a  missionary. 
Let  these  combine  their  contributions  as  they  do  now,  and  let  the  Union 
administer  the  funds  thus  given.  But  wherever  this  is  possible,  let  single 
states,  single  cities,  single  churches,  single  Sabbath  schools,  single  mission- 
bands,  single  wealthy  men  at  home,  be  encouraged  to  take  up,  and  be  respon- 
sible for  the  support  of,  certain  missions,  the  evangelizing  of  certain  prov- 
inces, the  maintenance  of  certain  schools,  the  salaries  of  certain  missionaries, 
the  living  of  certain  native  teachers,  with  the  express  qualification  and 
stipulation,  however,  that  their  gifts  shall  all  go  through  the  treasury  of  the 
Union,  and  that  the  laborers  whom  they  support  shall  all  be  controlled  by 
the  Union.  In  other  words,  let  the  privilege  be  offered,  to  all  who  will  accept 
it,  of  doing  some  specific  mission  work  in  connection  with  our  great  Society, 
—  the  Society  being  the  almoner  and  dispenser  of  their  bounty,  while  it  gives 
up  none  of  its  powers.  Let  individuals  be  encouraged  to  support  specific 
missions,  as  Arthington  of  Leeds  gave  his  fifty  thousand  to  evangelize  the 
newly  discovered  regions  of  Africa.  We  have  wealthy  men  who  could  send 
the  gospel  into  the  heart  of  heathen  empires.  Let  us  give  them  the  oppor- 
tunity,—  it  will  be  better  than  offering  them  a  kingdom.  Who  can  doubt 
that  missionary  zeal  would  thus  be  quickened  —  that  missionary  contribu- 
tions would  be  doubled  —  that  missionary  laborers  would  be  multiplied,  and 
that  new  prayer  to  God  and  new  triumph  of  his  cause  would  attend  the  new 
movement  of  the  churches  ?  It  is  the  principle  of  individual  responsibility. 
I  have  urged  it  as  a  principle  of  business  and  financial  management.  But 
it  is  more  than  this  —  it  is  Baptist  —  it  is  Christian.  Under  God,  it  is  the 
principle  whose  acceptance  and  observance  will  bring  the  world  to  Christ. 


XXXVIII. 

THE  THEOLOGY  OF  MISSIONS.* 


On  behalf  of  the  Christian  people  of  Rochester,  and  of  the  Faculty  and 
students  of  the  Rochester  Theological  Seminary,  I  most  cordially  and  affec- 
tionately welcome  this  Alliance  to  our  houses  of  worship,  our  Seminary 
buildings,  and  our  homes.  It  gladdens  our  eyes  and  warms  our  hearts,  my 
young  brethren,  to  see  this  great  company  of  young  men  whom  Christ  has 
called  to  preach  his  glorious  gospel.  Though  you  are  from  many  parts  of 
our  continent,  and  from  Seminaries  of  many  Christian  names,  Christ's  ban- 
ner floats  over  us  all  and  we  are  one  in  him.  In  the  name  of  Christ  you 
come,  and  in  the  name  of  Christ  we  receive  you. 

For  several  weeks,  in  our  daily  meetings  at  the  Seminary,  we  have  prayed 
that  we  might  be  able  to  communicate  as  well  as  receive  good  while  you  were 
with  us.  It  may  help  you  to  get  good,  if  I  tell  you  something  about  the 
Seminary  and  the  city  that  welcome  you.  This  Seminary  is  not  one  of  the 
oldest  represented  here,  but  it  was  founded  a  generation  since  by  good  men 
and  true,  many  of  whom  have  now  entered  into  rest.  The  stones  of  its  walls 
were  laid  in  prayers  and  tears  and  sacrifices.  God's  blessing  has  rested  upon 
it.  There  has  never  failed  in  it  a  truly  apostolic  succession  of  faithful  stu- 
dents who  have  been  willing  to  consecrate  themselves  to  the  work  of  missions. 
Many  have  left  us  to  go  to  the  other  side  of  the  world  as  laborers  in  Bur- 
mah  and  China,  and  the  bones  of  some  of  them  are  buried  now  under  the 
shadow  of  heathen  temples  and  pagodas.  Others  are  sowing  seed  for  great 
future  harvests  in  the  rich  new  fields  of  Dakota  and  Colorado  and  California 
and  Oregon. 

This  city  to  which  you  come  has  been  a  city  of  revivals.  Nature  and  art 
have  done  something  for  it,  but  grace  has  done  more.  In  1830,  the  prevail- 
ing influence  here  was  one  of  skepticism.  A  powerful  religious  awakening 
under  the  preaching  of  Charles  G.  Finney,  that  lion-like  reformer,  brought 
the  leading  young  merchants  and  physicians  and  lawyers  into  the  churches, 
and  the  whole  character  of  Rochester  was  changed.  These  young  men  grew 
up  to  be  the  leaders  in  every  moral  reform  and  in  every  religious  movement 
of  the  generation  that  followed. — It  was  a  remarkable  instance,  as  I  think, 
of  the  wide  and  almost  incalculable  results  of  good  that  may  follow  a  single 
work  of  God's  grace,  and  the  labors  of  a  single  preacher,  during  the  formative 
period  of  a  city's  history.  And  here,  since  then,  there  have  been  times  when 
the  Spirit  of  God  has  seemed  to  sweep  down  upon  the  whole  community 
and  to  shake  the  very  foundations  of  the  place,  as  he  did  in  the  days  of  the 


*  An  Address  of  Welcome,  at  the  meeting-  of  the  Inter-Seminary  Missionary  Alliance, 
Rochester,  October,  1885. 

387 


388  THE   THEOLOGY   OF   MISSIONS. 

apostles.  May  God  grant  that  such  days  may  come  again,  and  that  your 
meeting  with  us  may  be  the  beginning  of  them. 

We  give  you  fair  notice  that  we  expect  to  get  more  from  you  than  we  give, 
although  we  give  you  all  we  can.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  twelve  apostles 
could  have  met  together  after  Pentecost,  to  consult  about  their  work,  with- 
out leaving  a  blessing  behind  them.  And  I  know  that,  as  you  come  in  the 
Spirit  of  Christ  to  ask  what  he  will  have  you  do,  your  debates  and  your 
decisions,  your  conversation  and  your  example,  will  be  a  stimulus  and  inspi- 
ration, not  only  to  all  our  students,  but  to  all  our  friends.  For  I  do  not 
doubt  that  Christ  himself  has  come  with  you,  and  that  many  a  man,  whose 
zeal  and  devotion  were  waning,  will  here  be  renewed  in  the  spirit  of  his 
mind,  and  will  go  back  to  his  work  with  the  heroic  determination  to  take 
his  life  in  his  hand  and  go  far  hence  to  the  heathen. 

We  only  need  to  look  face  to  face  at  the  facts  of  Christianity  and  of  mis- 
sions, to  be  stirred  in  our  inmost  being.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  mis- 
sions are  the  greatest  argument  for  Christianity,  and  Christianity  is  the 
greatest  argument  for  missions.  Missions  are  the  distinctive  mark  of 
Christianity,  as  they  are  not  of  any  other^religion.  Buddhism,  it  is  true,  is 
to  a  certain  extent  a  missionary  religion,  and  that  because  of  the  one  grain 
of  truth  that  mingles  with  its  mass  of  error  —  the  truth  that  knowledge  and 
morality  are  not  for  a  select  caste,  but  for  all.  But  the  morality  of  Budd- 
hism revolves  around  self,  not  around  God.  It  has  no  organizing  principle, 
—  for  it  recognizes  no  God,  no  inspiration,  no  soul,  no  salvation,  no  personal 
immortality.  Salvation  is  not  from  sin,  but  from  desire, — and  from  this  men 
can  escape  only  by  fleeing  from  life  itself.  Mohammedanism  is  in  some 
sense  a  missionary  religion,  and  that  because  of  its  one  grain  of  truth  —  the 
oneness  and  spirituality  of  God.  But  Mohammedanism  does  not  base  mor- 
ality on  love.  It  conquers  only  by  force.  It  does  not  convert  either  mind 
or  heart.  Both  Buddhism  and  Mohammedanism  appeal  to  immoral  prin- 
ciples of  human  nature, —  the  one  to  the  disposition  to  fly  from  evil  instead 
of  overcoming  it ;  the  other  to  the  disposition  to  seek  sensuous  happiness  as 
the  chief  end  of  life. 

But  Christian  missions  present  to  us  the  spectacle  of  men  who  do  not  flee 
from  evil,  but  set  out  to  conquer  it,  and  to  conquer  it  in  the  strength  of  God  ; 
of  men  who  do  this,  not  by  violence,  but  in  the  power  of  love  ;  not  for  the 
sake  of  sensuous  happiness,  but  solely  for  the  sake  of  Christ  and  the  souls 
he  died  to  save.  The  lives  of  Beginald  Heber  and  Adoniram  Judson  and 
David  Livingstone  are  the  most  devoted,  the  most  pathetic,  the  most  inspir- 
ing, the  most  sublime,  that  history  can  show.  Take  away  the  record  of 
missionary  lives  and  our  conception  of  humanity  is  at  once  narrowed  and 
lowered.  But  all  the  lives  of  modern  missionaries  are  only  copies  in  mini- 
ature —  aye,  even  the  life  of  Paul  himself  is  only  a  copy  in  miniature  —  of  the 
life  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  great  preacher  and  the  great  missionary. 

As  missions  are  the  greatest  argument  for  Christianity,  missions  show  us 
what  Christianity  really  is.  If  we  can  find  out  what  it  is  that  missionaries 
have  preached,  what  has  been  the  inspiration  of  their  lives,  what  they  have 
found  the  means  of  reclaiming  and  recreating  the  degraded  and  the  lost,  we 
may  be  pretty  sure  that  that  is  Christianity,  and  that  this  Christianity  is 
from  God.  Now  I  am  certain  that  missions,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  have  been 


THE   THEOLOGY    OF   MISSIONS.  389 

based  upon  an  unwavering  confidence  in  four  fundamental  doctrines,  namely, 
first,  the  universal  depravity  and  guilt  of  men  ;  secondly,  the  substitutionary 
sacrifice  of  the  Son  of  God  to  save  them  ;  thirdly,  that  this  life  only  is  the 
time  to  accept  God's  plan  of  mercy ;  fourthly,  that  the  heathen  are  lost 
unless  we  carry  to  them  the  gospel.  These  faiths  are  still  the  sinews  of 
missionary  effort.  Take  one  of  them  away  and  the  impulse  to  missions 
ceases.  If  missions  are  from  God,  then  these  doctrines  are  from  God, —  for 
without  them  missions  are  impossible.  And  so,  missions  become  an  argu- 
ment for  Christianity, —  not  only  for  Christianity  in  general,  but  for  its 
particular  doctrines  of  sin,  and  atonement,  of  probation  limited  to  this  life, 
and  of  condemnation  for  all  who  are  out  of  Christ. 

But  if  missions  are  an  argument  for  Christianity,  Christianity  is  no  less 
an  argument  for  missions.  If  the  gospel  be  true,  then  the  only  true  object 
of  life  is  to  further  Christ's  plan  of  saving  the  world.  If  Christ  has  saved 
us,  then  the  only  fit  return  we  can  make  is  to  give  ourselves  to  him  to  be 
used  in  his  service.  But  more  than  all  else,  the  love  of  Christ  constraineth 
us.  That  great  love  of  his  awakens  responsive  love  in  our  hearts,  and  that 
love,  once  aroused,  goes  out  toward  that  whole  humanity  which  he  took  into 
union  with  himself,  and  which  he  died  to  save.  Apart  from  Christ,  there  is 
no  disposition  toward  missions, —  to  the  mere  philosopher  the  heathen  do 
not  seem  worth  the  saving.  But  love  for  Christ  is  inseparable  from  love  for 
men.  And  here  for  each  of  us  comes  the  test  of  character.  I  remember 
well  when  I  stood  where  you  now  stand.  I  had  entered  upon  a  course  of 
theological  study.  I  had  in  view  the  ministry  of  the  gospel.  But  I  was 
fresh  from  the  competitions  and  emulations  of  college  life.  The  ministry 
was  to  me  an  opportunity  of  doing  good,  but  it  was  also  a  profession. 
Standing,  honor,  comfort,  the  gratification  of  intellectual  tastes,  the  love  for 
public  address,  were  unconsciously  strong  motives  and  influences  within  me. 
One  day  I  asked  myself  :  "  Do  you  love  Christ  enough  to  go  to  the  Hotten- 
tots for  him  ?  And  if  you  do  not,  what  business  have  you  to  preach  here,  or 
anywhere  else  ?  "  Then  began  a  struggle,  as  painful  and  intense  as  any  that 
I  knew  at  my  conversion.  I  found  no  rest  for  my  soul  until  I  was  able  to 
say  :  "  Yes,  I  will  go  anywhere  for  Christ.  I  will  count  it  an  honor  and  a 
joy  to  tell  the  Hottentots  the  story  of  him  who  died  for  them."  God  did 
not  so  honor  me.  Health  failed,  and  my  work  opened  to  me  here  at  home. 
But  that  consecration  was  one  of  the  epochs  of  my  life.  The  mission-call 
was  the  test  of  my  Christian  character.  If  I  had  not  responded  rightly,  I  do 
not  see  what  right  I  should  have  had  to  enter  the  ministry,  or  to  call  myself 
by  the  name  of  Christ  at  all. 

The  mission-call  is  the  test  of  Christian  character,  both  for  the  ministry 
and  for  the  church.  I  most  devoutly  pray  that  here  in  these  meetings  that 
mission-call  may  be  heard  by  every  one  of  you.  When  the  prophet  Isaiah 
had  revealed  to  him  the  burning  glory  of  God's  throne  and  the  seraphim  that 
evermore  cry  "Holy  !  holy  !  holy  !  "  before  it,  he  felt  the  contrast  between 
that  holiness  and  his  own  sin,  and  falling  prostrate  in  the  dust  he  uttered 
the  leper's  cry,  "  Unclean  !  unclean  !"  But  then  a  live  coal  from  the  altar 
of  sacrifice  touched  his  lips,  his  iniquity  was  taken  away  and  his  sin  purged ; 
and  when  the  voice  of  God  came  to  him,  "Whom  shall  I  send,  and  who  will 
go  for  us  ?  "  the  prophet  answered  :  "  Here  am  I,  send  me  !  "  May  God  so 


390  THE   THEOLOGY   OF   MISSIONS. 

reveal  here  the  glory  of  his  justice  and  his  grace,  that  each  one  of  you  shall 
hear  God's  call,  and  shall  answer:  "I  will  go  —  here  am  I  —  send  me  — 
wherever  I  can  do  the  most  to  honor  Christ  and  to  save  mankind. " 

God  puts  his  ministers  and  his  churches  thrpugh  long  processes  of  prepa- 
ration,—  but  results  come  often  in  an  instant  of  time.  He  works  through 
evolution  in  the  ages  of  geology  and  in  the  ages  of  history.  Providence 
moves  through  time,  says  Guizot,  as  the  gods  of  Homer  moved  through 
space, —  it  takes  one  step  and  ages  have  past  away.  With  the  Lord  a  thou- 
sand years  are  as  one  day.  But  let  us  not  forget  the  complementary  truth. 
God  is  transcendent  as  well  as  immanent.  He  is  not  shut  up  to  evolution. 
He  can  cut  short  his  work  of  righteousness  in  sudden  judgment ;  he  can  cut 
short  his  work  of  grace  in  sudden  visitations  of  his  power  and  glory.  Nature 
is  the  living  garment  of  the  Deity,  but  God  can  thrust  aside  that  garment 
and  make  bare  his  arm.  He  can  condense  the  substance  of  a  life-time  into 
one  hour's  decision,  and  initiate  an  age-long  movement  of  his  kingdom  in  a 
single  day.  It  is  just  as  true  that  one  day  is  with  the  Lord  as  a  thousand 
years,  as  it  is  that  a  thousand  years  are  with  him  as  one  day. 

Oh  that  this  body  of  young  men,  with  their  vigor  and  enthusiasm,  might 
have  the  faith  that  will  make  this  gathering  a  time  of  the  right  hand  of  the 
Most  High,  a  time  of  the  revelation  of  God's  will,  a  time  of  new  enduing 
with  power  from  on  high,  a  time  of  entrance  upon  new  enterprises  for  the 
glory  of  his  name,  a  time  of  everlasting  decisions,  a  time  when  years  are 
crowded  into  hours  !  It  took  many  years  to  tunnel  and  drill  Jthat  rock  at 
Hellgate  that  raised  its  head  in  the  face  of  commerce  and  obstructed  the  free 
flowing  of  the  tide.  But  at  the  last  it  was  the  touch  of  a  little  child  that  set 
at  liberty  all  that  imprisoned  power  and  blew  nine  acres  of  rock  into  the  air. 
My  young  friends,  there  is  gunpowder  in  you  which  can  accomplish  a  great 
deal,  if  it  is  only  touched  with  the  divine  fire, — dynamite  in  you  that  can 
blow  up  the  rocky  foundations  of  Satan's  throne,  if  it  only  came  into  contact 
with  the  electric  energy  of  the  living  God.  It  is  the  touch  of  a  childlike 
faith  that  brings  the  two  —  man's  will  and  God's  will  —  together.  If  you 
have  faith  as  a  grain  of  mustard-seed,  you  shall  say  to  this  mountain,  Be 
thou  removed,  and  be  thou  cast  into  the  sea, —  and  it  shall  obey  you.  Yes, 
every  mountainous  obstacle,  within  us  or  without,  that  obstructs  the  progress 
of  God's  kingdom,  may  be  removed,  aye,  may  be  removed  more  quickly 
than  we  know,  if  we  only  have  faith.  May  God  give  you  all  this  faith,  that 
this  meeting  may  witness  a  blowing  to  fragments,  a  sweeping  away  forever, 
of  some  mighty  obstacle  to  the  progress  of  God's  kingdom,  either  in  your 
own  souls  or  in  the  world  outside  of  you.  So  may  the  Hellgate  of  ambition 
and  unbelief  within,  or  of  human  and  Satanic  opposition  without,  be  changed 
by  God's  power  into  a  very  Heaven-gate  through  which  the  flood-tide  of 
God's  salvation  may  flow  to  us  and  to  the  world. 


XXXIX. 

THE  NATURE  AND  PURPOSE  OF  THE  CHERUBIM.* 


Even  in  the  first  pages  of  the  book  of  Genesis,  we  find  that  beautiful 
combination  of  justice  and  mercy  which  makes  the  Bible  a  perfect  revela- 
tion. There  is  threatening  here,  but  there  is  promise  also, — not  far  from 
every  curse  you  will  find  the  announcement  of  a  blessing.  By  the  dim  light 
of  these  early  records,  we  can  see  that  the  picture  of  God's  character  drawn 
for  the  childhood  of  the  race  was  symmetrical  and  true,  —  the  main  features 
were  there,  and  all  later  revelations  have  only  more  perfectly  displayed  and 
unfolded  them. 

He  is  very  far  from  the  truth  who  supposes  that  the  religion  of  mankind 
had  its  origin  only  in  human  fears, —  even  the  preparatory  dispensations 
were  full  of  comfort  and  promise.  Man's  sin  had  opened  a  Pandora's  box 
of  ills,  and  had  sent  them  forth  to  desolate  the  world,  but  hope  was  still 
suffered  to  remain.  On  the  one  hand,  the  curse  was  alleviated  by  being 
made  the  occasion  of  incidental  blessing.  The  necessity  of  labor,  which 
seemed  so  hard  at  first,  was  made  the  means  of  developing  human  resources 
and  ensuring  human  progress,  while  it  restrained  in  no  small  degree  the 
growth  of  human  sin.  The  supreme  sorrow  of  woman  was  made  her  honor, 
—  she  who  had  brought  sin  into  the  world  and  all  our  woe,  was  permitted  to 
bring  into  the  world  its  Savior  and  to  transmit  to  all  generations  the  bless- 
ings of  his  salvation.  Even  the  gloom  of  death  was  lighted  up  when  it 
became  to  the  righteous  the  gateway  of  escape  from  the  toils  and  sorrows  of 
life,  and  of  entrance  upon  a  happier  and  holier  state  of  being. 

But  besides  these  incidental  blessings  which  were  made  by  divine  mercy 
to  alleviate  the  terrors  of  the  sentence  against  sin,  a  still  greater  blessing 
was  bestowed  in  the  assurance  that  sin  itself  should  be  finally  done  away. 
This  assurance  was  given  in  direct  promise.  The  serpent  should  be  crushed, 
bruised,  trampled  in  the  dust  by  the  woman's  seed, —  all  subjection  to  him 
should  cease, —  complete  victory  over  all  his  arts  and  powers  should  be 
achieved.  It  was  given,  too,  in  symbol.  The  skins  of  animals  offered  in 
sacrifice,  with  which  it  is  more  than  probable  that  our  first  parents  were 
clothed  by  God,  afforded  a  beautiful  type  of  that  divine  righteousness, 
secured  only  by  the  death  of  another,  with  which  God  would  clothe  their 
guilty  souls.  And  yet  another  symbolic  lesson  of  hope  and  comfort  was 
given  in  the  Cherubim,  which  were  stationed  at  the  entrance  of  Eden,  after 
man  was  banished  from  the  garden. 

With  regard  to  the  meaning  of  these  mysterious  forms,  there  has  been 


*  A  sermon  upon  the  text,  Genesis  3  :  24 — "  So  he  drove  out  the  man,  and  he  placed  at 
the  east  of  the  garden  of  Eden  cherubim,  and  a  flaming  sword  which  turned  every 
way,  to  keep  the  way  of  the  tree  of  life." 

391 


392  THE   NATURE   AND   PURPOSE   OF  THE   CHERUBIM. 

the  greatest  diversity  of  opinion.  Yet,  amid  the  multitude  of  explanations, 
I  am  satisfied  that  there  is  one  which  not  only  harmonizes  the  Scriptural 
accounts,  but  furnishes  important  practical  instruction.  In  considering  this 
difficult  subject  —  the  nature  and  purpose  of  the  cherubim  —  let  us  first  free 
ourselves  from  certain  common  misconceptions  of  the  narrative  in  Genesis. 
You  remember  that  man,  having  disobeyed  his  Creator,  and  having  set 
himself  in  opposition  to  the  will  of  God,  came  to  know  good  only  by  the 
loss  of  it,  and  to  know  evil  by  sad  and  bitter  experience.  Since  he  had  for- 
saken God,  the  source  of  life,  he  was  driven  forth  from  "the  tree  of  life," 
and  "the  land  of  life."  "And  God  placed  at  the  east  of  the  garden  of 
Eden  cherubim,  and  a  flaming  sword  which  turned  every  way,  to  keep  the 
way  of  the  tree  of  life. " 

The  common  impression  with  regard  to  this  passage  is  that  the  cherubim 
are  executors  of  the  divine  vengeance,  and  that  they  stand  at  the  gates  of 
Eden  brandishing  the  sword  of  flame,  and  barring  all  return.  This  is  nearly 
the  view  which  Milton  takes  in  the  closing  Hues  of  Paradise  Lost ;  there 
the  sinning  pair, 

"  Hand  in  hand,  with  wandering-  steps  and  slow, 
Through  Eden  take  their  solitary  way," 

"  And  looking-  back,  all  the  eastern  side  behold 
Of  Paradise,  so  late  their  happy  seat, 
Waved  over  by  that  flaming  brand ;  the  gate 
With  dreadful  faces  thronged,  and  fiery  arms." 

But  a  slight  examination  of  the  text  suffices  to  show  that  the  sword  and  the 
cherubim  are  not  necessarily  connected,  as  both  of  them  and  equally  mani- 
festations of  divine  wrath, —  they  are  rather  placed  side  by  side  as  distinct 
and  separate  symbols, — while  the  word  which  describes  their  office  is  a  word 
capable  of  double  meaning,  and  admits  the  supposition  that  the  purpose  of 
the  cherubim,  and  the  purpose  of  the  sword,  were  radically  different. 

There  is  nothing  in  this  text  of  Genesis  to  forbid  our  believing  that  in 
these  symbolic  forms  of  sword  and  cherubim,  stationed  at  the  entrance  of 
Eden,  we  have  an  example  of  that  constant  juxtaposition  of  the  emblems  of 
justice  and  mercy  which  meets  us  throughout  the  Bible.  The  establishment 
of  this,  view  will  occupy  us  further  on.  It  is  sufficient  here  to  say,  that  I 
find  in  the  flaming  sword  the  emblem  of  God's  avenging  justice, —  and  in 
this  its  whole  meaning  is  exhausted.  The  cherubim,  on  the  other  hand, 
were  meant,  as  I  believe,  not  to  terrify,  but  to  inspire  with  hope.  The 
sword  meant  judgment  only, —  the  cherub-forms  meant  mercy.  Even  in 
driving  forth  his  creatures  from  Paradise,  God  did  not  manifest  himself  in 
unmitigated  wrath,  nor  send  them  forth  into  a  rayless  gloom  of  toil  and 
suffering  and  death.  As  our  first  parents  turned  sorrowfully  to  take  one 
last  passionate  look  at  the  home  of  their  innocence,  never  more  to  be  theirs 
on  earth,  they  saw  the  flaming  sword  indeed, —  that  told  them  of  injured 
holiness  forbidding  all  approach, —  but  side  by  side  with  that  flame-like 
sword,  were  the  glorious  figures  of  the  cherubim,  teaching  them  that  the 
Paradise  they  had  lost  should  be  reserved  for  them,  until  they  should  return 
to  it  again,  fitted  for  more  exalted  enjoyments  aud  possessed  of  a  more  per- 
fect nature  than  they  had  before  the  fall.  The  cherubim  were  not  vague 
images  of  terror,  but  symbols  of  mercy  and  restoration,  inspiring  the  exiled 


THE    NATURE    AND    PURPOSE    OF   THE    CHERUBIM.  393 

pair  with  hope  and  courage.  The  sword  was  the  image  of  justice,  keeping 
the  way  of  the  tree  of  life  from  unholy  man.  The  cherubim  were  the 
image  of  mercy,  keeping  the  way  of  the  tree  of  life  for  man,  when  once  he 
should  be  redeemed  and  perfected  by  God's  discipline  of  grace,—  and  hold- 
ing out  to  him,  amidst  his  woe,  the  promise  of  a  Paradise  Kegained. 

This  passage  in  Genesis,  taken  by  itself,  throws  but  little  light  upon  the 
form  of  the  cherubim.  There  is  no  description  of  them, —  it  is  taken  for 
granted,  indeed,  that  the  figures  are  already  known.  The  etymology  of  the 
word  "cherub "  is  involved  in  hopeless  obscurity.  We  are  left  to  the  inti- 
mations of  other  parts  of  Scripture,  therefore,  for  almost  all  our  knowledge 
respecting  them.  There  are,  fortunately,  three  other  places  in  the  sacred 
record  where  these  symbolic  forms  appear.  In  the  25th  chapter  of  Exodus, 
Moses  is  directed  to  make  two  golden  cherubim,  one  at  each  end  of  the 
mercy-seat  in  the  holy  of  holies.  The  two  are  to  look  toward  each  other 
and  toward  the  mercy-seat,  where  the  divine  glory  was  manifested  and 
the  Almighty  made  his  throne.  But  even  in  the  narrative  of  the  book  of 
Exodus,  so  full  of  detailed  description  of  the  tabernacle  and  all  its  furni- 
ture, there  is  almost  complete  silence  respecting  the  object  or  appearance 
of  these  figures  of  gold.  Nothing  is  told  us  of  their  structure,  except  that 
they  had  wings  stretched  forth  on  high  which  covered  the  mercy-seat,  and 
faces  bent  downwards,  it  may  be,  in  the  attitude  of  adoration. 

Pass  on,  then,  from  book  to  book  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  you  find  no 
other  description,  until  you  reach  Ezekiel's  visions  of  what  he  calls  "the 
living  creatures, "  in  the  first  and  tenth  chapters  of  his  prophecy.  He  beholds 
four  glorious  forms,  each  having  four  faces  and  four  wings.  Only  one  of 
these  faces  is  the  face  of  man, — the  three  others  are  the  faces  respectively 
of  an  ox,  a  lion,  and  an  eagle.  Each  one  of  these  living  creatures  has  the 
hands  of  a  man.  Immense  revolving  wheels  are  underneath  each  one,  carry- 
ing them,  with  the  speed  of  a  meteor-flash,  wherever  they  will  go.  These 
four  bear  aloft  a  sapphire  pavement  upon  which  rests  a  throne, — and  upon 
the  throne  sits  God  himself.  This  description  of  the  living  creatures  of 
Ezekiel's  vision  is  connected  with  the  earlier  part  of  our  investigation  by  a 
single  sentence  of  the  prophet,  which  reads  :  "And  I  knew  that  they  were  the 
cherubim," — those  sacred  figures,  namely,  with  which  he  had  been  familiar 
when  performing  his  duties  as  priest  in  the  temple.  The  living  creatures 
and  the  cherubim,  therefore,  are  one  and  the  same. 

From  this  point  we  must  take  a  long  leap  before  we  find  another  reference 
to  them,  and  when  we  find  it,  it  is  the  last  of  all,  and  in  the  last  book  of  the 
Bible.  In  the  Kevelation  of  John ,  we  read  of  the  ' '  four  beasts,  "that  worship 
and  adore  in  the  innermost  circle  of  heaven.  Consult  the  original,  and  you 
find  that  this  word  "beasts"  is  an  utter  mistranslation.  The  word  is  the 
same  as  that  translated  "living  creatures "  in  Ezekiel.  Not  only  is  the  same 
name  applied  to  them,  but  there  is  a  remarkable  similarity  of  description. 
The  same  composite  forms  appear  in  the  Revelation  that  meet  us  in  Ezekiel's 
prophecy,  but  each  has  not  four  faces  as  there.  Yet  each  has  a  face  after 
one  of  the  four  types, —  there  is  one  face  of  an  ox,  one  of  an  eagle,  one  of  a 
lion,  and  one  of  a  man.  Here  too,  the  number  of  wings  is  not  four  but  six. 
In  Ezekiel's  vision,  the  wheels  are  full  of  eyes, —  here  there  are  no  wheels,, 
but  the  living  creatures  themselves,  around  and  within,  are  full  of  eyes. 


394  THE   NATURE    XND   PURPOSE   OF  THE   CHERUBIM. 

There  can  be  little  question,  then,  that  the  cherubim  of  the  tabernacle  and 
temple,  the  living  creatures  of  Ezekiel,  and  the  hymning  "beasts"  of  the 
Revelation,  are  one  and  the  same  symbol. 

From  these  Biblical  descriptions  certain  deductions  may  be  drawn,  which 
may  gradually  open  to  us  the  design  and  nature  of  the  cherubim.  First, 
then,  the  cherubim  are  artificial,  temporary,  symbolic  figures, —  not  actual, 
personal,  eternal  existences.  They  are  not  personal  beings,  of  a  higher 
order  than  man,  ranging  with  archangels  and  the  principalities  of  heaven, — 
but  they  are  rather  types  and  representations  of  spiritual  existence.  This 
we  may  infer  from  the  fact  that  they  assume  different  shapes  and  appear- 
ances, according  to  the  ends  to  be  attained  by  their  appearances,  each  having 
variously  four  faces  or  one  face,  six  wings  or  four  wings,  a  multitude  of  eyes, 
or  none  at  all.  They  appear,  too,  only  at  times  when  God  is  speaking  in  the 
language  of  symbol,  as  in  the  visions  of  John  and  Ezekiel,  over  the  mercy- 
seat,  or  at  the  gates  of  Eden.  They  never  speak  to  men  nor  hold  commu- 
nication with  men.  Their  whole  aim  seems  accomplished,  when  they  have 
once  set  forth  the  idea  of  an  existence  near  to  God,  and  subservient  to  his 
will. 

Secondly,  while  they  are  not  themselves  personal  existences,  they  are  sym- 
bols of  personal  existence  —  symbols  not  of  divine  nor  angelic  perfections, 
but  of  human  nature.  Two  main  facts  make  it  clear  that  they  are  emblems 
of  human  nature.  On  the  one  hand  the  predominating  appearance  of  them, 
as  Ezekiel  tells  us,  is  that  of  a  man.  Their  upright  posture  and  gestures 
indicate  that  the  body  is  human.  There  are  the  hands  of  a  man  under  their 
wings.  In  Revelation,  though  only  one  of  them  had  the  face  of  a  man,  all 
four  had  a  human  body.  In  truth,  all  the  descriptions  agree  with  the  proph- 
et's words:  "And  this  was  their  appearance  —  they  had  the  likeness  of  a 
man. "  Another  fact,  and  one  which  furnishes  the  key  to  the  whole  mystery, 
is  given  us  by  John.  We  read  that  the  four  living  creatures  with  the  four 
and  twenty  elders,  fall  down  before  the  Lamb,  having  every  one  of  them 
harps  and  golden  bowls  full  of  odors, — and  thus  prostrate  before  the  throne, 
they  sing  this  new  song  :  ' '  Thou  art  worthy  to  take  the  book  and  to  open 
the  seals  thereof,  for  thou  wast  slain  and  hast  redeemed  us  to  God  by  thy 
blood,  and  hast  made  us  unto  our  God  kings  and  priests,  and  we  shall  reign 
on  the  earth."  This  is  the  song  of  the  redeemed.  Can  it  be  the  song  of 
angels  or  archangels  ?  Has  Christ  been  slain  for  the  redemption  of  angels  ? 
Let  the  author  of  the  epistle  to  the  Hebrews  answer  :  "  Verily,  lie  took  not 
on  him  the  nature  of  angels,  but  he  took  on  him  the  seed  of  Abraham. " 
Moreover  we  have  only  to  look  a  few  verses  further  in  the  Revelation,  and 
we  find  that  the  song  of  the  angels  is  a  totally  distinct  and  separate  one  — 
a  song  in  which  there  is  no  note  of  praise  like  this  :  "  Thou  hast  redeemed 
us  to  God  by  thy  blood,  and  hast  made  us  kings  and  priests  unto  God,  and 
we  shall  reign  on  the  earth."  This  is  the  new  song  of  redeemed  humanity, 
which  "none  can  learn  except  those  who  have  been  redeemed  from  the 
earth." 

In  this  reference  to  the  book  of  Revelation,  I  have  followed  the  Author- 
ized Version,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  Revised  Version  omits  the  word 
*  'us,"  and  substitutes  in  italics  the  word  "men" — a  change  which  might 
intimate  that  the  cherubim  do  not  identify  themselves  with  redeemed 


THE    NATURE    AND    PURPOSE    OF   THE   CHERUBIM.  395 

humanity.  The  reading  of  the  Authorized  Version  has  better  textual  sup- 
port, and  has  the  advantage  of  assigning  an  object  to  the  verb  "redeemed," 
while  the  text  followed  by  the  Bevised  Version  gives  the  verb  no  expressed 
object,  but  is  obliged,  in  a  somewhat  unnatural  way,  to  supply  one.  I 
regard  the  view  I  have  propounded  as  the  most  probable  one,  apart  from 
the  testimony  of  this  particular  passage, —  with  this  passage,  it  appears  to 
me  to  have  the  force  of  demonstration.  Over  against  the  view  we  adopt, 
however, —  the  view  that  the  cherubim  are  symbols  of  redeemed  humanity 

there  stands  another  view  which  I  must  mention,  this,  namely,  that  the 

cherubim  are  symbols  of  nature,  as  pervaded  by  the  divine  energy  and 
as  subordinated  to  the  divine  purpose.  Those  who  hold  this  view  would 
say  that  in  the  cherubim  the  world  of  nature,  including  both  the  material 
and  the  brute  creation,  is  represented  as  praising  God.  I  am  persuaded  that 
this  view  may  be  combined  with  the  one  I  have  been  advocating,  and  only 
by  so  enlarging  it  can  it  be  made  consistent  or  intelligible.  For  how  can 
nature  ever  find  a  voice,  except  in  redeemed  humanity  ?  Man,  as  having  a 
physical  organism,  is  a  part  of  nature  ;  as  having  a  soul,  he  emerges  from 
nature,  and  can  speak,  as  nature  of  herself  never  could.  Only  through  man, 
is  nature,  otherwise  blind  and  dumb  and  dead,  able  to  appreciate  and  express 
the  Creator's  glory.  The  cherubim  then  are  symbols  of  redeemed  man,  in 
his  two-fold  capacity  of  image  of  God  and  as  priest  of  nature.  Not  in  soul 
only,  but  in  body  also,  does  he  speak  forth  God's  praise,  and  only  as 
redeemed  humanity  thus  praises  God  does  the  material  universe  give  glory 
to  him  who  made  it. 

But,  thirdly,  the  cherubim  are  emblems  of  human  nature,  not  in  its  pres- 
ent stage  of  development,  but  possessed  of  all  its  original  perfections.  For 
this  reason  the  most  perfect  animal  forms  are  combined  with  that  of  man. 
The  Jewish  proverb  ran  :  "  There  are  four  highest  in  the  world  —  the  lion 
among  the  beasts,  the  ox  among  cattle,  the  eagle  among  birds,  man 
among  all  creatures, — but  God  is  supreme  over  all. "  These  cherubic  forms 
combine  the  excellencies  of  these  four  chiefs  of  God's  terrestrial  creation. 
Before  the  fall,  it  may  be,  man  possessed  these  excellencies  in  a  far  higher 
degree,  and  so  was  lord  of  the  animal  creation,  himself  being  the  climax  of 
creaturely  perfection.  But  his  sin  deprived  him  of  this  high  place.  The 
animal  world  emancipated  itself  from  his  dominion,  and  now  the  ox,  the 
lioii,  the  eagle,  all  have  powers  which  man  has  not  in  the  same  perfection. 
"We  see  then  that  though  the  essential  nature  of  man  is  highest  of  all,  yet  it 
might  be  greatly  elevated  and  ennobled  by  superadding  to  it  the  qualities 
typified  in  these  animal  forms.  To  symbolize  perfected  human  nature  every 
creature  perfection  on  earth  must  be  comprehended  and  combined  with  his 
own.  To  superadd  to  his  own  perfections  those  of  the  animal  kingdom  is 
not  to  degrade  but  to  exalt  him  —  to  picture  him  indeed  in  that  original 
supremacy  in  which  "all  things  are  put  under  his  feet,  all  sheep  and  oxen, 
yea,  and  the  beasts  of  the  field,  the  fowl  of  the  air,  and  the  fish  of  the  sea, 
and  whatsoever  passeth  through  the  paths  of  the  seas." 

Add  then  to  human  nature  all  the  lionlike  qualities  —  kinglike  majesty 
and  peerless  strength,  undaunted  courage  and  glowing  zeal,  innate  magna- 
nimity and  nobleness  of  spirit,  royal  superiority  to  the  petty  and  the  mean, 
secure  and  triumphant  carelessness  of  every  foe.  Take  your  weak  and  timid 


396  THE   NATURE   AND   PURPOSE   OF   THE   CHERUBIM. 

Christian  and  endow  him  with  these  qualities,  and  lo  !  a  Knox  or  a  Luther, 
The  lion  is  the  king  among  beasts.  Engraved  on  the  throne  of  Solomon,  it 
has  been  the  emblem  of  royalty  ever  since.  What  does  it  mean  here  among 
these  cherubic  forms,  but  an  intimation  of  the  kingly  dignity  and  courage 
and  strength  that  belong  to  the  unf alien  sons  of  God. — What  now  are  the 
qualities  of  the  ox  ?  W e  at  once  count  among  them,  patient  labor,  produc- 
tive energy,  meek  submission  to  the  yoke,  unwearied  and  useful  service. 
Hence  the  ox  was  placed  higher  than  the  horse,  and  in  Egypt  the  home  and 
mother-land  of  symbols,  was  even  made  an  object  of  worship.  Take  now 
your  vacillating,  inconstant,  labor-hating,  self-willed,  useless  Christian, — 
add  to  him  the  ox-like  qualities, — lo  !  you  have  a  Howard  or  a  Harlan  Page. 
And  what  is  the  meaning  of  this  symbol  here,  if  not  that  our  human  nature, 
as  one  of  its  proper  perfections,  must  possess  the  spirit  of  humble  yet  rest- 
less service  which  they  display  who  rest  not  night  or  day  in  their  heavenly 
service  of  ministration  and  of  worship  ?  —  Then,  too,  the  eagle,  marvelous 
for  vision  and  for  flight, — able,  according  to  the  ancient  notions,  to  see  fish 
in  the  sea  from  the  greatest  heights,  and  to  gaze  undazzled  on  the  sun.  The 
epithet  eagle-eyed  is  too  graphic  to  need  an  explanation,  even  to  the  com- 
monest mind.  In  the  Eevelation,  the  fourth  face  was  that  of  a  * '  flying 
eagle,"  bringing  to  our  thoughts  the  ancient  declaration  that  no  bird  can 
fly  so  far  or  so  high.  How  vivid  an  image  of  an  active,  vigilant,  fervent, 
soaring  spirit,  prompting  the  readiest  and  swiftest  execution  of  the  divine 
behests,  and  lifting  the  soul  up  from  the  low  concerns  of  sense  to  the  insight 
and  contemplation  of  divine  and  spiritual  glories.  Take  now  your  earthly- 
minded,  short-sighted,  narrow-hearted  Christian,  and  add  to  him  these  qual- 
ities of  spiritual  flight  and  vision, —  and  lo  !  a  St.  John  or  a  Fe'ne'lon  stands 
before  you.  What  does  the  eagle  symbolize,  but  the  fact  that  to  human 
nature,  in  its  truest,  noblest  development,  belong  an  insight  into  divine 
realities  and  a  soaring  of  the  spirit  into  the  regions  of  divine  communion, 
of  which  we  get  here  only  the  rare  and  rapturous  foretastes.  Take  man  — 
even  redeemed  man  in  his  present  state  —  and  give  him  the  qualities  typified 
by  all  these  animal  forms, —  then  add  reason,  conscience,  will,  affection, 
raised  each  to  their  highest  powers  attainable, —  and  how  magnificent  is  the 
sum  ! 

But,  fourthly,  these  cherubic  forms  represent  not  merely  material  or 
earthly  perfections,  but  are  emblems  of  human  nature  spiritualized  and 
sanctified.  It  is  important  to  observe  that  the  term  "living  creatures"  is 
used  more  than  thirty  times  in  Ezekiel  and  Eevelation  to  describe  them. 
We  cannot  fail  to  see  that  life  in  its  highest  state  of  power  and  activity  is 
indicated  as  their  essential  characteristic.  And  the  descriptions  of  the  pro- 
phetic visions  bear  out  this  inference.  They  are  creatures  instinct  with  life. 
The  wheels  in  Ezekiel,  and  their  whole  bodies  in  Revelation,  are  full  of  eyes 
—  the  symbol  of  intelligent  life.  "The  spirit  of  the  living  creature,"  we 
read,  "was  in  the  wheels," — they  communicated  life  to  things  else  inani- 
mate. We  see  in  them  a  quick  and  restless  activity,—  they  run  and  return 
with  lightning  speed, —  their  wings,  ever  outstretched,  indicate  incessant 
motion.  They  represent  that  humanity  in  which  Christ's  purpose  is  accom- 
plished, that  it  might  have  life  and  have  it  more  abundantly.  Yet  this  life 
is  not  physical  alone  or  chiefly  —  but  spiritual.  It  is  holy  life  as  opposed 


THE    NATURE   AND    PURPOSE   OF   THE   CHERUBIM.  397 

to  sin,  the  death  of  the  soul.  They  made  no  crooked  paths  for  their  feet, 
but  every  one,  as  the  prophet  tells  us,  went  straight  forward.  And  they  had 
no  need  to  turn,  in  order  to  move  in  the  path  of  rectitude,  for  there  were 
wheels  beneath  each  one  which  crossed  one  another  transversely,  so  that,  in 
whichever  direction  the  cherub  would  move,  in  that  direction  the  swiftly 
revolving  wheels  were  ready  to  carry  him.  They  move  too  on  God's  errands, 
obeying  instantly  the  voice  from  above  the  throned  firmament  of  sapphire 
blue.  If  they  represent  human  nature,  it  must  be  a  human  nature  perfectly 
subject  to  the  divine  will,  and  executing  the  divine  commands.  We  cannot 
bring  before  our  imagination  the  scene  in  the  Apocalypse  and  the  unceasing 
worship  of  the  divine  perfections,  nor  the  scene  in  the  prophet's  vision, 
where  the  reflection  from  them  of  the  divine  glory  is  intolerable  to  mortal 
eyes,  without  seeing  in  them  the  symbols  of  a  human  nature  not  only  restored 
to  its  original  purity,  but  possessed  at  length  of  a  holiness  and  beauty  far 
surpassing  that  which  was  lost  by  the  fall. 

Fifthly,  these  figures  set  forth,  in  type  and  shadow,  a  human  nature  exalted 
to  be  the  dwelling  place  of  God.  For  the  cherubim  dwell  in  the  immediate 
presence  of  God.  Not  only  was  the  tabernacle  God's  habitation  and  their 
habitation,  and  so  the  whole  of  the  curtains  forming  the  interior  of  the  tent 
were  interwoven  with  cherubic  figures,  but  they  dwelt  close  to  the  very 
throne  of  God,  on  the  mercy-seat.  There,  between  the  cherubim,  was  the 
seat  of  the  commonwealth  of  Israel.  There  God  manifested  his  glory. 
There  was  the  place  of  the  "Shekinah."  And  there,  in  the  very  blaze  of 
the  divine  glory,  and  with  faces  turned  towards  it  as  witnesses  of  the  divine 
glory,  were  the  cherubim.  Aye,  they  not  only  dwell  with  God  and  are  eye 
witnesses  of  his  majesty,  but  God  dwells  in  them.  The  living  creatures  in 
Ezekiel  are  pervaded,  not  with  a  self -fed  and  self-originated  life,  but  it  is 
God's  life  that  flows  through  them  and  manifests  itself  in  them.  And  the 
cherubim  of  the  Revelation  are  not  of  any  outer  circle  of  worshipers,  but 
appear  in  the  midst  of  the  throne.  What  is  this,  but  the  glorious  prophecy 
of  a  human  nature  perfectly  restored  and  transcendently  exalted, —  made 
one  again  with  God  and  made  the  dwelling  place  of  God, —  rescued  forever 
from  the  curse  and  stain  of  sin,  filled  once  more  with  the  divine  life,  seated 
on  the  throne  with  Christ,  clothed  with  a  glory  and  beauty  that  reflect  the 
glory  and  beauty  of  God,  and  so,  endowed  with  privileges  and  elevated  to 
dignities  infinitely  greater  than  those  over  whose  loss  the  race  of  man  has 
shed  so  many  and  so  bitter  tears  ! 

Apply  these  conclusions  now  to  the  passage  before  us.  What  was  the 
special  meaning  of  the  cherubim  at  the  gates  of  Eden,  when  man  was  driven 
out  for  his  sin  ?  I  answer,  they  taught  our  first  parents,  and  they  teach  us, 
that  Paradise,  though  lost,  is  still  reserved  for  man.  The  cherubim  were 
stationed  there  to  occupy,  until  man  should  be  ready  to  return.  Just  that 
imagery  was  employed  which  would  waken  in  him  a  just  and  true  view  of 
God.  Terror  and  repulsion  were  not  the  emotions  which  God  desired  in 
this  child  just  banished  from  his  Father's  house.  The  sword  was  needed 
there,  to  vindicate  God's  holiness  and  show  the  guilt  of  sin,  but  an  image  of 
mercy  and  hope  was  needed  also.  When  Adam  looked  back  towards  the 
entrance  of  his  lost  Eden,  the  sword  indeed  awed  him,  but  these  living 
forms,  made  in  his  own  mould,  yet  endowed  with  exalted  beauties  and  capa- 


398  THE    NATURE   AND   PURPOSE    OF   THE    CHERUBIM. 

bilities,  these  indicated  to  him  that  Paradise  was  not  blotted  out  of  existence, 
nor  given  to  beings  of  another  order  and  sphere,  but  was  still  reserved  for 
him  in  God's  mercy.  Earthly  forms  like  his  own  still  held  it.  The  region 
of  life  was  not  lost  to  man  forever.  Human  nature  was  yet  destined  to 
regain  the  lost  Paradise. 

Again,  these  figures  taught  Adam,  and  the  early  races  of  mankind,  that 
Paradise  could  only  be  regained  by  man's  return  to  holiness  and  divine 
communion.  Hence  the  forms  were  not  common  forms  of  humanity,  but 
ideal  forms,  exalted  representations  of  human  nature,  fit  to  dwell  in  closest 
intimacy  with  God,  pervaded  by  his  life  and  reflecting  his  glory.  The  great 
lesson  was  taught,  that  holiness  must  come  before  blessedness,  and  that  man 
shall  regain  his  lost  estate  when  he  has  nothing  to  fear  from  the  divine 
justice.  The  promise  of  restoration  shall  be  fulfilled,  not  by  the  surrender 
of  the  divine  righteousness,  but  by  providing  for  its  exercise  while  the 
creature  is  notwithstanding  saved.  In  other  words,  salvation  is  from  God, 
yet  salvation  shall  not  obscure,  but  glorify  and  honor,  the  divine  justice. 

With  this  symbolic  promise,  too,  of  a  rightly  restored  and  sanctified 
human  nature,  was  combined  the  promise  that  the  Paradise  Regained 
should  be  more  glorious  than  the  Paradise  Lost.  Not  only  should  there 
be  life  instead  of  death,  fellowship  instead  of  estrangement,  love  instead 
of  hostility,  purity  in  place  of  pollution,  but  all  these  blessings  should  be 
large  and  abundant  beyond  all  human  experience  or  comprehension.  The 
recovery  should  not  be  partial,  but  complete  and  more  than  complete, — 
nay,  the  powers  of  sin  should  be  so  vanquished,  and  the  plans  of  the  adver- 
sary so  outwitted,  that  God's  grace  should  get  greater  glory  and  the  human 
race  greater  blessedness,  than  could  have  been  without  the  fall.  So  not 
man's  efforts  or  deserts,  but  God's  almighty  and  conquering  grace,  shall  be 
magnified  in  the  admission  of  the  creature  to  a  closer  relation  to  God,  and 
a  participation  in  grander  sights  and  ministrations  than  were  ever  known 
under  the  original  constitution  of  things.  How  much  of  all  this  symbolism 
was  understood  by  our  first  parents,  we  cannot  know  ;  but  this  we  may 
believe,  that  in  the  light  of  the  promise,  and  under  the  scrutiny  of  keener 
intuitions  than  ours,  both  they  and  the  earliest  members  of  a  believing  seed 
found  in  it  a  hope  and  comfort  which  mere  words  could  never  have  given. 
Aye,  I  love  to  fancy,  that  under  the  inward  teachings  of  God's  spirit,  the 
first  Adam  amid  his  sorrow  and  weariness  had  some  glimpses,  at  least,  of 
the  land  of  rest  which  only  the  second  Adam  fully  revealed  to  the  world, 
and  that  in  spirit,  if  not  in  words,  he  sang  : 

"  There  happier  bowers  than  Eden's  bloom, 

Nor  sin  nor  sorrow  know  ; 
Blest  seats,—  through  rude  and  stormy  seas, 
I  onward  press  to  you ! " 

Yet  doubtless  much  was  left  to  be  unfolded  in  the  progress  of  God's  reve- 
lation. As  man  comes  nearer  and  nearer  to  occupying  the  high  position 
typified  by  the  cherubim,  his  knowledge  of  divine  mysteries  grows  also. 
And  this  growing  nearness  to  the  divine,  and  consequent  nearness  to  the 
Paradisaic  state,  seems  to  be  symbolized  in  the  varying  relations  of  man  to 
these  cherubic  forms.  At  the  expulsion  from  Eden,  the  region  of  holy  life 
was  shut  to  men  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  none  could  approach  the  cherubim. 


THE    NATURE    AND    PURPOSE    OF   THE    CHERUBIM. 

But  in  the  tabernacle,  the  human  and  earthly  won  a  greater  nearness  to  the 
divine,  and  in  the  person  of  the  high  priest,  men  could  approach  to  the  very 
feet  of  the  cherubim  of  glory.  In  Ezekiel,  the  favorite  of  God  is  admitted 
to  a  still  grander  and  more  open  view  of  God's  glory.  In  the  early  visions 
of  the  Apocalypse,  man  has  reached  the  very  place  of  the  cherubim, —  the 
type  and  the  antitype  meet  and  mingle,  —  the  elders  who  are  the  select 
ones  of  the  church,  and  the  cherubim  which  only  symbolize  the  church,  are 
together  in  the  midst  of  the  throne.  But  now,  when  man  once  fallen  has 
been  led  by  the  Lamb  to  the  very  height  and  pinnacle  of  created  being,  the 
cherubim,  having  served  their  purpose  as  foreshadowings  of  that  exalted 
state,  disappear  and  vanish  away.  In  the  last  visions  of  Revelation,  amid 
the  most  glowing  descriptions  of  the  heavenly  glories  and  the  heavenly 
inhabitants,  these  symbolic  forms  are  seen  no  longer.  Since  man  has  at 
length  reentered  the  long  lost  Eden,  and  now  eats  of  the  tree  of  life  which 
yields  twelve  manner  of  fruits  and  whose  leaves  are  for  the  healing  of  the 
nations,  the  cherubim  keep  the  way  of  the  tree  of  life  no  longer,  for  Para- 
dise is  regained,  and  the  promise  is  fulfilled. 

These  mysterious  forms  were  indeed  but  symbols  —  symbols  that  were 
lower  and  less  than  the  realities  they  symbolized.  It  would  be  childish  to 
imagine,  then,  that  they  illustrate  to  us  what  our  future  bodies  will  be.  We 
are  not  to  have  forms  like  those  of  the  cherubim,  but  we  are  to  have  all  the 
glorious  qualities  of  heart  and  mind  and  soul  which  they  typified,  and  these 
very  figures  may  assure  us  that  whatever  may  be  lacking  to  us  here  will  be 
supplied  there.  How  grand  an  object  of  contemplation  is  the  glory  that 
yet  waits  to  be  revealed  !  That  heavenly  knowledge,  power,  holiness, — 
that  fullness  of  spiritual  life  of  which  the  kingly  energy  of  the  lion,  the 
unwearied  service  of  the  ox,  the  soaring  flight  of  the  eagle,  are  but  poor 
symbols, —  that  nearness  to  God  and  that  sight  of  his  glory  which  John  and 
Ezekiel  faintly  pictured,  are  not  these  the  only  fit  objects  of  ambition?  Do 
they  not  dwarf  our  highest  conceptions  of  human  destiny  ?  Yes,  it  was  for 
this  imperial  greatness  that  man  was  made,  and  if  we  forget  it,  we  forget 
it  to  our  sorrow.  Earthly  glories  fade,  but  the  glory  of  a  human  soul  that 
has  grown  up  in  all  things  into  Christ  fades  never.  Who  of  us  shall  be 
kings  and  priests  unto  God  ?  Who  of  us  shall  shine  as  the  brightness  of 
the  sun  forever  and  ever  ?  Who  shall  cry,  like  the  burning  ones  before  the 
throne  :  "  Holy  !  holy  !  holy  !  "  Ah,  it  shall  not  be  the  great,  the  rich,  the 
proud,  the  wise,  of  the  earth,  unless  they  can  sing  before  the  Lamb,  "  Thou 
hast  redeemed  us  to  God  by  thy  blood. "  Those  only  shall  reach  the  sum- 
mit of  heavenly  glory  and  felicity,  who  have  bowed  here  in  humility  and 
penitence  at  the  foot  of  the  Savior's  cross.  Who  of  us  shall  dwell  forever 
with  God, — and  who  of  us  shall  dwell  in  everlasting  burnings  ?  Both  dwell- 
ing-places are  offered  to  us,—  God  offers  one,—  the  devil  offers  the  other. 
Choose  ye  this  day  ! 


XL. 

WOMAN'S  PLACE  AND  WORK. 


This  word  of  God,  which  comes  echoing  down  to  us  from  our  long-lost 
Paradise,  is  the  key-word  to  the  whole  enigma  of  woman's  place  aiid  work. 
It  was  uttered  before  temptation  and  sin  had  disordered  human  relations, 
before  selfishness  and  transgression  had  blinded  man  to  the  natural  rights 
of  woman,  before  the  curse  had  turned  associations  of  joy  into  a  source  of 
bitterness  and  trial.  It  tells  us  what  God  intended  woman  to  be,  what  he 
originally  fitted  her  to  be,  what  it  is  her  true  nature  to  be,  what  she  would 
have  been  if  the  race  had  not  fallen,  what  she  will  be  in  just  the  degree  to 
which  the  race  is  restored.  And  if  our  highest  glory  in  this  earthly  life  is 
to  be  what  God  intended  us  to  be,  and  to  accomplish  the  work  which  he 
sent  us  into  the  world  to  do,  it  is  certainly  wise  for  woman  to  compare  her 
own  nature  with  the  divine  descriptions  of  it,  and  strive  to  realize  to  the 
utmost  the  ideal  of  her  character  and  work  that  exists  in  the  mind  of  God. 

What  then  was  the  Paradisaic  state  of  woman  ?  I  answer  :  she  was  the 
"help  meet  of  man,"  or  as  it  is  more  accurately  translated  "a  helper  over 
against  him," — evidently  signifying  a  helper  suitable  for  him,  corresponding 
to  him,  one  like  him  in  person,  disposition,  affection,  united  to  him  by  the 
tenderest  ties,  always  present  before  him  to  aid,  sympathize,  and  comfort, 
and  yet  not  the  same  but  different,  the  counterpart,  the  complement,  the 
converse  of  himself.  And  if  you  read  onward  a  few  verses,  you  find  that, 
when  God  brings  to  man  his  new  created  companion  and  bestows  her  upon 
him  in  the  bonds  of  the  marriage  covenant,  Adam  receives  her,  not  as  his 
slave,  not  as  his  fellow  simply,  but  as  a  part  of  himself,  giving  her  a  name 
taken  from  his  own  name,  and  engaging  to  cleave  unto  her  in  a  perpetual 
union  of  sympathy  and  affection.  In  these  simple  statements,  we  have  the 
whole  Scriptural  doctrine  of  woman's  proper  and  normal  condition.  And 
that  doctrine  may  be  summed  up  in  three  particulars  :  1st,  Equality  with 
man  in  nature ;  2ndly,  Subordination  to  man  in  office  ;  3rdly,  Union  with 
man  in  life  and  work. 

Let  me  make  these  three  particulars  somewhat  plainer.  First,  Woman  is 
the  equal  of  man  in  nature.  She  has  the  same  humanity, — the  same  divine 
hand  formed  her.  She  is  not  the  creature  of  man,  but  the  creature  of  God, 
—  and  God  set  her  over  against  man  as  his  counterpart,  his  complement,  his 
second  self.  The  words  "over  against  man,"  while  they  imply  that  she  is 
not  the  same  with  man,  but  different  from  him,  just  as  plainly  imply  that 
her  nature  is  in  no  respect  inferior  to  his.  The  equality  between  them  is  an 


*  A  sermon  preached  in  the  First  Baptist  Church,  Rochester,  July  21, 1878,  on  the  text, 
Genesis  2  : 18  — "  And  the  Lord  God  said :  It  is  not  good  that  the  man  should  be  alone ;  I 
will  make  him  an  help  meet  for  him." 

400 


401 

equality  of  value,  but  not  an  equality  of  identity.  Secondly,  She  is  subor-/ 
dinate  to  man  in  office.  She  is  to  be  helper,  not  principal.  Therefore  man 
has  precedence  in  the  order  of  creation, —  woman  is  made  of  man,  and  toV 
supply  the  felt  need  of  man.  The  race,  therefore,  is  called  the  race  of  man,  j 
not  the  race  of  woman.  Man,  superior  not  at  all  in  his  essential  nature,  has  \ 
yet  a  superiority  in  office.  His  it  is  to  subdue  the  world  and  govern  it, — aud 
woman's  office  is  the  subordinate  one  of  being  man's  helper,  man's  furnisher, 
man's  inspirer.  But  thirdly,  This  subordination  of  woman  to  man  in  office, 
works  no  degradation  to  her,  but  constitutes  her  truest  glory.  For,  in  her 
office  of  helper,  she  is  no  servant.  She  stands,  not  beneath,  but  side  by  side. 
Aye,  she  is  one  with  him  in  life  and  work  —  her  equal  influence  penetrating 
and  pervading  his  —  her  soul  possessing  and  appropriating  all  his  joys  and 
all  his  conquests.  The  two  are  one.  They  each  give  up  personal  prefer- 
ences for  the  common  weal.  The  personal  liberty  of  the  man  is  restrained 
as  much  as  that  of  the  woman, — neither  can  go  where  they  like.  The  man 
serves  the  woman,  as  really  as  the  woman  serves  the  man, —  there  is  no 
slavery,  for  when  was  it  heard  of  that  a  master  worked  for  the  support  of 
his  slave,  and  not  the  slave  for  the  support  of  his  master  ?  Man  gives  her 
his  name  and  they  are  one  in  law  thenceforth,  not  because  of  any  trampling 
under  foot  of  her  rights,  or  annihilation  of  her  personality,  but  because  she 
is  actually  one  with  her  husband,  having  her  interests  common  with  his. 
Woman  was  once  in  man  as  part  of  his  very  body, —  and  that  original  unity 
is  shadowed  forth  in  the  oneness  of  their  life  and  work. 

There  is  a  passage  in  the  New  Testament  which  throws  great  light  upon 
the  true  character  of  this  relation,  and  illustrates  very  perfectly  every  one  of 
the  three  particulars  we  have  been  considering.  It  is  found  in  the  eleventh 
chapter  of  First  Corinthians,  where  the  apostle  is  speaking  of  the  modesty 
and  subordination  proper  to  the  female  sex.  What  limitations  must  be  put 
upon  the  literal  interpretation  of  his  command  to  the  women  of  his  day,  I 
shall  indicate  presently.  This  passage  is  not  affected  by  them.  "Here  I 
would  have  you  know,"  he  says,  "that  the  head  of  every  man  is  Christ; 
and  the  head  of  the  woman  is  the  man ;  and  the  head  of  Christ  is  God." 
Observe  how  an  analogy  is  drawn  between  the  relation  of  man  to  woman, 
and  the  relation  of  God  to  Christ.  Between  God  and  Christ  there  is  perfect 
equality  in  point  of  nature, —  but,  in  his  office  of  incarnate  Kedeemer  and 
Savior,  Christ  was  subordinate  to  the  Father.  Did  this  subordination  of  the 
Son  destroy  their  union  or  the  community  of  interest  between  them  ?  Hear 
the  Savior  say  :  "I  and  my  Father  are  one."  So  it  is  the  lot  of  woman, 
that  being  equal  to  man  in  point  of  nature,  she  comes,  after  the  example  of 
the  Son  of  God,  to  hold  an  office  of  subordination.  Not  to  be  ministered 
unto,  but  to  minister,  she  comes, —  in  all  manner  of  helpful  service  proving 
herself  to  be  one  with  him,  and  in  this  humbling  of  herself  finding  herself 
most  truly  exalted. 

You  have  seen  that  I  have  taken  God's  words  with  regard  to  woman  before 
the  fall,  as  the  standard  of  appeal  in  our  discussion  of  her  true  position.  I 
do  not  consider  that  the  curse  pronounced  upon  woman  has  anything  to  do 
with  determining  her  rightful  place  and  work.  Even  if  that  curse  were  an 
arbitrary  decree  of  God,  as  some  so  unjustly  interpret  it,  it  would  be  no 
business  of  ours  to  execute  it.  If  the  slave-holder's  ancient  but  baseless 
26 


402  WOMAN'S  PLACE* AND  WORK. 

notion  that  "Cursed  be  Canaan  "  referred  to  the  negro  race,  what  right  did 
it  give  him  to  kidnap  and  enslave  them  ?  But  none  of  God's  curses  are 
arbitrary  decrees, —  they  are  only  prophecies  of  what  will  be,  and  must  be,, 
the  natural  results  of  sin.  And  when  God  uttered  those  words  of  doom  to 
woman  :  "  I  will  greatly  multiply  thy  sorrow  and  thy  conception  ;  in  sorrow 
thou  shalt  bring  forth  children  ;  and  thy  desire  shall  be  unto  thy  husband, 
and  he  shah1  rule  over  thee,"  this  so-called  curse  was  but  the  pitiful  fore- 
warning of  a  long  course  of  tyranny  and  oppression,  in  which  alienation 
from  God  should  bring  forth  its  natural  fruits,  and  the  female  sex  should 
find  their  pleading  love  and  their  longings  for  sympathy  and  their  aspira- 
tions for  better  things  met  too  often  by  imperious  contempt  and  sensual 
degradations.  In  how  many  a  land  and  age  these  predictions  of  the  conse- 
quences of  transgression  have  been  verified  !  How  often  women  have  been 
bought  and  sold  like  cattle  ;  how  often  their  very  sex  has  been  turned  into 
a  reproach  and  stigma ;  how  often  it  has  been  even  denied  that  they  had 
souls  !  But  this  is  not  the  sentence  of  Christianity  or  the  Bible.  These 
recognize  often  the  existence  of  the  customs  of  the  day,  and  dissuade  men 
from  hasty  attempts  to  break  them  up,  lest  the  evil  be  greater  than  the  good. 
So  Paul  exhorted  the  Eomans  to  obey  Nero  instead  of  rising  in  insurrection, 
and  commanded  the  Corinthian  women  not  to  violate  the  general  sense  of 
propriety  in  the  community  around  them, —  but  these  exhortations  ceased 
to  be  binding  when  the  circumstances  which  called  them  forth  had  changed. 
Both  Christianity  and  the  Bible  bring  in  their  train  the  enfranchisement  of 
woman  and  the  lifting  of  the  curse.  As  the  curse  is  only  a  prediction  of 
the  natural  consequences  of  sin,  wherever  the  gospel  puts  an  end  to  men's 
supreme  selfishness  and  love  of  power  there  woman  escapes  from  her  state 
of  slavish  subjection,  and  is  recognized  as  the  equal  and  companion  of  man. 
The  Hindu  woman  never  dares  to  sit  at  the  same  table  with  her  lord,  nor 
to  walk  by  his  side.  Her  husband  and  her  sons  must  eat  before  her  while 
she  serves,  and  she  must  walk  like  a  slave  behind  them.  Even  the  Jewish 
Rabbins  said,  "  No  man  ever  salutes  a  woman,"  and  "  He  that  teaches  his 
daughter  in  the  law  is  as  one  who  plays  the  fool. "  Let  the  women  of  our  day 
thank  God  for  the  Bible,  and  for  what  it  has  wrought.  Who  can  doubt  that 
it  is  to  accomplish  much  more,  not  only  in  heathen,  but  in  Christian  lands, 
until  woman  reaches  the  height  for  which  God  made  her,  and  becomes  in 
the  noblest  sense  the  equal  and  helper  of  man  ?  The  gospel  of  Christ  is  to 
abolish  the  curse  at  last,  and  we  are  to  do  our  part  in  hastening  its  abolition. 
With  this  view,  it  is  our  duty  to  recognize  and  put  away  all  those  relics 
of  ancient  injustice  in  our  laws  and  manners  which  deprive  woman  of  her 
just  consideration  and  of  the  just  rewards  of  her  labor.  In  all  power  there 
is  a  natural  tendency  to  abuse,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  man's 
power  over  woman  has  been  often  very  shamefully  and  injuriously  exercised. 
It  is  often  the  case  that  the  laws  of  a  country  are  palpably  unjust,  simply 
because  they  reflect  the  manners  and  opinions  of  an  age  gone  by.  There  are 
certain  provisions  in  the  laws  of  many  of  our  states  which  unfairly  deprive 
the  wife  or  widow  of  the  control  of  her  property  or  her  children.  The 
public  sentiment  of  the  day,  when  once  called  to  act  upon  these  incongrui- 
ties in  our  legislation,  almost  invariably  rectifies  them.  There  are  other 
disabilities  which  women  labor  under  with  regard  to  education, — the  highest 


WOMAN'S  PLACE  AND  WORK.  403 

facilities  of  culture  have  not  been  offered  to  them  as  freely  as  to  men.  There 
are  occupations  closed  to  them  now,  which  might  well  be  opened  to  them. 
Steam-working  machinery  has  taken  much  work  out  of  their  hands,  and 
nothing  has  yet  been  put  in  its  place.  The  result  is  that  the  labor  of  women 
is  confined  too  much  to  a  narrow  range,  with  all  the  disadvantages  of  im- 
mense competition  within  it.  Now,  in  all  these  things,  our  human  as  well 
as  our  Christian  feeling  carries  us  with  the  advocates  of  reform.  We  thank 
them  for  bringing  these  things  to  our  notice, —  we  bid  them  God-speed  in 
their  work, —  we  assure  them  of  our  sympathy  and  aid  in  every  effort  to 
secure  to  woman  the  possession  of  her  own  property  and  earnings,  the 
development  of  her  powers  by  the  highest  education,  the  opening  to  her 
of  every  field  of  labor  or  trust  which  she  is  fitted  to  occupy,  whether  it  be 
literature  or  art,  brokerage  or  medicine,  teaching  or  book-keeping,  and  the 
right  to  the  same  wages  which  men  receive  for  the  same  work.  There  can 
be  little  doubt  that  many  women  have  peculiar  gifts  for  work  that  hitherto 
has  been  interdicted  to  them.  There  are  some,  unbound  by  family  ties, 
who  may  do  the  world  more  good  by  their  public  teaching,  than  they  could 
do  by  confining  themselves  to  the  common  work  of  women.  Exceptional 
as  these  cases  are,  and  repugnant  to  our  tastes  as  their  course  may  sometimes 
be,  we  have  no  right  to  pass  harsh  judgment  upon  them,  so  long  as  they  do 
not  manifestly  violate  the  rules  of  modesty  and  subordination  laid  down  in 
the  word  of  God.  We  may  not  yet  know  all  that  is  in  woman  to  do.  Let 
us  be  willing  to  tolerate  many  a  failure,  and  to  look  very  kindly  upon  the 
experiments  she  makes,  for  only  thus  can  many  learn  where  their  real 
strength  lies  and  what  is  their  true  vocation.  Let  us  be  willing  to  accord 
to  woman  the  fullest  possible  development  of  her  powers,  and  the  widest 
scope  for  their  exercise,  consistently  with  the  nature  and  place  that  God  has 
given  her. 

But  while  we  acknowledge  that  the  womanly  nature  is  broader  than  has 
been  supposed,  and  that  it  deserves  the  noblest  opportunities  for  cultivation 
and  use,  are  there  no  limits  to  its  range  ?  Has  womankind  the  same  place 
and  work  as  man  ?  May  she  rightly  aspire,  for  example,  to  the  same  public 
and  political  life  with  man  ?  Here  we  part  company  from  the  modern 
agitators  of  so-called  woman's  rights,  and  declare  that  nature,  as  well  as  the 
Bible,  has  proclaimed  not  only  woman's  equality  of  nature  but  her  subordi- 
nation in  office.  I  say  nature  as  well  as  the  Bible  has  proclaimed  this, — and 
how?  By  the  simple  fact  of  sex  —  a  fact  seldom  alluded  to  in  addresses 
upon  the  platform,  and  difficult  to  treat  in  the  pulpit,  but  a  fact  completely 
decisive  of  the  whole  question.  It  is  too  commonly  assumed  that  woman  is 
but  a  sort  of  undeveloped  and  suppressed  man.  Sidney  Smith  once  said  that 
if  boys  and  girls  were  educated  alike,  they  would  soon  be  indistinguishable 
from  each  other, —  a  sentiment  which  shows  that  wise  and  witty  men  can 
sometimes  utter  things  not  wise  nor  witty  either.  And  John  Stuart  Mill, 
whose  book  on  the  Subjection  of  Women  has  been  the  great  arsenal  from 
which  most  of  the  late  arguments  for  woman's  suffrage  have  been  drawn, 
treats  the  whole  subject  almost  as  if  the  distinction  of  sex  did  not  exist,  and 
had  no  influence  of  its  own  on  character.  Hence  he  ascribes  the  general 
condition  of  subordination,  which  has  prevailed  almost  without  exception 
from  the  beginning  until  now,  simply  to  the  law  of  the  strongest,  by  which 


404  WOMAN'S  PLACE  AND  WORK. 

the  earliest  men,  seeing  the  value  of  women  as  bond-maids,  made  them  by 
force  their  slaves.  So  man,  being  the  stronger,  has  put  woman  under  his 
heel,  and  has  kept  her  there  ever  since.  Now  we  might  urge  that  such  an 
explanation  of  a  universal  fact  from  mere  superiority  of  brute  force,  without 
taking  into  account  the  affinities  that  undoubtedly  exist  between  the  sexes, 
is  far  more  incredible  and  un philosophical  than  the  Biblical  explanation, 
according  to  which  God  made  the  woman  by  nature  a  helper,  and  brought 
her,  in  accordance  with  that  nature,  to  the  man, —  who  on  his  part  longed 
for  a  companion.  It  forgets  the  fact  that  this  subordination,  with  all  its 
perversions  and  abuses  on  the  part  of  man,  has  yet  been  no  involuntary 
servitude,  but  a  willing  subjection,  and  the  source  of  many  of  the  purest 
joys  of  life  to  scores  of  generations.  And  for  this  office  of  subordination, 
whether  they  assent  to  it  or  not,  women  are  fitted  by  their  very  constitution. 
Woman,  in  the  first  place,  is  of  less  stature  and  strength.  If  measured 
with  man  according  to  his  own  standard,  she  must  be  deemed  inferior,  for 
unless  in  intelligence  and  power  of  will  she  far  excel  him,  this  inferiority 
in  physical  strength  makes  her  the  second,  not  the  first.  Then,  secondly, 
there  is  the  natural  and  inborn  attraction  of  the  sexes  —  an  attraction  whose 
essence  consists  partly  in  the  love  of  weakness  for  courage  and  strength, 
and  the  delight  of  manhood  in  the  protection  and  upholding  of  that  which 
clings  to  it  for  shelter  and  rest.  If  you  could  snap  the  cords  of  written 
law  all  over  the  globe, —  if  you  could  say  to  every  woman  ;  "Your  hour  of 
freedom  has  come  —  assert  your  right  to  absolute  equality," — you  would  find 
that,  no  long  time  after,  society  would  return  to  its  old  ways ;  the  man  with 
his  strength,  going  out  to  earn  bread  for  the  family,  would,  on  his  return, 
be  saluted  gladly  as  its  head  ;  and  the  wife  would  delight  to  serve  him.  It 
is  the  man  who  represents  the  principle  of  authority,  and  it  is  woman's 
nature  to  recognize  and  delight  in  it.  The  most  high-spirited  girl,  however 
she  may  be  educated  to  believe  in  exaggerated  estimates  of  the  rights  of 
woman,  no  sooner  falls  in  love  and  is  married,  than  all  her  theories  of  abso- 
lute equality  go  to  the  winds,  and  in  practice  she  finds  herself,  in  her  enthusi- 
astic affection,  putting  herself  of  her  own  accord  into  subjection  to  her 
husband,  "even  as  Sarah  of  old  obeyed  Abraham,  calling  him  lord."  And 
this  will  be  so  all  the  more,  if  the  husband  refrain  from  all  acts  of  authority, 
«,nd,  instead  of  assuming  the  place  of  superiority,  takes  only  what  true 
^affection  gives  him.  As  oil  and  water  find  their  places,  when  mixed  together, 
so  it  will  be  with  every  ingenuous  wedded  pair. 

The  conclusions  of  science,  so  far  as  they  go,  disprove  the  oft-repeated 
assertion  that  "  the  soul  has  no  gender."  These  differences  of  sex  are  most 
essential  and  radical.  They  must,  and  in  point  of  fact  they  do,  wonderfully 
influence  character,  giving  to  man  the  place  of  force  and  authority  —  to  the 
woman  that  of  help  and  submission.  But  beyond  all  this,  there  are  peculiar 
liabilities  of  woman,  in  her  normal  state,  which  necessarily  prevent  unremit- 
ting labor  or  public  duties  of  any  kind.  As  the  greatest  advocate  of  woman's 
equality  with  man  himself  confesses,  "  Out-door  occupations  would  in  any 
event  be  practically  interdicted  to  the  great  majority  of  women. "  The  great 
fault  of  his  discussion,  however,  is,  that  woman's  nature  and  woman's  special 
work  are  studiously  kept  out  of  sight.  The  advocates  of  woman's  rights 
are  too  often  silent  with  regard  to  that  great  function  of  women  which  con- 


WOMAN'S  PLACE  AND  WORK.  405 

stitutes  their  chief  and  most  important  care.  A  function  with  which  the  sex 
at  large  cannot  dispense  without  being  false  to  the  end  of  their  being  and 
their  mission  in  the  world.  There  are  times  when,  if  they  are  true  women, 
and  live  the  normal  and  appointed  life  of  women,  they  must  give  up  outward 
labor, —  must  give  up  their  preaching,  if  they  are  preachers  ;  the  practice  or 
study  of  the  professions,  if  they  are  engaged  in  these  ;  the  work  of  public 
offices,  if  they  are  employed  there.  Children  must  be  born  into  the  world, 
if  the  world  is  to  go  on, —  and  the  best  of  women  must  be  mothers,  if  the 
best  of  men  are  to  fill  our  places  of  trust  and  power.  There  must  be  times 
of  seclusion,  even  if  they  are  allowed  to  enter  upon  public  duties, —  and 
then,  whether  they  will  or  no,  they  must  be  dependent  upon  others.  Man's 
life  goes  on  in  uninterrupted  strength  and  activity.  Theirs  has  its  seasons 
of  passivity  and  weakness.  With  this  necessity  upon  them,  they  cannot 
compete  with  men  in  the  more  active  callings  of  life, —  or,  if  they  sacrifice 
their  motherhood  and  their  womanhood  to  pursue  them,  they  only  lose  the 
greater  to  gain  the  less.  With  this  greatest  aud  grandest  of  all  human 
works,  the  bringing-forth  and  nurturing  of  men  to  bless  the  world,  no 
other  work  of  woman  can  be  compared.  Let  her  only  point  to  a  family  of 
bright  and  happy  and  well-trained  children,  saying  with  the  Roman  matron, 
"  These  are  my  jewels," —  and  she  need  envy  no  coronets  of  gems  that  glitter 
upon  the  heads  of  queens.  Every  theory  which  ignores  the  necessity  and 
dignity  of  this  work,  or  aims  to  put  upon  it  the  stamp  of  inferiority,  not  only 
proclaims  itself,  by  that  very  act,  futile  and  irrational,  but  tends  to  unsettle 
all  right  ideas  of  human  relations  and  to  disorganize  and  destroy  society. 
They  who  would  secure  freedom  from  this  work  that  God  has  laid  upon 
them,  with  the  idea  that  a  public  career  is  more  noble,  secure  it  only  by 
denying  their  sex  and  putting  contempt  upon  true  womanhood.  And  the 
great  accusation  which  we  bring  against  the  Woman's  Rights  movement  is 
that,  whether  consciously  or  not,  it  proceeds  upon  the  assumption  that  there 
is  a  higher  life  for  woman  than  that  of  the  family  and  the  home,  that  there 
is  no  difference  of  obligation  arising  from  sex,  no  subordination  of  woman's 
office  and  calling  to  that  of  men,  in  fine,  no  real  womanhood  as  distinguished 
from  manhood. 

It  has  been  the  fancy  of  some  that,  as  civilization  lifted  up  the  female  sex, 
the  differences  of  character  and  of  occupation  between  woman  and  man  might 
wholly  disappear.  Aside  from  the  objection,  which  ought  to  count  much 
with  such  persons,  that  if  this  were  so  there  are  a  thousand  rough  and  menial 
occupations  which  would  fall  to  woman's  share,  and  so  her  fancied  advance 
be  only  a  degradation,  it  may  be  said  also  that  all  experience  shows  a  grow- 
ing difference  between  the  sexes,  instead  of  a  growing  likeness,  as  civiliza- 
tion advances.  The  lower  down  you  get  in  the  scale  of  civilization,  the 
smaller  are  the  differences  between  the  outward  work  of  woman  and  man, 
and  between  his  mind  and  hers.  In  Switzerland  and  Germany  you  may  see 
any  day  hundreds  of  women  digging  and  wheeling  earth  for  railroad  embank- 
ments. And,  while  the  woman  digs  and  plows  in  the  fields,  the  man  not 
unfrequently  knits  or  cooks  at  home.  The  one  is  as  rough  and  masculine 
as  the  other ;  they  have  nearly  the  same  dress  ;  you  cannot  tell  one  voice  from 
the  other,  and  they  exchange  works  with  little  or  no  sense  of  impropriety. 
So  it  is  in  all  rude  and  early  stages  of  society.  But,  in  an  advanced  civiliza- 


406  WOMAN'S  PLACE  AND  WORK. 

tion,  the  differences  of  sex  become  more  marked.  Woman's  voice  becomes 
softer,  her  face  and  hands  more  delicate,  her  dress  more  elaborate,  and  with 
this  outward  change  there  is  an  inward  change  corresponding.  There  is  the 
old  progress  of  the  married  pair  from  homogeneity  to  heterogeneity,  from 
likeness  to  difference.  The  idea  that  woman  is  to  be  more  like  man  in  the 
progress  of  civilization  is  all  a  delusion,  since  it  is  only  in  civilization  that 
the  more  subtle  characteristics  of  the  sexes  are  made  manifest.  And  the 
more  woman  is  civilized,  the  less  she  desires  to  be  like  man, — the  less  pos- 
sible it  is  for  her  to  be  like  man.  Civilization  and  Christianity  bring  her  up 
gradually,  from  her  slavish  subjection  and  oppression,  to  a  place  where  her 
natural  equality  is  recognized  and  respected, —  but  they  will  only  make  her 
more  truly  woman,  not  more  nearly  man.  Her  subordination  of  office  will 
be  more  and  more  perfectly  seen  in  the  Christian  humility  and  gentleness 
and  endurance  of  her  character,  and  in  her  indisposition  to  assume  the  place 
or  do  the  work  of  man.  In  the  very  creation  of  mankind  in  the  garden  of 
beauty,  undefiled  by  the  slimy  track  of  the  serpent  as  it  was,  God  ordained 
the  subordination  of  women  and  the  differences  of  nature  that  make  that 
subordination  inevitable  ;  and  it  is  the  greatest  heresy  of  modern  radicalism 
to  denounce  as  barbarism  this  divinely  appointed  relation  of  the  sexes.  Dr. 
Bushnell  tells  us  that  the  Buddhist  women  of  China,  who  believe  that  they 
existed  as  dogs  and  cats  before  they  came  into  this  worjd,  and  call  their 
present  despised  condition  as  women  by  the  name  of  the  "  bitterness,"  ear- 
nestly pray  their  god  Buddha  to  grant  them  his  favor,  that  in  the  next  trans- 
migratory  state  they  may  enter  upon  life  in  the  position  of  men,  and  of  men 
in  good  circumstances.  Have  we  actually  fallen  upon  a  time  when  women 
so  little  value  the  dignity  and  privileges  of  womanhood,  as  to  seek  even  in 
this  life  to  be  no  longer  women,  but  men  ?  Napoleon  said  that  the  great 
need  of  France  was  good  mothers.  Is  it  possible  that  women  can  conceive 
that  it  lies  nearer  their  true  powers  and  duties  to  be  good  politicians  ? 

I  fear,  too,  the  effect  of  these  fundamental  heresies  upon  the  marriage 
bond.  When  you  look  upon  woman  as  only  a  second  edition  of  man,  you 
lose  the  true  idea  of  marriage  as  the  unity  of  two  different  personalities. 
Marriage  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the  union  of  two  friends,  or  the  part- 
nership of  two  merchants.  It  is  the  bringing  together  of  two  halves,  and 
the  making  of  them  one,  of  halves  that  greatly  differ  from  each  other.  Man 
and  woman  are  complements  to  each  other,  and  the  entire  rounded  being  is 
only  made  up  by  the  united  life  of  the  two.  Therefore  it  is  a  union  for  life  ; 
and  the  violation  of  faith  on  either  side  cuts  at  the  very  root  of  all  morality. 
It  is  a  union  constituted  by  God,  and  dissoluble  only  by  his  hand  in  death. 
Now  the  moment  you  make  woman  to  be  man,  forgetting  that  she  is  not 
identical  with  man  but  different,  that  moment  you  turn  marriage  into  a  part- 
nership, which,  like  some  other  partnerships,  has  no  binding  obligations  to 
it,  any  longer  than  both  parties  are  satisfied  with  its  continuance.  It  is  no 
longer  a  union,  but  a  confederation,  as  the  rebels  said  of  our  national  gov- 
ernment, and  so  may  be  dissolved  at  will.  Wrong  views  of  the  nature  and 
position  of  women  lead  directly  and  logically  to  this  result.  And  in  prac- 
tice, it  is  not  so  far  away.  We  have  a  leading  woman  apostle  of  this  move- 
ment declaring  that  "true  marriage  dwells  in  the  sanctuary  of  the  soul, 
beyond  the  cognizance  or  sanction  of  state  or  church,"  and  intimating  that 


WOMAN'S  PLACE  AND  WORK.  407 

unhappiness  in  the  relation  is  a  proper  reason  for  seeking  happiness  else- 
where. I  am  pained  to  hear  even  John  Stuart  Mill  saying  that  it  is  a  pity 
not  to  give  a  woman  who  is  the  body-slave  of  a  despot,  the  opportunity  of 
trying  her  fortune  twice.  I  am  solicitous  about  the  effect  of  the  Woman's 
Rights  agitation,  not  so  much  on  account  of  the  direct  objects  it  seeks,  as 
on  acount  of  the  false  underlying  principles  which  are  assumed  in  it.  We 
live  in  a  time  of  such  general  migration,  that  the  restraints  of  home  and  the 
care  for  established  reputation  are  far  too  little  thought  of.  Desertions  of 
husbands  by  wives  and  wives  by  husbands,  and  divorces  for  trifling  causes, 
have  been  destroying  in  the  public  mind  the  idea  of  the  sanctity  of  marriage. 
And  we  must  guard  against  the  spread  of  any  principles  which  will  strengthen 
these  evil  tendencies  of  our  day, —  for  the  moment  marriage  becomes  a  mere 
partnership,  womanhood  is  dead,  and  a  death-blow  is  struck  at  public  virtue. 

And  what  shall  we  say  to  the  claim  to  the  suffrage  which  is  made  for 
woman  ?  I  am  aware  that  many  good  men  advocate  the  admission  of  women 
to  the  privilege  of  the  ballot.  But,  while  I  desire  to  give  to  women  the  larg- 
est liberty  and  the  widest  influence  which  the  best  of  the  sex  desire,  I  have 
most  serious  doubts  whether  both  of  these,  as  well  as  the  interests  of  society, 
will  not  be  compromised  by  conferring  upon  them  the  franchise.  And  that 
for  the  same  reason  that  underlies  all  my  former  arguments,  namely,  that 
the  putting  of  political  power  into  the  hands  of  women  is  not  only  contrary 
to  any  right  theory  of  true  womanhood,  but  contrary  also  to  any  right  the- 
ory of  the  family.  The  power  of  rule  seems  to  me  to  have  been  vested  in 
the  head  of  the  family,  that  he  may  act  for  them,  or  rather  that  they  may 
act  through  him.  There  is  a  shrinking  from  the  publicity  and  collisions  of 
politics,  which  seems  a  part  of  the  nature  of  woman,  and  to  lie  down  deeper 
than  the  effects  of  education  or  circumstances.  The  law,  that  seems  to  some 
so  faulty,  has  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  fact  that  man  and  wife  are  one,  and 
that  the  individual  is  not  the  true  unit  of  civil  society,  but  the  family.  If  I 
am  not  mistaken,  the  whole  argument  for  the  suffrage  rests  upon  the  uncon- 
scious assumption  that  a  woman  is  a  man,  instead  of  constituting  in  her 
normal  relations  a  part  of  a  higher  unity  —  a  unity  in  which  she  is  a  part 
and  man  is  a  part,  but  of  which  he,  by  virtue  of  his  office,  as  man  and  as 
head,  is  the  proper  representative.  But  even  allowing  that  she  is  the  same 
as  man,  does  it  follow  that  the  possession  of  humanity  gives  a  natural  right 
to  the  ballot  ?  Not  so,  for  if  this  were  true,  all  might  vote, —  the  fact  that  one 
was  a  human  being  would  determine  the  right  to  the  franchise.  But  chil- 
dren do  not  vote  ;  the  sick  and  the  absent  do  not  vote ;  the  criminal  and  the 
insane  do  not  vote.  Others  vote  as  their  representatives,—  or  rather,  their 
interests  are  represented  by  those  whom  the  state  allows  to  vote.  A  whole 
half  of  the  male  population  do  not  vote  at  all.  Voting  then  is  not  a  natural 
right,  for  government  is  representation,  and  only  those  vote  to  whom  soci- 
ety thinks  it  for  its  best  interests  to  grant  the  franchise.  Women  then  have 
no  right  to  the  suffrage,  simply  on  the  ground  that  they  are  a  part  of  human- 
ity. If  they  have  the  privilege  of  voting,  it  must  be  because  society  thinks 
it  for  the  interest  of  women  themselves  and  for  the  interest  of  the  State  that 
they  should  vote,  and  so  has  actually  conferred  the  privilege  upon  them. 

When  it  comes  to  the  question  of  expediency  and  advantage,  also,  the 
preponderance  of  argument  is  against  it.  Add  to  the  pernicious  effect  upon 


408  WOMAN'S  PLACE  AND  WORK. 

the  family  of  making  the  married  pair  two  instead  of  one,  the  other  dangers 
of  destroying  all  the  dignity  and  delicacy  of  womanhood  in  primary  meet- 
ings and  party  caucuses, —  add  female  corruption  and  intrigue,  such  as 
we  have  seen  recent  specimens  of  at  Washington,  to  the  already  serious  evils 
of  our  political  situation, —  intensify  political  bitterness  and  strife  by  that 
feeling  of  partizanship  which  belongs  more  to  women  than  to  men,  — 
and  I  think  we  can  see  only  evil  in  the  measure.  It  is  said  that  the  pres- 
ence of  women  will  refine  and  adorn  our  elections  and  public  councils. 
But  women  are  naturally  not  so  much  better  than  men, —  the  same  publicity 
of  life  and  mingling  with  the  rude  and  boisterous  crowd  would  after  a  time 
take  the  edge  off  from  their  manners  and  neutralize  their  influence.  A  great 
part  of  women's  refining  influence  hitherto  has  been  due  to  the  fact  that  they 
have  not  been  accustomed  to  a  public  life.  Whether  their  purifying  power 
could  long  withstand  the  corruptions  of  modern  politics  is  more  than  doubt- 
ful. Besides  all  this,  it  seems  to  me  that  neither  they  nor  the  State  at  large 
need  their  votes.  They  do  not  need  these  votes  to  protect  their  own  rights. 
Their  husbands  and  brothers  are  ready  to  give  these  to  them.  They  are  not 
without  representation.  Those  they  love  best  are  their  representatives. 
To  admit  them  to  the  franchise  is  to  declare  that  men  and  women  are  two 
different  classes  upon  the  same  level,  whereas  the  truth  is,  these  two  classes 
are,  both  in  theory  and  in  practice,  one.  In  the  vote  of  the  husband,  the  wife 
bears  her  part  of  silent  and  powerful  influence, — in  the  votes  of  men,  the 
whole  class  of  women  is  represented  also.  When  one  of  our  late  reformers 
said  she  did  not  care  to  vote,  if  she  only  might  talk,  she  unconsciously  and 
by  accident  gave  the  true  solution  of  the  whole  matter.  Woman's  place  is 
not  that  of  direct  political  power,  but  of  indirect  influence  through  those 
who  wield  the  power. 

It  has  been  common  to  scout  the  Bible,  as  antiquated  and  worn  out,  and 
to  deny  it  any  place  in  deciding  upon  the  claims  of  modern  philosophies 
and  reforms.  But  there  is  a  constant  surprise  and  gratitude  to  the  Christian 
as  he  sees  how  the  principles  of  Scripture,  enunciated  so  many  thousand 
years  ago,  are  still  applicable  to  these  days  in  which  we  live,  throwing  the 
most  vivid  light  upon  human  relations  and  setting  before  us  most  clearly 
the  way  of  personal  duty.  I  have  aimed  to  make  my  treatment  of  this  sub- 
ject a  simple  application,  to  one  of  the  most  perplexing  questions  of  our 
time,  of  the  old  truth  of  God.  I  may  have  failed  to  convince  you,  but  I 
trust  we  have  seen  that  while  woman  can  claim  equality  with  man  in  nature, 
she  misses  her  true  place  and  work  when  she  forgets  that  she  is  different 
from  him,  and  in  office  subordinate  to  him.  She  gains  most  herself,  and  does 
most  for  others,  when  she  recognizes  this  divine  order  and  accepts  the  place 
of  man's  helper,  without  aspiring  to  fill  that  of  man  himself. 

The  Woman's  Rights  Convention,  which  held  its  sessions  in  this  city  dur- 
ing the  past  week,  adopted  a  series  of  resolutions  among  which  I  find  the 
following  :  ' '  Resolved,  that  as  the  duty  of  every  individual  is  self-develop- 
ment, the  lessons  of  self-sacrifice  and  obedience  taught  woman  by  the  Chris- 
tian church  have  been  fatal,  not  only  to  her  own  highest  interests,  but 
through  her  have  also  dwarfed  and  degraded  the  race. "  And  then  come  two 
others  in  which,  if  I  do  not  misunderstand  them,  woman  is  urged  to  take 
reason  instead  of  revelation  for  her  guide,  make  the  present  life  instead  of 


WOMAN'S  PLACE  AND  WOKK.  409 

the  future  the  object  of  her  care,  and  so  escape  from  the  subjugating  influ- 
ences of  priestcraft  and  superstition.  And  yet  all  that  woman  has  she  owes 
to  Christianity,  and  all  that  she  has  won  has  been  won  by  the  increasing 
power  of  this  very  gospel  of  self-sacrifice,  which  she  is  now  called  upon  to 
reject.  So  fatuous  and  ruinous  are  counsels  of  those  who  prefer  the  light 
of  an  unsanctified  reason  to  that  which  streams  from  the  word  of  God.  I 
am  glad  that  Frederick  Douglass  had  the  judgment  to  point  out  that  self- 
development  and  self-sacrifice  are  not  inconsistent  with  each  other.  The 
Convention  passed  these  resolutions,  but  they  do  not  express  the  sentiments 
of  the  true  friends  of  woman,  they  do  not  express  the  sentiments  of  true 
women  themselves.  Self -development  through  self-sacrifice,  this  is  not  only 
the  law  of  woman's  being, —  it  is  the  law  of  all  being  —  even  that  of  the  Son  of 
God,  —  and,  when  woman  forgets  it,  she  casts  away  her  crown.  Her  true  place 
and  work  is  that  of  man's  helper.  This  she  may  be  in  the  married  state, 
and  doubtless  here  her  highest  work  and  most  lasting  influence  reside.  But, 
whether  she  be  married  or  not,  she  still  may  in  a  most  true  sense  be  man's 
helper.  With  many  holy  ministries  of  counsel,  of  admonition,  of  invitation, 
of  example,  she  may  elevate,  refine,  purify,  society ;  she  may  relieve  distress, 
and  stimulate  to  noble  achievement ;  she  may  point  the  young  and  the  old 
alike  to  Jesus  her  Savior.  And  here,  in  this  spiritual  help,  the  glory  of  every 
true  woman  lies.  She  can  speak,  when  others  words  would  not  be  heard. 
She  can  reach  depths  of  the  soul  by  the  tones  of  her  voice,  and  the  modesty 
of  her  demeanor,  and  the  clearness  of  her  faith,  which  men  cannot  reach. 
Oh,  let  these  powers  be  used  for  Christ,  in  the  family,  in  the  Sabbath  school, 
in  the  social  circle,  and  many  of  you,  my  sisters,  may  have  the  joy  of  wel- 
coming sinners  to  the  kingdom  of  God.  "With  works  such  as  these" — I 
quote  from  Adolph  Monod's  sermon  on  the  Life  of  Woman — "with  works 
such  as  these  to  do,  are  you  jealous  of  still  greater  works  reserved  for  others  ? 
Let  me  wake  in  you  a  holy  jealousy, —  let  me  lead  you  to  appreciate  the 
position  in  which  God  has  placed  you.  Conform  yourselves  to  his  views, 
without  a  word  of  complaint  or  regret ;  and,  putting  away  all  ambitious  views 
of  change,  cherish  a  joyful  fidelity  to  your  peculiar  mission,  and  a  heart 
which  envies  nothing  but  a  more  active  charity  and  a  more  profound  humil- 
ity. Woman,  in  fine,  whoever  thou  art  and  wherever  thou  art,  take  to  thy 
heart  this  word  :  'I  will  make  for  him  an  helpmeet, '  and  determine,  without 
more  delay,  to  justify  the  definition  which  God  has  given  of  thee  !  " 


XLI. 

WOMAN'S  WORK  IN  MISSIONS.' 


I  should  greatly  feel  the  honor  of  addressing  this  assembly  of  Christian 
women,  if  I  were  not  so  deeply  impressed  with  the  responsibility.  I  have 
been  awed  as  I  have  gone  into  the  engine-room  of  an  ocean  steamer,  and 
have  looked  at  the  lever  which  could  unlock  its  sources  of  strength  and  set 
the  great  vessel  moving  on  its  way.  That  lever  I  should  have  hardly  dared 
to  touch.  So  I  feel,  as  I  stand  before  this  Woman's  Missionary  Society.  It 
is  a  solemn  thing  to  influence,  in  any  degree,  the  movement  of  these  forces 
for  good.  I  do  not  flatter  myself  that  I  can  add  to  the  wisdom  of  your 
counsels.  I  shall  be  content,  if  I  can  give  to  these  earnest  workers  before 
me  some  new  stimulus  and  hope.  And  this  I  can  best  do  by  speaking  to 
you  first  of  the  great  things  which  Christ  has  done  for  woman,  and  then  of 
the  great  things  which  woman  may  do  for  Christ. 

Think  for  a  moment  what  woman  was  in  ancient  society,  and  what  she  is 
now  in  heathen  lands,  and  you  will  see  how  much  she  owes  to  Christ.  There 
was  the  general  polygamy  of  the  nations  of  the  East,  which  made  woman 
only  the  toy  and  slave  of  man,  and  which,  while  it  degraded  her  intellect 
and  depraved  her  heart,  made  true  conjugal  affection  aud  family  peace 
impossible.  Among  the  Greeks,  though  there  was  but  one  wife,  the  wife 
was  still  in  a  state  of  perpetual  subjection.  In  Athens,  she  was  allowed  no 
true  education  or  instruction  ;  was  permitted  only  scant  intercourse  with 
her  nearest  relations,  and  even  with  her  own  husband, — lived  indeed  in  a 
separate  part  of  the  house  from  him,  and  was  dependent  for  her  principal 
society  upon  her  slaves.  The  husband  found  his  advisers  and  confidants 
among  educated  courtesans,  and  these  held  an  actually  higher  place  in  social 
esteem  than  the  lawful  wife.  The  wife  was  treated  all  her  life  long  as  a 
minor, —  the  widowed  mother,  instead  of  being  the  guardian  of  her  own  chil- 
dren, herself  fell  to  the  guardianship  of  her  eldest  son.  And,  to  crown  the 
whole,  the  husband  might  put  away  his  wife  at  will,  and  at  any  time  take 
another  younger,  and  fairer,  and  richer.  In  Rome,  the  stricter  form  of 
marriage  put  the  wife  completely  at  the  mercy  of  the  husband,  giving  him, 
as  despot  of  the  family,  even  the  power  of  life  and  death.  But  this  form 
of  marriage  had  one  advantage  —  it  could  not  be  easily  dissolved.  The 
commoner  form  was  dissoluble  upon  the  slightest  pretexts.  Caius  Sulpicius 
Gallus  divorced  his  wife  because  she  had  gone  into  the  street  without  a  vail. 
Cicero  repudiated  his  first  wife,  in  order  to  take  a  wealthier  ;  and  put  away 
this  second,  because  she  was  not  sufficiently  sorry  for  his  daughter's  death. 
Woman  came  to  be  so  despised  that  the  Censor  Metellus,  170  years  before 


*  An  Address  before  the  Annual  Convention  of  the  American  Women's  Baptist  Mis- 
sionary Society,  delivered  in  the  First  Baptist  Church,  Rochester,  April  18, 1883. 

410 


WOMAN'S  WORK  IN  MISSIONS.  .  411 

Christ,  had  gone  so  far  as  to  say  in  public  :  "Could  we  but  exist  as  citizens 
without  wives,  we  should  all  be  glad  to  get  rid  of  such  a  burden. "  And 
yet  these  things  existed  in  Athens  and  Eome,  at  the  very  height  of  their 
civilization. 

See  what  woman's  condition  is  even  now,  in  heathen  lands,  and  you  get 
some  idea  of  what  Christ  has  done  for  woman  where  the  light  of  the  gospel 
has  come.  It  is  the  life  of  eighteen  centuries  ago  brought  down  to  this 
generation, —  not  one  of  its  sorrows  alleviated,  not  one  of  its  outrages  on 
womanhood  outgrown.  Still  woman  is  the  drudge  and  burden-bearer  of 
man,  or  she  is  the  mere  instrument  of  his  passion  and  the  means  of  his 
greater  degradation.  Take  the  nations  of  the  far  East  among  whom  our 
missions  are  established.  The  wife  never  sits  by  the  side  of  her  husband 
at  the  family  meal, —  she  must  stand  by  in  silence  to  wait  upon  her  betters. 
Only  after  her  husband,  and  her  sons  too,  have  eaten,  is  she  permitted  to 
sit  down  to  the  remnants  of  the  feast.  She  never  walks  by  his  side.  She 
must  follow  after  him,  as  if  she  were  his  menial  servant  and  dependent. 
Instead  of  sharing  in  his  plans  and  thoughts,  stimulating  his  labors,  and 
feeling  that  a  part  of  his  triumphs  are  her  own,  she  must  be  content  to 
know,  only  as  a  slave  knows,  of  his  purposes  and  his  success.  The  blessed 
relation  of  confidence  and  equality  which  makes  husband  and  wife  in  Chris- 
tian lands  mutual  helpers  of  each  other  in  everything  noble  and  pure  ;  the 
hallowed  joy  of  a  Christian  home  in  which  the  wife  reigns,  with  her  hus- 
band, like  a  queen  upon  an  equal  throne  ;  the  respect  and  reverence  of  the 
members  of  a  Christian  family,  as  they  do  little  acts  of  duty  to  the  mother 
of  the  household, —  all  this  the  heathen  woman  knows  nothing  of.  Nothing 
is  before  her  in  life  but  the  silly  idle  routine  of  a  favorite,  closely  watched 
and  guarded,  or  the  unrewarded  round  of  hopeless  drudgery,  varied  only 
by  the  frequent  cruelty  of  an  arbitrary  master.  With  no  resources  of  edu- 
cation to  furnish  food  for  thought,  and  with  no  religious  knowledge  but  the 
dreadful  phantoms  of  an  idolatrous  worship,  life  is  only  a  weary  mockery 
and  show,  from  which  death  itself,  if  it  were  not  for  heart-freezing  fears  of 
the  future,  would  be  a  glad  relief. 

All  this  in  civilized  and  semi-civilized  lands.  But,  as  you  get  further  from 
Christianity,  the  condition  of  woman  becomes  more  desperate.  There  are 
savage  tribes  like  the  Koussa  Kaffirs,  where  there  is  absolutely  no  feeling  of 
love  in  marriage.  In  Australia,  women  are  treated  with  the  utmost  brutality, 
beaten  and  speared  in  the  limbs  on  the  most  trivial  provocation,  so  that  few 
women  can  be  found  free  from  frightful  scars  upon  the  head,  or  the  marks 
of  spear-wounds  upon  the  body.  In  Tahiti,  infanticide  prevailed  to  such 
an  extent  before  the  gospel  was  preached  there,  that  the  missionaries  con- 
sidered that  not  less  than  two-thirds  of  the  children  were  murdered  by  their 
parents.  Mr.  Ellis  says  :  "  I  do  not  recollect  having  met  with  a  female  in 
the  islands  during  the  whole  period  of  my  residence  there,  who  had  been 
a  mother  while  idolatry  prevailed,  who  had  not  imbrued  her  hands  in  the 
blood  of  her  offspring."  Among  the  Fijians,  the  mothers  themselves 
were  killed  as  soon  as  they  began  to  feel  the  approach  of  old  age,  having 
only  their  choice  of  being  strangled  or  buried  alive.  Mr.  Hunt  tells  us  that 
a  young  man  among  them  came  to  him  and  invited  him  to  attend  his  mother's 
funeral,  which  was  just  going  to  take  place.  He  accepted  the  invitation  and 


412  WOMAN'S  WORK  IN  MISSIONS. 

joined  the  procession,  but,  surprised  to  see  no  corpse,  he  made  inquiries, 
when  the  young  man  pointed  out  his  mother,  who  was  walking  along  with 
them,  alive  and  well.  On  Mr.  Hunt's  expressing  his  astonishment,  the 
young  Fijian  replied  that  she  was  old,  that  his  brother  and  himself  had 
thought  she  had  lived  long  enough,  that  they  had  made  her  death-feast  and 
were  now  going  to  bury  her.  Mr.  Hunt  did  all  he  could  to  prevent  so  dia- 
bolical an  act,  but  the  only  reply  he  received  was  that  she  was  their  mother 
and  they  her  children,  and  that  they  ought  to  put  her  to  death.  A  little 
further  on  they  came  to  a  grave,  already  dug  ;  the  mother  sat  down,  and  all 
her  children  and  grandchildren  took  leave  of  her  ;  a  rope  made  of  twisted 
tapa  was  then  passed  twice  around  her  neck  by  her  sons,  who  took  hold  of  it 
and  strangled  her ;  after  which  she  was  put  in  her  grave  and  buried,  with 
the  usual  ceremonies. 

If  this  picture  of  what  women  can  become  without  the  gospel  were  only 
the  picture  of  a  present  reality,  it  would  not  be  so  frightful,  but  let  us 
remember  that  it  is  self  perpetuating.  As  the  mothers  are,  so  are  their 
children.  Degraded  and  savage  mothers  reproduce  themselves  in  their  off- 
spring,—  the  benighted  and  besotted  mind  of  the  mother  is  the  spring  of 
blindness  and  cruelty  and  misery  without  end,  not  only  to  her  female  but 
to  her  male  descendants.  And  when  we  consider  how  many  such  mothers 
there  are,  how  incalculably  great  seems  the  evil  of  woman's  present  condi- 
tion and  the  consequences  of  corruption  and  death  that  flow  therefrom  I 
"Remember,"  says  Mr.  Bainbridge,  "that  200,000,000  women  are  living  in 
the  only  Buddhist  hope  beyond  this  world,  of  perhaps  being  born  again  a 
man  instead  of  a  toad  or  a  snake  ;  that  90,000,000  women  more  are  in  the 
most  abject  slavery,  body  and  soul,  to  their  Hindu  lords ;  and  that  still 
80,000,000  more  are  in  Moslem  harems,  unloved,  uncared  for,  but  as  slaves 
of  passion,  and  certainly  expecting  to  be  supplanted  in  the  dismal  remnant 
of  their  conjugal  affections  by  '  the  black-eyed  houris '  promised  to  the  faith- 
ful in  Mahomet's  paradise." 

And  yet,  to  use  the  language  of  a  noble  Christian  woman,  "according  to 
present  appearances,  these  seething  masses  are  to  go  on  from  generation  to 
generation,  constantly  repeating  and  deepening  their  degradation.  More 
than  four  hundred  millions  of  women  still  in  heathen  darkness  !  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  comprehend  so  large  a  number,  but  let  one  of  these  young  ladies 
stand  at  this  church  door  and  spend  the  working  hours  of  each  day  in  count- 
ing this  vast  multitude  as  they  pass  by  her  at  the  rate  of  one  every  second, 
sixty  every  minute,  thirty-six  hundred  every  hour,  and  her  hair  would  be 
gray  and  the  light  of  youth  gone  from  her  eye  before  the  last  of  these  be- 
nighted, sin-stricken  sisters  of  hers  would  have  filed  past.  Thirty  thousand 
women,  capable  of  purity  and  love  and  education  and  lofty  thought  and  all 
of  the  Christian  experience  that  brings  us  into  such  tender  relation  to  Christ 
and  enables  us  to  call  a  holy  God,  Father  —  thirty  thousand  of  these  women 
every  day  are  dropping  into  a  grave  only  a  little  darker  than  the  life  they 
leave.  In  life,  they  are  shut  out  from  all  that  makes  life  desirable  to  you, 
Christian  mother  or  wife  or  daughter."  In  death,  they  are  buried  in  a 
heathen's  grave,  while  the  immortal  part,  consciously  guilty  and  full  of 
fears,  enters  in  terror  upon  a  hopeless  eternity. 

From  all  this,  Christian  women,  Christ  by  his  blessed  gospel  has  delivered 


WOMAN'S  WORK  IN  MISSIONS.  413 

you.  He  delivered  you  from  it,  first,  by  honoring  and  consecrating  woman's 
nature  when  he  was  born  of  a  woman.  He  might  have  come  into  the  world 
in  other  ways  than  this,  descending  like  some  bright- winged  angel,  or  light- 
footed  Apollo,  to  the  earth.  But  no,  he  saw  the  suffering,  down-trodden, 
crushed  and  broken-hearted  sex,  whose  crown  of  glory  had  fallen,  and  the 
whiteness  of  whose  robes  was  draggling  in  the  mire,  and  it  entered  his  heart 
so  to  distinguish  this  sorrowful  and  sinniug  womanhood,  that  it  might  be 
lifted  up  again  from  its  degradation,  and  gain  a  dignity  and  glory  that  should 
more  than  counterbalance  all  the  misery  and  shame  of  its  former  fall.  And 
so  from  the  flesh  of  Mary  the  Virgin  he  took  his  own  human  flesh,  in  the 
eyes  of  all  the  world  sanctifying  and  ennobling  that  motherhood  which  had 
been  before  accounted  only  woman's  mark  of  inferiority  and  weakness. 
Thus  motherhood  has  been  made  sacred,  and  woman  has  come  to  be  honored 
for  the  sake  of  it.  In  the  Tribune  of  the  Pitti  Palace  at  Florence  I  saw  the 
statue  of  the  Venus  de'  Medici,  the  best  representation  in  sculpture  of  the 
classic  type  of  beauty.  It  had  come  down  from  pagan  antiquity  —  the 
undraped  form  of  a  woman  —  the  statue  of  an  unchaste  goddess,  fashioned, 
it  may  be,  as  many  such  statues  were,  after  the  living  form  of  some  noted 
harlot  in  the  days  of  Pericles.  It  did  not  seem  to  be  an  accident  that 
directly  above  the  statue,  and  near  it  on  the  wall,  there  hung  that  loveliest 
of  all  of  Raphael's  creations,  the  Madonna  della  Seggiola,  that  picture  of 
the  Virgin  and  the  infant  Savior,  upon  which  no  spectator  looks  without  new 
reverence  for  woman  and  new  conceptions  of  the  way  in  which  that  mighty 
mission  of  bearing  upon  her  bosom  the  Son  of  God  has  consecrated  and 
exalted  her.  The  two  works  of  art  are  separated  by  an  infinite  moral  dis- 
tance, though  so  close  together,  and  they  show  what  woman  is  without  Christ, 
and  with  him.  The  most  beautiful  statue  of  woman  that  pagan  antiquity 
can  furnish  us  is  the  undraped  statue  of  a  harlot.  The  picture  of  the  mother 
of  Jesus,  clothed  and  in  her  right  mind,  and  clinging  with  motherly  devo- 
tion to  the  wondrous  child  she  holds  in  her  blessed  arms,  shows  us,  in  its 
matchless  dignity  and  purity  and  sweetness,  what  woman  is,  now  that  the 
incarnation  of  Christ  has  given  to  her  once  more  her  lost  sceptre  and  glory. 
Henceforth  none  may  enslave  her  or  despise  her,  since  the  Son  of  God  has 
bestowed  on  her  such  honor.  Just  in  the  proportion  that  civilization  retro- 
grades, as  in  France,  to  the  pagan  skepticism  and  sensualism,  just  in  that 
proportion  is  woman  remanded  to  her  old  position  in  classic  times,  and 
is  treated  only  as  an  animal  and  a  servant.  Just  in  proportion  as  civilization 
is  pervaded  with  Christian  ideas,  does  wif  ehood  and  motherhood  become  the 
object  of  men's  reverence  and  devotion. 

Christ  has  delivered  woman  from  degradation,  again,  by  dying  for  her 
and  by  thus  showing  the  value  of  her  soul,  and  her  religious  equality  with 
man.  Heathen  religions  had  declared  that  woman  had  no  soul.  The  Rabbins 
had  so  far  perverted  the  teachings  of  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  as  to 
discourage,  if  not  absolutely  to  forbid,  the  religious  instruction  of  women. 
But,  in  opposition  to  all  this,  Jesus  taught  the  Samaritan  woman  at  Jacob's 
well,  and  Mary,  the  sister  of  Lazarus,  as  she  sat  at  his  feet  in  the  house ; 
declared,  of  her  who  put  the  two  mites  into  the  treasury,  that  she  had  cast  in 
more  than  they  all ;  accepted  the  ministrations  of  women  in  his  journeyings ; 
made  them  the  first  publishers  of  his  gospel  after  his  resurrection.  Thus  he 


414  WOMAN'S  WORK  IN  MISSIONS. 

made  known  the  fact  that  his  death  was  suffered  for  all  the  human  race,  not 
for  men  only  but  for  women  also,  and  that  salvation  was  offered  not  to  per- 
sons of  one  sex  only,  but  to  every  creature.  How  great  a  change  this  made 
in  the  condition  of  woman,  to  be  treated  as  a  rational  and  immortal  being, 
whose  soul  was  of  enough  value  to  be  worth  the  sacrifice  of  the  Son  of  God, 
we  may  try  to  imagine  but  can  hardly  fully  comprehend.  I  know  that  there 
was  a  Teutonic  reverence  for  woman  —  the  relic,  as  I  believe,  of  her  origi- 
nal God-given  rights  and  dignity  —  and  that  this  helped  on  the  influence 
of  Christianity  when  it  sought  to  restore  her  to  her  place.  But  I  also  know 
that  the  German  tribes,  in  contact  with  the  debased  civilization  of  Borne, 
would  have  lost  that  reverence,  if  the  religion  of  Christ  had  not  furnished  it 
with  a  new  motive  and  ground.  That  motive  and  ground  were  found  in  the 
death  of  Christ.  That  the  Lord  of  glory  should  die  for  her  and  should  give 
to  her  his  infinite  Spirit,  that  she  should  be  admitted  on  an  equal  footing  to 
all  the  privileges  of  his  church,  and  commissioned  as  a  fellow-helper  in  the 
propagation  of  his  gospel,  was  a  spectacle  almost  as  striking  as  the  breaking 
down  of  the  middle  wall  of  partition  between  Jew  and  Gentile, — indeed  was 
an  earlier  declaration  of  the  same  principle,  that  henceforth  nothing  should 
be  called  common  or  unclean.  And  so  the  women  of  Christian  lands, 
whether  they  honor  this  Savior  in  their  hearts  or  not,  whether  they  openly 
profess  his  name  or  refuse  to  acknowledge  him,  can  never  rid  themselves  of 
their  obligation  to  him.  All  that  they  have  of  social  privilege  and  respect, 
standing  as  they  do,  side  by  side  with  their  brothers  or  husbands  instead  of 
waiting  behind  them,  the  unpitied  victims  of  scorn  and  abuse,  all  this  they 
owe  to  the  death  of  Jesus  for  them.  That  death  put  honor  and  dignity  upon 
all  human  souls, —  that  death  decided  the  religious  equality  of  the  sexes, — 
that  death  lifted  woman  up  to  the  place  from  which  she  first  was  taken, 
nearest  to  man's  side  and  closest  to  his  heart. 

Once  more  only, — Jesus  has  delivered  woman  by  living  for  her,  as  well  as 
dying  for  her.  I  refer  particularly  to  his  exaltation  of  the  passive  virtues, 
in  his  precept  and  example.  Before  his  coming,  men  honored  the  active 
virtues,  and  called  them  manly.  Courage,  energy,  strength,  ambition, — 
these  were  glorified.  But  the  passive  virtues  —  patience,  meekness,  tender- 
ness, humility  —  these  were  thought  unmanly,  and  men  scorned  them,  as 
mere  weakness.  But  these  were  the  virtues  of  a  full  half  of  human  kind, — 
in  scorning  these  they  scorned  woman,  God's  last  and  best  creation.  And 
so  man  lost  immeasurably  in  his  own  character,  and  treated  woman  with  hid- 
eous injustice,  and  yet  called  it  just.  Now  have  you  ever  thought  how  much 
Christ  did  for  woman  by  combining  her  virtues  with  man's,  and  by  giving  to 
the  world,  in  his  own  character,  the  perfect  image  of  them  both  ?  Thus  Christ 
became  the  perfect  representative  of  humanity, — all  virtues  and  graces, 
whether  manly  or  womanly,  meet  and  blend  in  him.  Before  the  minds  of 
men  there  is  the  picture  of  the  living  Jesus  as  he  walked  in  Palestine,  with 
his  patient  biding  of  his  time,  his  tender  sympathy  for  all  distress,  his 
shrinking  from  the  public  eye,  his  meek  sufferance  under  injuries  sore  and 
unprovoked,  his  matchless  forgiveness  to  those  who  deserved  his  wrath. 
And  so  in  his  precepts.  He  did  not  exalt  and  dignify  the  self-asserting  and 
combative  qualities, —  the  world  had  made  idols  of  them,  and  would  idolize 
them  without  his  help, — but  he  uttered  his  blessing  mainly  upon  those  vir- 


WOMAN'S  WORK  IN  MISSIONS.  415- 

tues  which  had  been  so  forgotten  that  they  had  almost  ceased  to  be  virtues  — 
the  passive  virtues,  which  seem  most  natural  and  find  their  highest  develop- 
ment in  woman.  "Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit,  the  meek,  the  merciful, 
the  hungering  and  thirsting  after  righteousness,  the  pure  in  heart,  the 
persecuted."  Even  skeptics  have  noticed  with  wonder  the  utter  unlikeness 
of  all  this  to  the  standards  of  society  in  Jesus'  time.  "  Have  you  observed," 
says  Kenan,  in  a  letter  to  Strauss,  "  how  there  is  absent  from  the  beatitudes 
all  mention  or  praise  of  what  we  call  the  warlike  virtues  ?  "  Ah,  it  was  a 
deeper  wisdom  than  Renan  or  Strauss  can  comprehend  —  wisdom  that  would 
add,  to  all  virtues  recognized  before,  a  whole  class  which  the  world  had  hith- 
erto despised.  To  the  masculine  qualities  of  a  noble  soul  were  added  by 
Christ  those  which  up  to  that  day  had  been  considered  distinctively  feminine, 
so  that  henceforth  the  two  must  go  together.  And  so,  all  that  was  beautiful 
in  chivalry  was  the  result  of  Jesus'  teaching,  and  the  meekness  and  patience 
which  chivalry  never  showed  are  coming  to  be  recognized  as  elements  of  the 
truest  character.  All  this  has  turned  to  the  advantage  of  woman.  Exalting 
men's  esteem  of  that  which  is  so  commonly  feminine  has  exalted  woman 
herself.  That  which  once  was  thought  her  weakness  and  shame  has,  through 
Christ's  precept  and  example,  come  to  be  considered  her  real  glory,  till  now 
a  Christian  civilization  accords  to  her  a  place  and  an  influence,  different  in 
kind  from  man's,  yet  equal  to  man's  own,  and  man  himself  delights  to  own 
her  gentle  and  persuasive  sway. 

Thus  we  have  followed  woman  from  the  depths  of  her  ancient  sorrow  and 
shame  to  the  blessed  heights  which  she  now  occupies,  and  have  seen  that 
she  owes  all  this  advancement  to  Christ.  Oh,  how  infinite  is  her  debt  to 
him  !  How  shall  she  ever  repay  it  ?  There  is  a  way  in  which  she  may  at 
least  testify  her  gratitude  —  by  using  these  new-found  powers  and  this 
widening  influence  for  the  extension  to  others  of  the  blessings  which  she 
herself  is  permitted  to  enjoy.  Oh,  Christian  women  !  the  history  of  this 
Society  is  witness  that  you  cannot  look  down  from  this  height  of  privilege 
upon  the  dark  masses  of  your  oppressed  and  benighted  sisters  in  heathen 
lands,  without  feeling  that  you  are  debtors  to  them  all,  to  carry  or  to  send 
to  them  this  same  priceless  gospel.  In  these  late  years,  God  has  been 
moving  by  his  spirit  upon  the  hearts  of  Christian  women  in  America,  as  he 
never  has  moved  upon  them  before,  showing  them  that  they  have  a  work 
of  their  own  to  do,  and  peculiar  gifts  and  qualifications  for  the  doing  of  it. 
Woman's  work  for  woman  in  heathen  lands  —  this  has  become  a  watchword 
and  an  inspiration  to  thousands  in  other  denominations  as  well  as  ours. 
Presbyterians  and  Methodists,  indeed,  have  gone  before  us,  and,  by  their 
zeal  and  success  in  organizing  the  women  of  their  churches  for  this  special 
work,  have  demonstrated  how  great  a  power  resides  in  the  Christian  women 
of  every  denomination,  which  is  yet  unused,  but  which  by  combination  may 
be  made  to  tell  with  wonderful  effect  in  raising  from  their  misery  the  mil- 
lions of  women  on  the  other  side  of  the  world. 

Every  one  of  you  knows  that  the  great  obstacle  to  the  success  of  general 
preaching,  in  many  heathen  countries,  is  the  seclusion  of  the  female  portion 
of  the  community.  Women,  especially  of  the  better  classes,  are  not  per- 
mitted to  appear  in  public, —  the  preacher  does  not  see  them  in  his  congre- 
gations, and  he  is  not  admitted  to  their  homes.  And  yet,  while  the  women 


416  WOMAN'S  WORK  IN  MISSIONS. 

are  unreached,  there  is  a  mighty  barrier  in  the  missionary's  way.  Let  the 
men  of  a  community  be  impressed  by  the  preaching  of  the  gospel,  yet  the 
influence  of  the  wives  upon  them  and  upon  their  children  is  mightier  than 
that  of  the  missionary.  The  heathen  mother  makes  a  heathen  household, 
whatever  the  husband  and  father  may  be.  Many  intelligent  Mohammedans 
are  beginning  to  see  that  their  women  should  have  some  education  and  refine- 
ment, for  the  sake  of  their  sons.  Archbishop  Hughes  said  once  :  ' '  Let  me 
have  the  children  of  the  country  under  my  instruction,  until  their  seventh 
year,  and  I  will  defy  you  to  get  them  away  from  me  thereafter."  So  let 
heathen  mothers  carry  their  little  children  to  the  feet  of  the  great  idol,  to 
bow  and  offer  flowers  before  it,  and  the  influence  of  that  early  training  will 
be  almost  impossible  to  overcome.  If  we  would  evangelize  a  land,  we  must 
make  the  mothers,  as  well  as  the  fathers,  Christian, —  only  when  Christianity 
takes  root  in  the  family  is  it  safe,  and  sure  of  perpetual  growth.  Now 
who  can  reach  these  heathen  mothers  ?  Men  ?  No,  not  men,  but  women. 
Women  must  carry  to  them  the  gospel  —  not  in  the  formal  way  of  preaching, 
but  by  visiting  them  in  their  homes,  ministering  to  them  in  their  sickness, 
comforting  them  in  their  afflictions,  and  then  pointing  the  way  to  him  who 
is  the  greater  Comforter  and  Savior.  The  blessing  which  has  attended  the 
Zenana  work  —  the  work  of  female  missionaries  in  the  private  apartments 
of  heathen  women  —  shows  that  women  have  qualifications  and  advantages 
for  certain  sorts  of  evangelizing  effort,  such  as  men  have  not,  and  never 
can  expect  to  have.  By  the  teaching  of  children  who  otherwise  would  be 
brought  up  in  all  the  demoralizing  ideas  and  customs  of  paganism,  by 
readings  of  the  Scriptures  to  knots  of  girls  and  women  assembled  together, 
by  self-sacrificing  ministrations  to  their  own  sex  in  time  of  sickness  and 
need,  women  can  be  an  unspeakable  blessing  to  their  degraded  sisters,  and 
can  open  new  doors  through  which  may  enter  into  great  nations  the  healing 
and  saving  influences  of  the  gospel  of  Christ. 

Much  of  this  work  must  be  done,  if  done  at  all,  by  unmarried  female 
missionaries.  The  wives  of  missionaries  already  on  the  field  have  their 
peculiar  family  cares,  and  their  duties  lie  mostly  in  their  own  homes.  Our 
general  society,  the  Missionary  Union,  to  which  this  is  auxiliary,  already 
provides  for  these  women  with  their  husbands.  The  other  work  of  sending 
out  and  supporting  unmarried  women  who  can  give  their  whole  time  to 
labors  among  those  of  their  own  sex  —  this  work  demanded  a  new  agency, 
and  the  agency  has  been  found  in  the  Woman's  Missionary  Society.  All 
honor  to  those  who  first  conceived  the  plan  and  to  those  who  have  so  nobly 
executed  it !  The  36  missionaries  and  48  Bible  women  whom  you  are  now 
supporting  ;  the  86  schools  you  have  aided,  with  their  3,294  pupils  ;  your  400 
mission  bands  with  their  8,000  members ;  your  1,000  mission  circles  with  their 
2,500  contributors ;  and  the  $54,000  you  have  collected  for  the  work  in  a 
single  year,  in  addition  to  the  funds  raised  by  the  Society  of  the  West, — 
this  is  a  record  that  provokes  our  praise  and  gratitude.  Here  is  a  great 
work  done  abroad.  But  it  is  also  plain  that  there  has  been  a  great  work  done 
at  home.  Not  all  Christian  women  can  go  abroad.  But  all  Christian  women 
may  pray  and  give  that  others  may  go.  They  may  combine  and  organize, 
so  that  their  interest  in  women  abroad  may  be  not  only  increased,  but  also 
utilized  and  made  the  means  of  definite  and  positive  good.  It  is  not  every 


WOMAN'S  WORK  IN  MISSIONS.  417 

Christian  woman  who  gives  at  all  to  the  cause  of  missions.  The  wives  and 
daughters  of  Christian  men  too  often  hide  themselves  behind  their  husbands 
or  fathers,  and  think  it  enough  that  they  should  give  in  their  stead.  It  is 
of  inestimable  importance  that  these  reserves  should  be  called  out,  and  that 
they  should  have  a  part  in  the  battle.  I  count  it  a  vast  gain,  when  I  see  set 
on  foot  a  plan  which  aims  at  nothing  less  than  bringing  the  million  and  a 
half  of  Baptist  women  in  this  land  to  feel  their  individual  responsibility  for 
the  conversion  of  their  heathen  sisters  across  the  sea,  and  to  give  even  the 
least  weekly  or  yearly  sum  to  bring  about  the  great  result. 

I  believe  that,  in  this  Women's  Missionary  movement,  the  rock  has  been 
smitten,  and  a  spring  has  begun  to  flow  that  will  go  on  forever.  Can  any 
one  think  that  when  God  once  stirs  the  great  woman's  heart  of  our  churches, 
that  heart  will  ever  cease  to  beat  in  sympathy  with  the  wants  and  woes  of 
her  suffering  sisters,  or  to  yearn  for  the  salvation  of  these  millions  who  are 
too  far  gone  in  their  degradation  and  sin  to  make  any  struggle  for  deliver- 
ance ?  No,  my  sisters,  this  work  is  of  God,  begun  never  more  to  cease  till 
the  last  heathen  woman  is  lifted  from  her  misery,  and  rejoices  in  the  saving 
grace  of  Christ.  How  mighty  the  field  that  is  before  you, —  how  vast  the 
responsibility  laid  upon  your  hands  !  But,  mighty  as  is  the  field,  and  vast 
as  is  the  responsibility,  Christ's  call  comes  to  you  to  go  forward,  and  he 
himself  goes  with  you.  He  has  called  you  only  because  it  is  his  purpose  to 
make  you  the  means  of  converting  the  women  of  the  world  to  him,  only  be- 
cause it  is  his  purpose  to  give  you  the  ultimate  salvation  of  these  millions  as 
the  reward  of  your  labor  and  the  answer  of  your  prayers.  Let  no  work  to 
which  Providence  opens  the  way  seem  too  great  for  you.  Let  no  blessing 
to  the  myriads  of  your  lost  sisters  for  which  his  Spirit  prompts  you  to  pray, 
seem  too  vast  to  plead  for  in  his  name.  Take  upon  your  hearts  the  burden 
of  this  great  world's  guilt  and  trouble,  as  that  Syro-Phoanician  woman  took 
upon  herself  the  burden  of  her  daughter's  disease  and  pain, —  identify 
yourselves  with  it,  and  bearing  it  to  Christ  as  if  it  were  your  own  personal 
sorrow,  say  to  him  as  that  woman  did  :  "Lord,  help  me  ! "  Who  knows 
but  he  may  say  to  you  as  he  said  to  her  :  "  O  woman,  great  is  thy  faith  ;  be 
it  unto  thee,  even  as  thou  wilt !  " 
27 


XLII. 

THE  EDUCATION  OF  A  WOMAN.* 


It  is  an  honor  to  be  permitted  any  share,  however  humble,  in  such  Anni- 
versary exercises  as  these.  As  a  fellow- worker  from  an  adjoining  field,  I 
come  to  congratulate  both  teachers  and  scholars  here  upon  the  results  of 
another  rounded  year  of  labor.  Some  of  these  results  are  visible,  and  we  see 
them  before  us.  Many  more  are  not  open  to  casual  sight,  but  are  all  the 
more  permanent  and  valuable.  The  teacher's  reward  is  not  so  much  in  the 
present,  as  in  the  future.  As  Jean  Paul  says  of  the  obscure  teachers  of  vil- 
lage schools  :  "  They  fall  from  notice  like  the  spring  blossoms,  but  they  fall 
that  the  fruit  may  be  born."  So,  as  I  look  about  me  upon  these  many  evi- 
dences of  thorough  and  successful  work,  and  reflect  that  all  this  patient 
endeavor  and  achievement  has  gone  to  the  widening  of  mental  view,  the 
training  of  faculty,  and  the  building  up  of  character,  I  am  filled  with  rejoic- 
ing that  such  institutions  exist,  and  that  such  teachers  devote  to  them  the 
unselfish  service  of  their  lives. 

And  yet,  it  is  not  merely  the  assurance  of  my  reverent  regard  that  I  would 
extend  to-day.  I  would,  if  possible,  give  some  help  also.  Lofty  estimates 
of  others'  work  are  more  cheering,  if  they  are  accompanied  by  something 
that  shall  make  the  practical  problems  of  that  work  more  comprehensible, 
or  its  prosecution  more  inspiring.  It  would  be  presumptuous  for  one  whose 
thoughts  have  been  mainly  occupied  in  another  sphere  of  inquiry  to  assume 
to  settle  any  of  the  vexed  questions  here.  And  yet  the  subject  of  The  Edu- 
cation of  a  Woman  is  one  upon  which  each  of  us  may  well  have  thoughts  of 
his  own.  Let  me  venture,  even  in  the  presence  of  those  whose  practical 
experience  has  been  far  greater  than  mine,  to  give  you  a  few  results  of  my 
reflections. 

The  most  difficult  problem  of  education  in  general  is,  how  at  once  to  store 
the  mind,  and  to  set  the  mind  to  work.  Reception  on  the  one  hand,  and 
mental  gymnastics  on  the  other, — the  filling  of  the  furnace,  and  the  fusing 
of  the  ore.  Education  certainly  implies  this  last.  Etymologically,  as  you 
know,  the  word  means  a  "  drawing  forth,"  and  it  implies  that  the  mind  has 
in  it  certain  hidden  capacities  or  powers,  which  by  appropriate  means  can  be 
drawn  forth  in  exercise  or  use.  Now  there  is  important  truth  here.  Edu- 
cation is  a  process  of  eliciting  the  inner  aptitudes  of  the  soul,  and  training 
them  to  harmonious  and  effective  action.  Discipline  is  one  of  its  most 
obvious  implications.  But  you  are  well  aware  that  it  is  possible  to  carry  this 
idea  too  far.  There  are  certain  doctrinaires  who  would  make  discipline  the 
be-all  and  end-all  of  education.  They  would  develop  the  mind  by  taxing  it, 

*  An  Address  delivered  at  the  Commencement  of  the  Granger  Place  School,  Canan- 
daigua,  Tuesday  morning,  June  20,  1882. 

418 


THE    EDUCATION    OF    A    WOMAN.  419 

just  as  you  bring  out  the  elasticity  of  a  r  u  bber  band  by  stretching  it.  Within 
are  inexhaustible  fountains,  they  would  say  ;  all  you  have  to  do  is  to  draw 
upon  them.  Out  of  itself  the  mind  will  spin  you  a  web,  as  the  spider  does. 
It  may  criticise  and  compare  what  comes  to  it  from  without,  but  all  real 
material  of  knowledge  is  from  within.  And  this  scheme  reaches  its  acme 
and  best  illustration  in  the  idealistic  philosophy,  which  regards  the  external 
world  as  merely  the  inward  creation  of  him  who  thinks  it  —  constructed  only 
out  of  "  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of." 

The  German  Christlieb  has  well  expressed  the  fundamental  error  of  this 
way  of  thinking,  when  he  says  :  "Reason  is  not  a  material  source  of  knowl- 
edge, but  a  faculty  without  concrete  contents. "  You  cannot  expect  to  get 
anything  out,  unless  you  first  put  something  in.  Involution  before  evolution, 
always.  Education  does  not  consist  simply  in  discipline.  All  our  mechani- 
cal systems  of  school  training  need  to  be  corrected  here.  Before  discipline, 
and  in  order  to  furnish  the  material  upon  which  it  is  to  work,  there  must  be 
impartation  and  reception  of  truth.  Before  the  training  and  drawing  forth 
of  faculty  are  possible,  there  must  be  something  for  faculty  to  work  upon. 
How  do  you  draw  out  the  plant  ?  Surely  not  by  stretching  it,  as  you  stretch 
the  elastic  band.  No,  you  treat  it  as  a  living  thing.  You  supply  it  with 
soil  and  water  and  sunshine.  You  impart  to  it,  before  you  expect  it  to  impart 
to  you.  Now  the  human  soul  is,  in  like  manner,  a  living  thing.  It  is  not 
independent  of  God  or  of  the  truth.  It  never  will  create  God  or  the  uni- 
verse. And  yet  it  must  be  brought  into  contact  with  these,  or  it  will  never 
grow.  This  is  the  teacher's  work  —  to  bring  truth  in  contact  with  the  living 
mind  and  soul.  Truth  is  the  mind's  natural  nutriment  and  stimulus.  Impar- 
tation of  truth  is  the  first  part  of  education  ;  the  drawing  out  and  exercise 
of  the  powers  is  the  second. 

Thus  I  have  taken  you  back  to  the  basis  of  all  education  —  the  truth. 
The  teacher  has  the  magnificent  task  of  bringing  the  wide  range  of  truth  in 
contact  with  the  mind,  and  of  directing  the  processes  of  the  mind  as  it  appro- 
priates the  truth  and  exercises  itself  upon  it ;  while  the  scholar  has  the  cor- 
respondingly noble  task,  first,  of  reception  from  without,  and  then  of  living 
reconstruction  from  within.  But  now  I  wish  you  to  push  on  with  me  to 
another  point  of  view,  and  to  consider  that  the  success  of  education  is  to  be 
tested  by  the  scholar's  ability  to  find  truth  for  himself,  and  to  be  independ- 
ent of  his  teacher.  That  is  a  very  dead  and  mechanical  view  of  education 
which  conceives  of  it  as  the  stamping  of  the  seal  into  soft  wax, —  it  is  more 
nearly  like  the  transformation  of  the  wax  into  a  seal.  The  teacher's  work  is 
not  done,  until  the  scholar  is  ready  to  be  a  teacher.  The  teacher  has  imparted 
nothing  of  great  value,  unless  he  has  imparted  the  love  for  knowledge  ;  the 
disposition  to  use  elementary  training  as  the  instrument  for  further  investi- 
gation ;  and  such  facility  and  accuracy  in  the  processes  of  study,  as  turns 
them  from  a  burden  into  a  pleasure.  How  much  we  owe  to  the  personal 
influences  that  have  formed  our  youthful  ambitions  !  Many  a  noble  woman 
looks  back  to  the  teachers  of  this  school  as  the  source  of  that  passion  for 
knowledge  which  has  elevated  and  refined  her  whole  life,  and  many  more  I 
trust  will  yet  go  out  from  these  walls,  scorning  to  be  mere  reflectors  of  chance 
influences  from  without ;  burning  after  some  original  understanding  of  phi- 
losophy and  science,  of  literature  and  history  and  art ;  and  ready  to  be,  under 
God,  independent  centres  of  thought  and  of  motive  power  to  others. 


420  THE   EDUCATION    OF    A    WOMAN. 

We  sometimes  speak  of  "the  higher  education," — and  we  ordinarily  mean 
by  it  all  training  beyond  that  of  our  common  schools.  The  higher  education 
would  ta  most  mind^  imply  something  of  classical  study.  But  I  am  inclined 
to  use  the  phrase  in  a  new  sense,  and  to  say  that  no  human  being,  whatever 
he  may  study,  passes  over  the  line  which  separates  the  lower  education  from 
the  higher,  until  he  seeks  knowledge,  not  from  reward  or  from  compulsion, 
but  from  an  inward  love.  Let  us  call  that  the  lower  education  which  busies 
itself  with  youth  while  they  are  yet  mainly  in  the  receptive  stage,  exercising 
themselves  for  the  most  part  upon  what  they  have  received  from  without, 
and  held  to  their  work  more  because  they  have  been  set  there  to  do  it,  than 
because  of  any  eager  desire  of  their  own.  The  higher  education  begins 
whenever  the  pupil  wakes  to  the  recognition  of  the  slumbering  possibilities 
of  his  being,  and  begins  of  his  own  accord  to  reach  outward  after  the  true, 
the  beautiful,  and  the  good.  In  the  lower  education,  the  teacher  imparts 
knowledge  as  a  manufactured  article ;  in  the  higher,  he  furnishes  only  the 
raw  material,  and  moves  the  pupil  to  manufacture  for  himself.  In  the  lower, 
the  scholar  is  still  wholly  dependent ;  in  the  higher,  he  has  acquired  some- 
thing of  spontaneity,  and  ability  to  conduct  business  for  himself.  There  is 
no  educated  man  or  woman  who  does  not  remember  the  passage  from  the 
one  stage  to  the  other  as  one  of  the  marked  epochs  of  life,  and  say  of  it : 
"  Then  first  I  emerged  from  bondage  into  freedom. "  And  the  glory  of  these 
school  months  and  years  is  this,  that  they  witness  these  changes  from  the 
chrysalis  state, — the  leaving  behind  of  childhood,  and  the  dawn  of  anew 
intellectual  life  and  liberty. 

Receptivity  and  spontaneity, — these  are  the  two  things  I  have  thus  far 
urged  as  essential  to  true  education.  But  I  must  mention  another,  and  that 
is  —  exhaustive  study  within  a  certain  limited  sphere.  I  shall  never  forget  my 
first  college  recitation,  and  the  seemingly  infinite  number  of  questions  which 
I  found  could  be  asked  about  one  line  of  the  Iliad.  For  the  first  time  in 
my  life  I  learned  what  it  was  to  study  a  subject  thoroughly, — to  leave  no 
stone  unturned, —  to  examine  it  in  all  its  relations.  To  learn  that  lesson  is 
worth  years  of  work.  One  text-book,  absolutely  mastered,  is  worth  a  whole 
library  skimmed  over  and  half  forgotten.  We  may  utter  inward  objurga- 
tions upon  the  head  of  the  teacher  who  will  not  tolerate  inaccuracy,  but  we 
bless  afterwards  ;  while  the  teacher  who  smooths  over  our  errors  and  neg- 
lects we  may  only  curse  in  after  years.  Let  us  set  the  standard  of  scholastic 
attainment  so  high  that  a  tone  of  thoroughness  shall  be  imparted  to  the 
whole  thinking  and  life.  Here,  if  I  mistake  not,  is  the  fault  which  most 
educated  men  find  with  the  ordinary  girls'  schools  of  our  day, —  they  do  not 
ground  their  pupils  thoroughly  in  the  elements  of  knowledge ;  and,  the 
foundation  being  insecure,  the  superstructure  cannot  possibly  be  firm.  And 
this  is  the  fault  of  much  of  women's  writing.  There  are  sprightliness,  imagi- 
nation, clear  observation,  inimitable  strokes  of  description.  With  a  little 
more  thoroughness,  as  another  has  said,  all  that  liveliness  might  become 
literature.  But  habits  of  exactness  have  not  been  cultivated, — the  one  flaw 
spoils  the  diamond.  Patient  production  under  criticism,  the  weighing  of 
every  word,  the  endless  labor  that  makes  a  work  of  art, —  these  things  must 
be  learned  in  school  days,  or  never.  I  am  glad  that  there  is  so  much  in 
this  School  that  answers  to  this  idea  of  intellectual  honesty.  Be  sure  that 


THE    EDr CATION    OF   A    WOMAN.  421 

there  is  no  nobler  praise  than  this  for  a  seminary  of  learning,  that  it  sends 
out  students  who  know  what  they  pretend  to  know.  To  do  a  few  things 
thoroughly  well, — this  should  be  the  constant  aim  of  our  modern  education. 

And  yet,  as  I  said  a  little  while  ago  that  receptivity  must  be  comple- 
mented by  spontaneity,  so  here  I  must  urge  that  this  thoroughness  in  a 
limited  sphere  should  be  complemented  by  a  certain  breadth  and  complete- 
ness of  culture.  We  not  only  need  to  know  everything  of  something,  but 
also  something  of  everything.  It  does  not  follow  that,  because  I  cannot, 
with  Macaulay,  "say  off  all  my  Archbishops  of  Canterbury,"  it  is  useless 
for  me  to  know  about  that  early  Archbishop,  Thomas  a-Becket,  or  that  latest 
of  all,  Archbishop  Tait.  Knowledge  is  for  use,  and  a  little  of  it,  instead  of 
being  a  dangerous  thing,  may  save  a  life  from  poisoning,  or  wing  God's 
arrows  of  mercy  to  some  recalcitrant  and  obdurate  heart.  One  of  the  great 
advantages  of  schools  like  this  is,  that  the  pupil  sees,  in  classmates  and  in 
teachers  alike,  many  varieties  of  excellence,  recognizes  and  admires  many 
traits  of  character  and  gifts  of  mind,  the  very  existence  of  which  in  the 
world  was  unknown  before.  Conceit  and  egotism  disappear.  So  too  with 
regard  to  studies.  We  commonly  get  our  first  bent  toward  a  new  kind  of 
knowledge  by  the  observation  of  some  friend's  enthusiasm  for  it.  In  a 
generous  commonwealth  like  that  of  the  seminary,  we  learn  to  respect  all 
studies  which  have  come  to  occupy  the  heads  and  hearts  of  its  citizens. 
Provincialism  and  bigotry  cannot  live  in  such  an  atmosphere.  I  know  that 
there  are  curious  gusts  of  popular  opinion  in  such  schools,  and  universal, 
though  temporary,  misjudgments.  But  these  errors  correct  themselves  after 
a  little,  and  the  errors  themselves  are  not  half  so  narrow  as  the  prejudices 
of  the  city  set  or  clique.  Breadth  of  view,  and  a  generous  sympathy  with 
all  good  men  and  all  good  things,  can  nowhere  be  better  learned  than  amid 
the  peculiar  excitements  and  emulations  of  the  school,  under  the  guiding 
hands  of  calm  and  wise  teachers,  with  the  whole  world  of  truth  and  beauty 
opening  around  one  like  a  new  creation  of  God. 

Ought  women  to  learn  the  alphabet  ?  So  Mr.  Higginson  asked  mock- 
ingly, a  few  years  ago.  But  in  some  antediluvian  era  it  was  doubtless  asked 
seriously.  And  there  are  people  now  who  ask  what  good  there  is  in  women's 
learning  Conic  Sections  and  Greek.  The  only  answer  is,  that  God  has  given 
to  women,  just  as  he  has  to  men,  an  intellectual  nature,  and  that  this  fact 
binds  them  to  make  the  most  of  themselves  for  his  glory  and  for  the  good 
of  humankind.  He  has  bestowed  upon  them  a  talent, —  he  will  require 
his  own  with  usury.  He  has  put  within  them  a  desire  to  know, —  let  them 
venture  out  upon  the  limitless  track  of  discovery,  and  make  tributary  all  the 
continents  of  knowledge.  Let  them  study  Geometry,  for  nothing  exists  like 
her  demonstrations  to  teach  us  what  it  is  to  have  a  thing  proved  beyond  all 
question  or  peradventure.  Let  them  study  Logic  to  sharpen  their  reasoning 
powers,  and  Grammar  to  discipline  their  powers  of  thought.  Language 
opens  the  doors  into  other  literatures,  and  furnishes  the  material  for  expres- 
sion. Rhetoric  teaches  us  how  to  order  this  material  aright.  Astronomy 
tells  the  laws  of  planetary  motion  in  the  great  concave  above  us  ;  Geology 
describes  the  making  of  the  world  beneath  our  feet ;  Chemistry  whispers  of 
the  secret  constitution  of  the  air  we  breathe.  We  study  Physiology,  to  learn 
the  wonderful  mechanism  of  our  bodies  ;  Psychology,  to  get  some  idea  of  the 


422  THE    EDUCATION    OF    A    WOMAN. 

powers  and  processes  of  our  minds.  How  shall  we  know  the  simplest  facts 
of  production  and  of  commerce  unless  we  have  studied  Political  Economy  ; 
how  can  the  past,  with  the  lessons  of  its  suffering  and  triumph,  its  progress 
and  its  failures,  be  other  than  a  dreary  blank  to  us,  until  we  have  read  History  ? 
Is  there  one  of  these  things  that  a  woman  may  not,  should  not,  know  ? 

A  bishop  of  the  English  church  said,  no  long  time  ago  :  "  Our  girls  are 
doubtless  very  badly  educated,  but  our  boys  will  never  find  it  out."  I 
would  not  advise  our  girls  to  trust  him.  Our  boys  are  learning  all  these 
things,  and  they  are  beginning  to  be  impatient  of  the  babyish  superstitions 
which  the  girls  are  cherishing,  in  place  of  knowledge.  Girls  can  never  be 
quite  happy,  when  they  suspect  that  boys  are  laughing  at  them.  The  great 
philosopher,  Kant,  tells  us  that  women  carry  books,  as  they  do  watches. 
The  watches  do  not  go,  or  if  they  go,  they  go  wrong.  They  carry  them,  he 
says,  only  that  it  may  be  seen  that  they  have  them.  Now  if  I  believed  this 
were  true,  I  should  not  have  thought  it  worth  while  to  speak  to  you  to-day. 
I  should  scorn  to  appeal  to  the  motive  of  vanity.  I  appeal  to  the  loftier 
instincts  of  womanhood,  to  the  desire  to  be  true,  to  the  love  of  knowledge 
for  its  own  sake,  to  the  longing  to  be  of  the  highest  use  in  the  world,  to  the 
sacred  ambition  to  attain  likeness  to  Him  in  whose  image  we  are  made. 

And,  with  this  motive,  I  do  not  know  what  learning  may  not  be  consecrated. 
I  believe  that  a  young  woman  ought  to  learn  everything,  ought  to  do  every- 
thing. "It  is  an  ill  mason  that  refuses  any  stone," — so  says  the  proverb. 
Thrust  aside  no  experience  or  attainment  as  worthless, —  some  day  it  will  be 
of  value, —  aye,  all  your  life  it  will  be  of  value,  because  it  gives  you  confi- 
dence and  the  sense  of  power.  Education,  we  have  seen,  is  the  drawing 
out,  under  proper  nutriment  and  stimulus,  of  all  the  powers, —  some,  let  us 
now  say,  with  thoroughness  ;  the  rest,  to  the  greatest  extent  consistent  with 
the  time  at  command  raid  with  the  rightful  claims  of  the  more  important. 
The  young  woman  should  know  how  to  use  her  physical  powers,  and  to  keep 
them  in  working  trim.  Beauty  itself  is  duty, —  since  health  is  beauty,  and 
health  is  a  matter  of  food  and  air  and  sleep  and  exercise.  Every  girl  should 
learn  to  row  a  boat  and  to  ride  a  horse.  She  may  or  may  not  have  a  voice 
&nd  an  ear,  but  she  should  at  least  learn  the  elements  of  music  and  be 
taught  the  correct  method  of  singing.  She  may  or  may  not  possess  the 
dramatic  faculty, —  she  should  at  any  rate  train  her  elocutionary  powers  to 
a,  perfectly  clear  articulation,  and  learn  to  read  aloud  with  propriety  and 
expression.  She  may  never  be  required  to  do  the  cooking  of  a  family ; 
nevertheless  she  ought  to  consider  herself  a  helpless  thing  till  she  can  make 
a  loaf  of  bread.  She  may  have  her  trousseau  from  Paris, — nevertheless  she 
ought  in  an  emergency  to  be  able  to  make  a  dress.  She  may  not  be  a  book- 
keeper,—  but  she  can  easily  learn  to  keep  her  household  accounts  ;  she  may 
never  be  a  merchant's  clerk, —  but  she  ought  to  know  how  to  draw  a  check 
upon  the  bank,  or  to  write  a  letter  in  simple  business  form.  There  is  no 
need  that  she  be  a  politician  or  a  litterateur,  —  but  one  hour  a  day  spent  in 
judicious  scanning  of  the  morning  paper,  or  of  the  last  critical  review,  will 
enable  her  to  be  a  perpetual  source  of  brightness  and  inspiration  in  the 
family,  and  will  make  her  conversation  an  educating,  stimulating,  refining 
influence,  throughout  a  wide  circle  of  friends. 

You  have  perceived,  long  since,  that  the  education  I  am  advocating  is  some- 


THE   EDUCATION    OF    A    WOMAN.  423 

thing  broader  than  the  mere  education  of  the  school.  It  is  nothing  less  than 
the  healthful  and  symmetrical  development  of  the  whole  being  —  a  process 
which  may  begin  in  school  days,  but  which  requires  for  its  completion  the 
labor  of  a  life.  Much  is  accomplished  in  the  school,  in  an  informal  way, 
that  never  could  be  done  in  regular  classes  and  by  set  lessons.  The  scholar 
who  has  eyes  and  ears  attent  to  learn  may  get  in  a  whole  stock  of  prepara- 
tion for  life,  while  another  is  only  dawdling.  I  value  not  least,  in  a  School 
like  this,  that  unconscious  influence  of  example,  shed  continually  by  teachers 
and  older  scholars  upon  the  younger  and  less  mature,  and  transforming 
those  on  whom  it  falls, —  I  mean  the  influence  of  conversation,  of  temper,  of 
demeanor,  of  tact  and  skill  in  entertaining  guests,  of  generalship  in  admin- 
istration of  affairs.  There  are  young  persons  who  get  tenfold  more  of  edu- 
cation from  society,  than  they  will  ever  get  from  books.  What  they  read 
they  forget ;  the  living  voice  impresses  itself  upon  their  memories.  I  am 
not  excusing  the  neglect  of  books, —  that  would  be  a  grievous  blunder, —  I 
am  only  urging  the  improvement,  to  the  utmost,  of  other  opportunities 
which  the  school  affords,  side  by  side  with  its  scholastic  work.  A  modern 
thinker  has  said  that  the  only  empire  freely  conceded  to  women  is  that  of 
manners,  but  that  this  is  worth  all  the  rest  put  together.  It  is  worth  all  the 
rest  put  together,  if  by  manners  we  mean  the  whole  pervasive  but  nameless 
influence  that  breathes  through  movement  and  tone  and  speech  and  act ;  for 
out  of  the  heart  the  mouth  speaketh,  and  a  good  manner  cannot  be  counter- 
feited, because  it  is  the  shadowy  effluence  of  the  soul  itself.  To  say  then 
that  one  of  the  great  matters  of  education  is  the  attainment  of  a  good  man- 
ner is  only  to  say,  in  another  form  of  words,  that  education  ought  to  give  to 
«very  woman  the  gentle  and  quiet  spirit,  the  large  and  calm  intelligence,  the 
quick  sympathy,  the  modest  self-confidence,  the  readiness  upon  emergency 
either  to  serve  or  to  command,  the  constant  setting  of  the  claims  of  pleasure 
beneath  the  claims  of  duty,  which  constitute  the  genuinely  Christian  char- 
acter. It  is  the  poet's  picture  over  again  : 

"A  being:  breathing  thoughtful  breath, 

A  traveler  between  life  and  death  : 

The  reason  firm,  the  temperate  will, 

Endurance,  foresight,  strength  and  skill; 
"A  perfect  woman,  nobly  planned, 

To  warn,  to  comfort,  to  command  ; 

And  yet  a  spirit  still,  and  bright. 

With  something  of  an  angel  light." 

Let  us  reverently  acknowledge  that  for  the  production  of  such  scholarship 
as  this  there  will  have  to  be  something  more  than  merely  human  teaching. 
But  I  think  that,  if  we  do  our  duty,  we  may  depend  on  a  higher  wisdom  to 
reinforce  and  supplement  our  efforts.  The  large-minded  womanhood  of 
which  I  have  been  speaking  has  its  directory  and  text-book  in  a  certain  ven- 
erable volume  of  which  we  know.  I  am  sorry  that  the  only  great  classic  in 
which  our  American  colleges  pretend  to  give  no  instruction  is  the  Bible.  In 
Germany,  with  all  its  rationalism,  it  is  not  so.  "  There  are  two  books,"  says 
Pastor  Braun  to  the  boys  of  his  Gymnasium,  "there  are  two  books,  all  the 
ins  and  outs  of  which  you  must  learn  here,— they  are  Homer  and  the  Bible." 
I  am  thankful  that,  in  this  respect,  our  girls'  schools  are  commonly  better 
than  our  colleges.  The  one  book  better  than  all  books,  the  one  book  from 


424  THE   EDUCATION   OF   A   WOMAN. 

which  more  of  wisdom  for  the  conduct  of  life  can  be  drawn  than  from  any 
or  from  all  others  combined,  that  one  book  is  the  Bible.  Not  Homer  first 
and  then  the  Bible,  but  the  Bible  first,  and  then  all  other  books  at  an  infinite 
remove.  No  education  can  be  worthy  of  the  name,  which  does  not  fill  the 
soul  with  the  knowledge  and  love  of  God  and  of  his  word.  That  alone  can 
rectify  our  imperfect  standards  of  judgment,  fashion  after  the  highest  model 
of  character,  and  send  us  out  with  a  divine  ambition  to  fill  the  lives  of  others 
with  sweetness  and  beauty,  to  comfort  the  church  of  God,  and  to  hasten  the 
coming  of  the  kingdom  of  truth  and  righteousness  in  the  earth. 

Thus  my  thoughts  with  regard  to  woman's  education  have  circled  about 
the  four  ideas  of  Receptivity,  Spontaneity,  Thoroughness,  Breadth.  You 
have  noticed  that  I  have  not  regarded  the  education  of  woman  as  essentially 
different  from  the  education  of  man.  She  is  a  human  being  before  she  is  a 
woman,  and  nothing  that  affects  humanity  should  be  foreign  to  her.  There 
is  a  common  liberal  education  which  we  give  to  all  young  men,  irrespective 
of  the  fact  that  some  are  to  enter  the  law,  and  others  to  devote  themselves  to 
civil  engineering.  We  allow  some  slight  modification  of  this  course,  accord- 
ing to  the  vocation  which  one  is  to  follow.  He  who  is  to  be  a  physician  may 
take  a  little  more  of  Chemistry ;  he  who  is  to  preach  may  take  a  little  more 
of  Greek.  But  to  all  we  give  substantially  the  same  course, —  to  all  toe  give 
the  elements  of  a  liberal  culture.  Now  woman,  as  she  is  a  human  being,  and 
therefore  is  man  in  the  generic  sense,  has  a  valid  claim  to  the  same  liberal 
culture  which  men  enjoy.  As  she  is  not  a  man,  but  possessed  of  peculiar 
aptitudes  and  destined  to  a  peculiar  vocation,  her  course  of  training  should 
be  modified  accordingly.  She  is  the  equal  of  man,  — let  her  have  as  great 
advantages  as  he.  She  is  different  from  man,—  let  her  education  be  adapted 
to  her  idiosyncrasies  and  to  her  probable  future  work.  If  she  have  special 
gifts  for  Astronomy,  let  her  by  all  means  have  the  opportunity  to  study  the 
higher  mathematics  and  to  calculate  eclipses.  If  her  tastes  however  be  for 
literature  and  art,  let  her  greatest  strength  be  put  forth  in  these.  But,  what- 
ever be  the  minimum  of  required  attainment  for  the  young  man,  let  that 
same  be  the  minimum  of  required  attainment  for  the  young  woman.  Let 
liberal  education  for  the  young  woman  imply  just  as  much  of  general  train- 
ing as  it  does  for  the  young  man. 

An  equal  education,  but  not  co-education.  Physically  the  young  woman 
is  the  weaker.  She  has  her  nervous  force  more  at  command,  so  that  in 
competition  with  young  men  she  can  distance  them  for  a  time,  but  she  gains 
this  advantage  only  at  fearful  cost.  The  youth  of  study  is  followed  by  the 
age  of  nerves.  The  loss  of  health  and  spirits  is  poorly  purchased  by  the 
higher  examination  marks.  The  acting  President  of  one  of  our  co-educating 
colleges  told  me  that  in  his  senior  class  there  were  three  young  women  each 
one  of  whom  was  better  than  the  best  of  the  young  men,  but  I  told  him  that 
after-years  were  yet  to  be  heard  from.  Let  the  aspiring  girl  resolve  that 
she  will  secure  a  training  equal  in  quantity  and  quality  to  the  best  which 
the  schools  for  boys  can  give ;  but  then  let  her  also  lay  down  two  funda- 
mental principles,  first,  that  she  will  never  set  out  to  be  a  man,  and  secondly, 
that  she  will  never  attempt  to  do  her  work  in  the  precise  way  in  which  men 
do.  If  she  does,  she  will  grasp  after  the  shadow  only  to  lose  the  substance 
of  power,  while  her  sceptre  of  womanly  persuasion  and  delicate  sympathy 


THE    EDUCATION    OP    A    WOMAN. 

will  have  passed  from  her  forever.  Fifty  years  ago,  a  class  of  girls  prepared 
for  Harvard  College  and  passed  their  Grammar  School  examinations  as  sat- 
isfactorily as  the  boys  with  whom  they  had  been  studying.  They  applied 
to  President  Quincy  for  admission.  "Well,  President  Quincy,  you  feel 
sure  the  trustees  will  let  us  come,  don't  you  ?  "  "  Oh,  by  no  means,"  replied 
he,  "this  is  a  place  only  for  men."  Whereupon  the  young  miss  of  sixteen, 
who  had  been  speaker  for  the  rest,  burst  into  tears,  and  exclaimed  with 
vehemence  :  "I  wish  I  could  annihilate  the  women,  and  let  the  men  have 
everything  to  themselves  ! "  I  am  glad  she  did  not  get  her  wish.  What 
would  have  become  of  us,  if  she  had  ?  I  am  glad  that  our  oldest  and  fore- 
most University  still  prefers  simultaneous  education  to  co-education,  —  the 
offering  of  equal  advantages  to  all  without  regard  to  sex,  rather  than  the 
training  of  young  women  and  young  men  together. 

I  am  of  course  entirely  prepared  to  hear  that  my  scheme  is  a  purely  ideal 
one,  and  that,  until  the  physical  powers  of  young  women  are  much  greater 
than  we  see  them  now,  and  until  these  same  young  women  are  willing  to 
postpone  marriage  a  full  ten  years,  the  attainment  of  such  a  standard  of 
education  is  wildly  impracticable.  This  leads  me  to  say  that  I  am  not 
unmindful  of  the  great  difficulties  in  the  way.  Let  me  mention  some  of 
them,  and  as  I  mention  them,  let  me  suggest  methods  for  their  removal. 
The  first,  and  perhaps  the  chief,  is  found  in  the  absurd  elementary  training 
that  is  now  furnished  equally  to  our  boys  and  girls.  No  one  who  looks  back 
to  his  own  childhood  can  fail  to  perceive  that  under  a  competent  teacher  the 
work  of  his  first  twelve  years  might  easily  have  been  put  into  nine,  and  that 
with  less  of  cost  to  nerve  and  brain  than  he  actually  had  to  pay.  When  we 
read  of  the  training  which  James  Mill  gave  to  his  son  John  Stuart,  and 
which  the  historian  Niebuhr  received  from  his  father,  we  begin  to  recog- 
nize that  our  own  lack  of  early  proficiency  was  not  wholly  due  to  native 
stupidity,  but  to  a  wrong  conception  on  the  part  of  our  early  teachers  of  the 
work  to  be  done.  At  ten  years  of  age  Niebuhr  knew  his  eight  languages, 
and  Mill  was  discussing  logical  problems  with  his  father.  The  best  speci- 
mens of  the  Kindergarten  are  showing  how  much  can  be  accomplished  in 
giving  an  elementary  knowledge  of  natural  science  to  children  of  five  and 
six.  A  celebrated  professor  at  Vassar,  on  a  certain  picnic  occasion,  was 
startled  to  hear  his  own  children  calling  to  him  to  come  and  play  geology 
with  them.  They  were  taking  a  day  of  sport,  to  play  over  again  what  they 
played  at  the  Kindergarten.  The  professor's  department  was  a  different  one 
from  that  of  geology,  and  he  was  obliged  to  confess  himself  too  ignorant  of 
the  subject  to  play  comfortably  with  his  own  children.  The  son  of  one  of 
my  old  college  teachers  was  looking  over  a  text-book  of  chemistry.  The 
boy's  age  was  six  years.  Father  and  mother  were  both  in  the  room,  though 
both  were  busy  with  their  own  work.  The  small  boy  broke  the  silence  with 
the  question  :  "  Father,  do  you  think  there  is  any  bicarbonate  of  soda  in  the 
pantry?"  The  father  without  much  reflection  replied,  "  I  think  not,  my 
son,"  and  turned  again  to  his  work.  A  few  moments  passed,  when  the  boy 
spoke  again  :  ' '  Mother,  do  you  think  there  is  any  bicarbonate  of  soda  in  the 
pantry  ?  "  The  mother,  much  more  decidedly  :  "  No,  my  son,  I  think  not," 
and  turned  to  her  work.  The  boy  of  six  pondered  deeply,  and  at  last  was- 
heard  to  say  :  "  Father  thinks  there  is  none  there,  because  he  does  n't  know 


426  THE   EDUCATION   OF   A   WOMAN. 

anything  about  the  pantry  ;  and  mother  thinks  there  is  n't  any  there,  because 
she  does  n't  know  anything  about  chemistry." 

Improved  methods  of  training  will  do  much  to  shorten  the  time  spent  in 
the  drudgery  of  acquiring  mere  rudiments,  and  will  fit  the  child  to  enter 
upon  work  that  will  elicit  interest  and  will  be  done  for  its  own  sake.  I 
believe  that  there  are  many  things  which  must  be  taught  during  the  first 
five  year's  of  the  child's  life  or  never.  Among  them  is  elocution  —  or  at 
least  the  most  important  part  of  it,  a  clear  articulation  and  a  pure  tone.  In 
many  an  American  family  where  final  syllables  are  clipped,  vowels  short- 
ened, and  consonants  half  pronounced,  an  English  nurse,  with  the  full, 
clear  enunciation  so  often  found  even  among  servants  in  England,  would 
give  the  children  simply  by  the  unconscious  influence  of  example  and  with- 
out any  formal  training,  a  lesson  in  elocution  that  a  life-time  would  be  too 
short  to  unlearn.  It  is  a  question,  indeed,  whether  the  pronunciation  of  the 
foreign  languages  is  not  best  learned  in  childhood  in  the  same  way.  One 
of  my  New  York  acquaintances  employed  a  French  nurse  for  his  children, 
with  peremptory  instructions  never  to  say  to  them  an  English  word.  The 
experiment  was  continued  until  the  children  did  their  quarreling  in  French, 
because  that  was  most  natural  to  them.  A  German  nurse  was  then  substi- 
tuted for  the  French.  The  remarkable  facility  of  the  traveled  and  educated 
Kussian  in  the  speaking  of  languages  not  his  own  is  due,  not  so  much 
to  any  natural  linguistic  gift,  as  to  this  training  in  childhood.  The  child 
catches,  as  by  instinct,  the  language  that  is  spoken  about  him,  whereas  in 
later  years  the  same  acquisition  would  be  made  at  great  cost  of  time  and 
labor,  and  many  American  parents  residing  on  the  Continent  have  been  put 
out  to  find  how  much  more  quickly  and  how  much  more  accurately  their  little 
children  learned  a  language  than  they  themselves  did. 

There  has  been  some  progress  in  our  public  schools,  since  we  were  chil- 
dren. It  has  been  progress  in  accuracy  and  thoroughness,  in  a  limited  range. 
It  is  very  questionable  whether  it  has  been  progress  in  breadth,  in  develop- 
ment of  thinking  power,  in  real  love  for  knowledge.  The  variety  of  the  old 
curriculum  was  stimulating,  and  the  teacher  was  apt  to  be  wakened  up  by 
the  variety  of  the  things  he  taught.  The  modern  principle  of  division  of 
labor,  which  condemns  the  teacher  to  a  narrow  round,  endlessly  trodden, 
tends  to  make  teaching  mechanical.  The  vivida  vis  is  absent  from  it.  The 
result  is  a  sort  of  technical  learning  on  the  part  of  the  scholar,  which  has 
little  connection  with  life.  We  have  still  in  our  schools  such  relics  of  barba- 
rism as  the  compulsory  writing  out  of  a  thousand  words  after  school,  as  a 
penalty  for  disorder,  and  the  compulsory  learning,  in  their  order,  of  a  whole 
column  of  words  arbitrarily  following  each  other  in  the  spelling-book.  And 
as  for  power  to  write  an  intelligent  letter,  or  to  give  account  in  grammatical 
language  of  a  simple  incident  of  every-day  life,  that  is  rare  among  the  schol- 
ars of  our  public  schools.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the  investigation  into 
the  nature  of  the  instruction  at  Quincy,  Mass.,  which  was  conducted  a  few 
years  ago  by  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  and  the  amazing  ignorance 
with  regard  to  the  simplest  practical  matters  which  was  found  to  exist 
.among  the  older  scholars  of  the  public  schools.  The  result  of  that  exposure 
was  the  entire  reconstruction  of  the  system  of  public  instruction,  the  retire- 
ment of  certain  fossilized  officials,  the  abolition  of  the  old  plan  of  mere 


THE    EDUCATION    OF    A    WOMAN.  427 

memorizing  from  text-books,  and  the  adoption  of  a  new  method  which  sub- 
stitutes instruction  for  mere  hearing  of  recitations,  brings  the  personality 
of  the  teacher  into  living  contact  with  the  scholar,  and  tests  the  value  of  the 
student's  acquirements  by  his  power  to  put  the  principles  he  learns  to  use 
in  ways  such  as  he  is  likely  to  use  them  in  after  life.  I  am  happy  to  say  that 
a  lady  of  intelligence,  in  one  of  our  neighboring  towns,  who  had  become 
convinced  of  the  utter  inadequacy  of  the  ordinary  school  methods  of  that 
town,  has  introduced  the  Quincy  system  there,  has  imported  teachers  who 
had  learned  the  art  at  Quincy,  has  secured  the  building  of  a  school  house 
at  private  expense,  has  seen  it  filled  with  scholars,  financially  prosperous, 
and  already  producing  such  results  that  children  of  ten  seem  to  be  further 
advanced  in  powers  of  thought  and  expression  than  those  of  fifteen  used  to 
be.  When  such  elementary  training  for  both  boys  and  girls  shall  become 
common,  one  of  the  great  obstacles  in  the  way  of  my  general  scheme  for  the 
education  of  young  women  will  be  removed. 

Another  difficulty  with  which  woman's  education  has  to  contend,  is  that 
it  does  not  extend  over  a  sufficient  period  of  time.  Indeed,  we  may  say 
that  it  commonly  stops  just  when  it  has  fairly  begun.  In  this  respect  it 
differs  very  greatly  from  the  best  training  given  to  young  men.  Only  when 
the  young  man  has  mastered  the  elements  of  knowledge,  and  got  command 
of  the  instruments  of  investigation,  can  he  be  said  fairly  to  begin  to  think  for 
himself.  This  period  usually  comes  at  the  end  of  the  Junior  year  in  College, 
when  he  enters  upon  the  broader  studies  of  the  Senior.  Then  he  perceives 
for  the  first  time  the  use  of  his  past  acquisitions.  Intellectual  and  Moral 
Philosophy,  Political  Economy,  Constitutional  and  International  Law,  the 
Philosophy  of  History  —  all  these  give  him  an  outlook  that  is  novel  and 
inspiring.  Or  perchance,  this  recognition  of  himself  as  a  free-born  citizen 
in  the  great  republic  of  letters  begins  only  with  his  entrance  upon  the  studies 
of  his  chosen  profession.  Then  first  he  feels  himself  a  maD,  bound  to  form 
judgments  for  himself,  and  deeply  interested  in  knowing  all  that  can  be 
known  about  the  art  and  mystery  of  theology,  or  medicine,  or  law.  Then 
he  finds  himself,  not  only  in  possession  of  the  discipline  needed  in  conduct- 
ing research  for  himself  —  the  result  of  long  continued  and  often  irksome 
labors,  —  but  he  has  also  a  physique  hardened  and  vigorous  and  matured  — 
a  physique  which  he  can  subject  to  long  continued  strain  without  fear  that 
it  will  break.  In  fine,  the  conditions  of  a  real  education  are  now  for  the 
first  time  in  existence,  and  the  results  of  three  or  four  years  of  work  are 
surprising.  The  youth  changes  into  the  man.  These  last  years  are  worth 
all  the  rest  put  together. 

Compare  with  this  the  intellectual  history  of  the  young  woman,  even 
under  circumstances  which  are  apt  to  be  considered  exceptionally  favorable. 
Until  she  is  eighteen,  nineteen,  or  twenty,  her  physical  system  is  not  in  its 
best  estate, — indeed,  the  dangers  attending  a  long-continued  strain  upon  it 
are  very  great,  as  is  proved  by  the  multitude  of  wrecked  constitutions  which 
result  from  our  present  high-pressure  system  of  education.  Until  she  is 
twenty,  she  has  not  the  physical  strength  for  the  hardest  study.  But  —  what 
is  equally  important  to  my  purpose  —  she  has  not  the  maturity  of  mind. 
She  has  quick  memory,  but  what  she  learns  goes  as  quickly  from  her,  for 
lack  of  time  to  reflect  upon  it,  and  for  lack  of  understanding  of  its  import- 


428  THE    EDUCATION    OF   A    WOMAN. 

ance.  She  has  susceptibility  and  enthusiasm,  but  these  are  not  yet  under 
control  of  a  dominant  purpose.  She  does  not  know  what  to  do  with  her 
powers,  even  if  she  had  the  will.  She  reaches  the  age  at  last  when  she  has 
strength  of  body,  discipline  of  her  powers,  maturity  of  judgment,— the  age 
corresponding  to  that  at  which  the  young  man  first  enters  upon  a  real  self- 
centered  growth,  the  age  at  which  she  herself  is  fairly  prepared  to  begin 
study,  the  age  when  three  or  four  years  would  make  her  thoroughly  accom- 
plished, genuinely  self-reliant,  broadly  thoughtful,  in  short  truly  educated, 
—  and  just  tlieu  and  there  she  stops  her  intellectual  work,  turns  her  back  on 
study,  leaves  her  school,  leaves  behind  her  all  this  fund  of  discipline,  and 
devotes  herself  to  society  and  to  embroidery.  There  is  no  end  of  young  ladies 
who  can  show  only  a  single  thousand-dollar  polka  or  nocturne  as  the  net 
result  of  eight  or  nine  years  of  musical  training.  And  so,  in  more  purely 
literary  and  scientific  work,  the  tools  are  sharpened  at  great  cost  through 
years  of  labor,  only  to  ba  allowed  at  the  end  of  those  years  to  lie  and  rust. 
Of  course  we  know  what  does  it  all.  The  mind  of  parents  and  daughters 
alike  is  prepossessed  with  the  idea  that  the  age  of  twenty  or  twenty-two  is 
the  fit  age  for  marriage.  If  the  idea  of  fitness  for  marriage  could  only 
supersede  this,  it  would  be  well  for  us.  We  have  heard  a  great  deal  of 
advice  about  early  marriages.  They  are  encouraged  by  the  public  press. 
Well,  we  have  the  principle  most  fully  exemplified  in  Siam,  where  a  girl  is 
betrothed  at  six  and  married  at  twelve.  But  civilization  changes  all  this. 
It  teaches  us  that  the  young  woman  should  be  educated,  before  she  is  mar- 
ried. And  when  we  in  America  recognize,  as  fully  as  our  English  cousins 
do,  that  the  fit  age  for  marriage  is  not  twenty,  but  rather  twenty-five,  we 
shall  see  the  removal  of  the  second  great  hindrance  in  the  way  of  woman's 
education. 

But  now  I  must  speak  of  a  last  hindrance,  which  is  almost  as  serious.  I 
mean  the  indifference  of  the  average  young  woman  to  the  means  of  culture 
within  her  reach.  You  will  bear  me  witness  that  I  do  not  regard  education 
as  a  mere  matter  of  the  schools.  It  has  to  do  with  the  whole  woman,  and  with 
all  life.  For  this  reason,  even  those  who  leave  school  may  still  continue  the 
process  of  self-training,  —  indeed  no  school  education  is  of  much  value  which 
does  not  form  the  habit  of  study,  and  make  it  a  part  of  the  very  being.  We 
shall  have  better  educated  women,  when  those  we  have  are  bent,  school  or 
no  school,  on  securing  the  development  of  all  their  powers,  on  filling  up  the 
gaps  in  their  knowledge,  on  knowing  the  what  and  the  why  in  all  depart- 
ments of  human  activity.  For  this  reason,  travel  is  a  great  means  of  educa- 
tion. It  forces  things  upon  the  attention  which,  merely  read  of,  would  not 
interest.  Herbert  Spencer  has  well  said,  that  other  things  being  equal,  that 
individual  and  that  nation  makes  greatest  advance  move  ment  which  has  had 
the  greatest  variety  of  environment.  Education  is  a  very  different  thing 
from  scholarship.  There  is  a  discipline  of  the  faculties  which  comes  from 
constant  contact  with  men  and  women  of  varied  temperaments  and  culture. 
By  all  means  let  us  have  scholarship,  —  but  let  us  supplement  it  by  knowl- 
edge of  the  world.  Otherwise  it  will  be  narrow  and  unsympathetic.  The 
educated  woman  may  not  be  a  scholar,  but  she  may  know  the  best  in  litera- 
ture and  art ;  may  have  her  taste  cultivated  by  seeing  the  best  pictures  and  by 
hearing  the  best  music ;  may  have  a  large  and  loving  regard  for  human 


THE    EDUCATION    OF    A    WOMAN.  429 

nature  everywhere,  because  she  has  seen  in  it  so  much  of  good,  and  at  the 
same  time  a  power  of  estimating  character  and  of  distinguishing  the  true 
from  the  false,  because  her  enthusiasm  of  humanity  has  been  tempered  by 
comparison  of  a  multitude  of  actual  examples.  And  here,  as  in  the  case  of 
young  men,  lies  the  undeniable  advantage  of  great  schools.  They  consti- 
tute a  world  in  themselves.  Their  inmates  learn  from  one  another.  There  is 
an  enlargement  of  the  individual  as  the  individual  feels  merged  in  the  great 
body.  The  silent,  constant  influence  of  the  multitude  of  scholars  is  ever 
with  us,  like  the  pressure  of  the  atmosphere,  powerfully  supporting  us  and 
furthering  our  effort  even  when  we  feel  it  least.  If  I  could  also  say  that 
these  great  bodies  of  students  were  free  from  lawlessness  of  opinion  and  of 
manner,  I  should  think  their  influence  wholly  a  good.  It  is  only  a  qualified 
approbation  I  can  give,  with  the  admonition  that  the  young  woman  who 
spends  years  of  her  life  in  such  companionship  should  be  self -centered,  with 
principles  and  even  manners  in  large  degree  formed,  lest  the  school  senti- 
ment override  the  society  sentiment,  and  conventionalities  lose  their  true 
aspect  of  rationality.  To  become  rude  and  mannish,  to  lose  the  gentle  and 
quiet  spirit,  to  learn  forth-putting  and  egotism,  this  would  be  too  large  a 
price  to  pay  for  any  merely  intellectual  advantage.  In  Mrs.  Kemble's  auto- 
biography published  three  years  ago,  she  tells  us  that  more  than  once,  when 
looking  from  her  reading-desk  over  the  sea  of  faces  uplifted  towards  her,  a 
sudden  feeling  seized  her  that  she  must  say  something  from  herself  to  all 
those  human  beings  whose  attention  she  felt  at  that  moment  entirely  at  her 
command,  and  between  whom  and  herself  a  sense  of  sympathy  thrilled  pow- 
erfully and  strangely  through  her  heart,  as  she  looked  steadfastly  at  them 
before  opening  her  lips.  But  she  adds  that  on  wondering  afterwards  what 
she  might,  could,  would  or  should  have  said  to  them  from  herself,  she  never 
could  think  of  anything  but  two  words  :  "£e  good  !  " 

Frances  Power  Cobbe,  in  her  recent  essay  on  the  fitness  of  woman  for 
the  ministry  of  the  religion,  quotes  this  remark  of  Mrs.  Kemble  as  indicat- 
ing that  women  of  genius  feel  within  them  an  impulse  to  use  their  powers 
of  emotion  and  expression  in  public  address.  I  draw  from  it  the  opposite 
conclusion,  that  the  most  gifted  women  feel  the  incongruity  of  assuming  to 
be  teachers  in  the  pulpit  or  upon  the  platform.  There  were  prophetesses 
of  old,  indeed ;  a  Jean  d'Arc  roused  France  against  the  invader ;  a  Mrs. 
Booth,  of  the  Salvation  Army,  is  the  most  effective  preacher  in  England. 
But  publicity  must  be  justified,  not  as  the  rula>  but  as  an  exception  to  the 
rule.  Quiet  ways  for  the  most  are  best.  And  in  these  quiet  ways  the  edu- 
cation of  a  woman  best  proceeds.  I  am  persuaded  that  it  is  in  the  power  of 
every  woman  to  educate  herself.  However  small  her  present  attainments 
may  be,  if  she  will  but  regularly  devote  to  the  reading  of  good  literature  a 
single  hour  in  each  day,  this  simple  habit  will  in  the  progress  of  years  give 
her  an  education  which  will  qualify  her  to  exert  a  real  and  beneficent  influ- 
ence on  the  tone  of  society  around  her.  One  such  woman  I  have  known. 
The  cares  of  a  large  household  have  not  broken  in  upon  her  devotion  of  this 
one  hour  to  the  improvement  of  her  mind.  Her  example  is  an  incitement 
and  stimulus  to  the  young, —  her  conversation  is  elevating  to  the  circle  in 
which  she  moves.  It  seems  an  easy  thing  to  compass  this  self -education. 
But  will  the  average  woman  of  our  time  do  it  ?  No,  she  has  not  time.  She 


430  THE   EDUCATION   OF   A   WOMAN. 

can  spend  hours  in  making  and  receiving  calls,  hours  in  the  details  of  house- 
hold management,  hours  in  shopping  and  in  the  preparation  of  her  dress, — 
but  one  hour  a  day  for  communion  with  the  master  minds  of  all  time  she 
cannot  give, — it  is  enough  for  her  if  she  succeeds  in  reading  her  Bible  and 
in  saying  her  prayers.  Still,  she  that  has  ears  to  hear,  let  her  hear.  There 
is  the  ideal.  She  who  strives  after  it  will  surely  accomplish  more  than  she 
who  gives  up  the  struggle  is  despair. 

Marheinecke  tells  us  that  we  need  never  fear  that  women  will  become  too 
learned.  Learned  women,  he  says,  only  need  husbands  who  are  more  learned 
than  themselves.  I  wish  I  could  assure  each  woman  who  loves  knowledge 
that  the  kind  fates  would  entangle  the  thread  of  her  life  with  that  of  some 
man  who  knows  more  than  she.  But  all  I  can  promise  is  that  she  will  deserve 
it.  And  whatever  may  betide,  this  stands  fast, — the  ambition  to  reach  the 
noblest  heights  of  womanhood,  to  compass  the  widest  fields  of  knowledge, 
to  wield  the  largest  influence  for  good,  to  bring  the  grandest  tribute  of  praise 
to  him  who  created  and  redeemed  mankind, — this  is  to  attain  the  end  of  her 
being,  and  to  fulfill  the  purpose  for  which  God  created  her  and  sent  her  into 
the  world.  Each  one  of  us  is  a  separate  creature  of  God,  and  each  one's 
work,  however  solitary  it  may  be,  or  however  linked  in  with  the  work  of 
others,  has  yet  an  individuality  of  its  own,  a  special  type  of  God's  creative 
wisdom  to  reflect,  a  special  destiny  to  fulfill.  There  are  capacities  within  you 
which  are  unlike  those  of  any  other  human  creature ;  there  is  a  task  set  for 
you  to  accomplish  such  as  no  angel  or  archangel  can  perform  in  your  stead  ; 
there  is  an  honor  you  can  render  to  Him  who  made  you  which  only  you  in  all 
the  universe  can  give.  Wait  not  then  for  any  other,  but  take  up  your  bur- 
den and  push  on.  "Trust  no  future,  howe'er  pleasant,"  —  but  act  to-day. 
Kemember  that  we  cannot  put  our  finger  on  the  moment,  and  say  :  "This  is 
present. "  "While  we  say  it,  it  is  gone.  There  is  no  present, — only  past  and 
future.  The  world  is  moving  down  that  future  in  one  grand  harmony.  The 
universe  is  revolving  round  the  throne  of  God,  and  every  star  is  singing, 
as  it  whirls  and  shines.  Let  us  not  break  in  upon  that  solemn  music  with 
the  jingling  of  "rings  on  our  fingers  and  bells  on  our  toes ;"  but,  keeping 
time  to  the  movement  of  the  rolling  anthem,  let  us,  with  God's  help,  add  one 
concordant  note,  however  faint  and  low,  to  the  grand  harmony  of  universal 
life! 


XLI1I. 

REMARRIAGE  AFTER  DIVORCE: 

THE  LAW  OF  THE  STATE  AND   THE  LAW  OF  SCRIPTURE.* 


What  is  the  proper  attitude  of  the  churches  toward  persons  divorced  for 
their  own  fault  and  then  marrying  again  ?  It  may  give  definiteness  to  my 
discussion,  if  I  put  the  question  more  concretely.  Let  me  instance  a  case, 
—  whether  it  be  a  real  one  or  not  is  nothing  to  my  present  purpose. 

A  man  is  divorced  by  a  New  York  Court  upon  the  ground  of  his  own  adul- 
tery —  an  adultery  committed  after  the  offender  has  been  admitted  to  mem- 
bership in  a  church,  let  me  say,  in  a  Baptist  church  ;  committed,  however, 
three  or  four  years  before  what  he  now  believes  to  have  been  his  real  con- 
version. The  New  York  statute  forbids  him  to  marry  again.  But  immedi- 
ately after  this  divorce,  and  in  order  to  evade  the  prohibition  of  the  New 
York  law,  he  crosses  the  line  into  the  State  of  Connecticut,  where  parties 
divorced  for  any  cause  may  lawfully  remarry,  and  in  Connecticut  he  marries 
another  wife.  Bringing  this  second  wife  back  at  once  into  the  State  of  New 
York,  he  begins  preaching  to  a  Baptist  church,  has  apparent  success  in  his 
work,  and  after  a  time  applies  to  be  regularly  ordained  as  a  Baptist  minister. 
The  question  now  arises,  What  answer  the  Baptist  church,  and  the  Council 
composed  of  representatives  of  Baptist  churches,  shall  make  to  his  applica- 
tion ?  I  propose  to  examine  his  status,  both  according  to  the  laws  of  this 
State  and  according  to  the  law  of  Christ,  and  this,  not  for  the  sake  of  deter- 
mining upon  a  particular  case,  so  much  as  for  the  sake  of  setting  forth  the 
principles  which  should  govern  our  ministers  and  our  churches  in  their 
response  to  similar  applications.  This  examination  may  suggest  to  us  the 
need  of  more  definite  interpretation  of  our  present  laws,  if  not  of  important 
modification  of  them. 

The  Revised  Statutes  of  New  York  provide  that : 

"  No  second  or  other  subsequent  marriage  shall  be  contracted  by  any  person  during 
the  lifetime  of  any  former  husband  or  wife  of  such  person,  unless  the  marriage  with 
such  former  husband  or  wife  shall  have  been  annulled  or  dissolved  for  some  cause  other 
than  the  adultery  of  such  person."  "  Every  marriage  contracted  in  violation  of  the 
provision  of  this  section  shall  [with  an  exception  where  one  of  the  parties  has  been 
absent  five  years,  etc.]  be  absolutely  void."  (2  Rev.  Stat,  139,  §  5 ). 

At  first  sight  this  statute  would  seem  to  settle  the  legal  status  of  the  per- 
son whose  case  we  are  considering,  and  to  determine  that  he  is  now  living 
with  a  person  who,  according  to  the  laws  of  this  State,  is  not  his  wife.  And 
so  certain  of  the  Courts  of  inferior  jurisdiction  have  decided.  In  the  case 
of  Marshall  vs.  Marshall  (2  Hun,  238),  Mr.  Justice  Westbrook,  of  the 


*  Printed  in  the  Examiner,  February  17  and  February  24, 1881. 

431 


432  REMARRIAGE   AFTER   DIVORCE. 

Supreme  Court,  held  to  be  null  and  void  a  marriage  contracted  in  Pennsyl- 
vania by  a  man  who  had  been  previously  divorced  in  New  York  for  his  own 
adultery,  and  who  immediately  after  his  remarriage  in  Pennsylvania  resumed 
his  residence  in  this  State.  The  principle  was  here  asserted  that  the  validity 
of  a  marriage  is  to  be  determined,  not  by  the  law  of  the  place  where  the 
marriage  is  contracted,  but  by  the  law  of  the  place  which  constitutes  the 
domicile  or  actual  residence  of  the  parties  who  contract  the  marriage.  Judge 
Davis  concurred  in  this  opinion,  though  Judge  Daniels,  for  reasons  which 
we  shall  consider  hereafter,  dissented. 

On  the  last  Wednesday  of  the  year  just  closed,  in  New  York  city,  as  the 
newspapers  inform  us,  Judge  Sedgwick,  in  the  case  of  Gould  H.  Thorp  vs. 
Laura  M.  Thorp,  followed  this  majority  opinion  of  the  general  term  just 
mentioned,  and  dismissed  the  suit  for  divorce  on  the  ground  that  the  mar- 
riage was  itself  void.  Mr.  Thorp  was  first  married  in  1855.  In  1861  the 
couple  was  separated  by  absolute  divorce,  and  several  years  later  Mr.  Thorp, 
though  lying  under  the  prohibition  of  the  New  York  Court,  married  in  Phil- 
delphia  the  defendant  in  the  present  suit.  By  Judge  Sedgwick's  decision, 
the  defendant  has  not  been  a  wife.  In  a  similar  case  in  North  Carolina, 
where  a  divorced  wife,  in  order  to  evade  the  North  Carolina  law,  went  into 
another  State  and  there  married,  the  marriage  was  declared  null  and  void 
(  Williams  vs.  Oates,  5  Iredell,  N.  O.,  535  ). 

In  all  these  cases,  the  decisions  of  the  Courts  have  implied  that  the  mere 
transfer  of  one's  person  or  of  one's  goods  to  another  State  for  the  purpose 
of  securing  a  divorce  does  not  give  a  man  domicile  in  that  State,  nor  alter  in 
the  least  the  claims  of  his  own  State  law  upon  him.  This  principle  a  New 
Jersey  Court  has  affirmed  in  determining  upon  an  application  for  divorce, 
refusing  to  regard  as  domiciled  in  New  Jersey  any  suitor  whose  manifest 
purpose  in  sojourning  in  that  State  is  only  to  get  a  divorce  ( Wins  hip  vs. 
Winship,  1  C.  E.  Green,  107-110).  It  is  a  settled  rule  of  law  that  there  can 
be  no  jurisdiction  without  domicile,  and  it  may  be  safely  asserted  as  an  infer- 
ence from  it,  however  Legislatures  or  Courts  may  have  been  tempted  to 
ignore  it,  that  in  order  to  give  the  applicant  for  divorce  a  standing  in  the 
Courts  of  any  State,  there  must  be  the  fixed  purpose  of  not  returning  to  the 
place  of  his  original  residence,  in  case  this  residence  was  previously  in  another 
State  (Bishop,  Marriage  and  Divorce,  2  : 122). 

To  make  my  statement  more  complete,  it  should  be  mentioned  that  in  1879 
the  Legislature  of  New  York  so  modified  the  law  of  divorce,  as  to  grant  the 
guilty  party  liberty  to  marry  again,  upon  furnishing  to  the  Court  decreeing 
the  divorce  sufficient  proof  that  the  complainant  has  remarried,  that  five 
years  have  elapsed  from  the  date  of  the  decree,  and  that  the  conduct  of  the 
defendant  since  the  decree  has  been  uniformly  good  (Laws  of  New  York, 
1879  :  321 ).  This  modification  of  the  statute  has  been  so  recent  that  only  a 
single  case  has,  to  my  knowledge,  thus  far  come  before  our  Courts.  Though 
this  case  is  a  very  different  one  from  that  which  we  are  examining,  there  is 
a,  lesson  to  be  learned  from  it  which  may  help  our  present  investigation. 

In  December,  1879,  on  petition  of  one  Green,  who  had  been  divorced  for 
his  own  adultery,  and  who  professed  to  bring  evidence  of  five  years's  subse- 
quent good  conduct,  Judge  Gilbert,  of  Brooklyn,  granted  the  applicant 
liberty  to  marry  again.  It  was  afterwards  found  that  prior  to  his  divorce 


REMARRIAGE    AFTER    DIVORCE.  433 

he  had  already  married  again,  and  that  after  the  divorce  from  the  first  wife 
he  had  deserted  the  second.  His  application  to  the  Court  for  permission  to 
marry  again  was  made  in  order  that  he  might  marry  yet  a  third  person,  who 
at  the  time  had  a  husband  still  living  with  whom  he  had  agreed  to  "trade 
wives. "  I  am  happy  to  say  that,  upon  these  facts  being  represented  to  the 
Court,  the  permission  to  remarry  was  revoked.  But  the  case  shows  the  ease 
with  which,  especially  in  a  great  city,  evidence  of  so-called  "good  conduct " 
can  be  procured  by  very  immoral  persons,  and  what  shameful  results  may 
follow  even  the  partial  repeal  of  our  only  penalty  for  adultery,  namely,  the 
prohibition  of  remarriage. 

Thus  the  New  York  Revised  Statutes  until  1879  absolutely  forbade  the 
remarriage  of  the  guilty  party  to  a  divorce  during  the  lifetime  of  the  inno- 
cent complainant,  and  the  main  judicial  decision  under  the  statute  had 
declared  null  and  void  a  marriage  contracted  outside  of  this  State  in  order 
to  evade  the  prohibition  of  our  law.  From  this  last  decision,  however,  there 
lay  a  possible  appeal,  but  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  learn,  the  case  was  not  car- 
ried up,  and  the  question  at  issue  had  not  been  finally  adjudicated  by  the 
Court  of  Appeals.  There  are  not  wanting  persons  who  claim  that  the  judg- 
ment in  the  case  of  Marshall  vs.  Marshall,  to  which  we  have  referred,  is 
not  warranted  by  the  law  as  it  stands. 

An  able  essay  recently  published  (Albany  Law  Journal,  June  18,  1880: 
486-488 )  takes  this  ground.  It  maintains  that  the  law  of  marriage  is  a  part 
of  international  law,  and  that  from  its  very  nature  marriage  must  have  a 
legal  ubiquity  of  operation.  As  in  a  civil  contract  the  law  of  the  place  of  con- 
tract prevails  over  the  law  of  the  domicile,  so  the  validity  of  a  marriage  is  to 
be  decided  by  the  law  of  the  place  where  it  is  celebrated.  If  valid  there,  it 
is  valid  everywhere.  This  general  rule  can  indeed  be  modified  in  Massa- 
chusetts. There  the  statute  expressly  declares  null  and  void  the  remarriage 
of  the  guilby  party  to  a  divorce  decreed  in  Massachusetts,  even  when  this 
remarriage  takes  place  outside  of  the  State,  and  Chief  Justice  Gray  admitted 
in  one  of  his  decisions  that,  but  for  this  express  prohibition  of  the  statute, 
marriage  contracted  in  evasion  of  the  laws  of  that  Commonwealth  would  not 
be  invalid.  But  in  the  New  York  statute  there  is  no  express  declaration  that 
such  marriages  contracted  outside  of  the  State  shall  be  null  and  void.  Upon 
the  principle,  therefore,  that  penal  laws  can  have  no  force  outside  of  the  ter- 
ritory which  enacts  them,  and  that  the  statute  can  apply  to  foreign  marriages 
only  in  case  of  a  special  prohibition,  which  here  is  certainly  not  expressed, 
it  is  argued  that  the  Courts  of  New  York  must  recognize  as  valid  even  the 
remarriage  of  its  own  divorced  citizens,  provided  this  remarriage  has  been 
valid  according  to  the  law  of  the  State  in  which  it  was  contracted. 

This  principle  of  interpretation,  if  it  were  true,  would  settle  the  legitimacy 
of  the  marriage  we  are  considering, —  for  it  is  beyond  question  that  according 
to  the  law  of  Connecticut,  where  that  marriage  was  contracted,  the  whole 
procedure  was  formally  correct.  How  much  of  authority  is  there  for  this 
view  ?  We  have  a  decision  of  the  Tennessee  Supreme  Court  which  is  in 
point.  The  Tennessee  law  makes  it  a  felony  for  any  person  to  marry  who 
has  a  former  husband  or  wife  living, —  yet  the  Tennessee  Court  did  not  hold 
a,  woman,  divorced  in  Kentucky  and  forbidden  by  Kentucky  law  to  marry, 
to  have  violated  any  law  when  she  evaded  the  Kentucky  statute  by  marrying 
28 


434  REMARRIAGE    AFTER    DIVORCE. 

in  Tennessee  ( Bishop,  2  :  701 ) ;  in  other  words,  a  person  forbidden  to  marry 
in  one  State  may  lawfully  marry  in  another. 

In  the  case  of  Ponsford  vs.  Johnson  ( 2  Blatch.  51 ),  the  United  States  Cir- 
cuit Court  asserted  that  a  marriage  contract  would  be  valid,  even  if  both 
parties  should  go  into  another  State  for  the  express  purpose  of  evading  the 
law  of  New  York  ;  and  Judge  Macomber,  of  the  New  York  Supreme  Court, 
has  very  recently  decided,  in  the  case  of  Kerrison  vs.  Kerrison,  that  the 
petitioner  for  the  annulling  of  a  marriage  of  this  sort  in  another  State  could 
claim  nothing  of  the  Court,  so  long  as  she  could  not  come  with  clean  hands, 
that  is,  show  that  she  was  not  herself  a  party  to  this  evasion  of  the  New  York 
law  (Albany  Law  Journal,  Dec.  25,  1880  :  502).  In  denying  the  petition, 
Judge  Macomber  expressed  himself  as  agreeing  with  the  dissenting  opinion 
of  Judge  Daniels  in  the  Marshall  case,  that  the  validity  of  a  marriage  is 
to  be  determined  solely  by  the  law  of  the  place  where  the  marriage  was 
contracted. 

In  his  well-known  work  on  Marriage  and  Divorce,  Bishop,  after  citing 
the  two  cases  first  mentioned  in  this  paragraph,  sums  up  the  whole  matter 
in  the  following  words  : 

"  Thus  it  is  held  that,  notwithstanding  this  statute,  if  a  person  divorced  in  New  York 
goes  into  another  State  and  there  marries,  the  marriage  is  good  in  New  York." 

And  in  other  places,  with  reference  to  the  same  matter,  he  declares  that 

"No  New  York  statute  should  be  construed  to  repeal  or  change  international  law." 
"  It  is  a  question  whether  all  prohibitions  of  marriage  to  the  divorced  party  should  not 
be  construed  as  operating  merely  by  way  of  penalty,  not  as  rendering  the  marriage  void, 
unless  express  words  of  nullity  are  employed"  ( Bishop,  2 :  703). 

We  have  now  got  before  us  whatever  of  argument  and  of  authority  has 
been  thus  far  adduced  in  favor  of  the  proposition  that  the  New  York  Courts 
are  compelled  to  recognize  as  valid  those  marriages  which  have  been  con- 
tracted in  other  States  in  defiance  of  their  decrees.  It  is  interesting  to  see 
that  much  of  this  argument  was  anticipated,  and  that  at  least  an  attempt  was 
made  to  answer  it,  in  the  first  and  the  chief  case  which  has  come  before  our 
Courts  —  the  case  of  Marshall  vs.  Marshall,  already  twice  alluded  to.  In 
his  decision,  Judge  Westbrook  replied  to  the  assertion  that,  without  express 
declarations  of  the  statute  that  such  foreign  marriages  were  null  and  void,, 
they  must  be  held  valid — replied  by  citing  the  celebrated  case  of  Brook  vs. 
Brook  in  the  English  House  of  Lords.  Here  an  Englishman  had  gone  to 
Denmark  to  marry  his  deceased  wife's  sister.  Lord  Chancellor  Campbell 
pronounced  the  marriage  null  and  void,  although  there  was  no  special  pro- 
hibition of  foreign  marriages  of  this  sort  in  the  English  statute,  and  pro- 
nounced it  null  and  void  upon  the  ground  that  the  law  of  the  domicile 
followed  the  parties.  Judge  Daniels,  in  his  dissenting  opinion,  attempted 
to  offset  Judge  Westbrook's  citation  by  remarking  that  Lord  Chancellor 
Campbell  was  led  to  his  conclusion  by  the  fact  that,  according  to  English 
law,  such  marriage  of  a  deceased  wife's  sister  is  an  incestuous  marriage,  and 
so,  opposed  to  the  ecclesiastical  policy  of  the  kingdom.  But,  so  far  as 
appears,  this  consideration  was  not  mentioned  by  the  Lord  Chancellor,  and 
no  intimation  is  given  that  the  same  rule  of  domicile  would  not  apply  to  any 
other  attempt  to  evade  English  law  by  marriage  abroad. 

Judge  Westbrook's  decision  goes  on  to  say  that  no  other  rule  than  that 


REMARRIAGE   AFTER    DIVORCE.  435 

which  he  enforces  will  enable  a  State  to  make  its  own  laws  of  marriage  and 
divorce  effectual,  and  place  that  relation  beyond  the  legislation  of  others. 
Story,  in  his  Conflict  of  Laws,  approves  of  this  rule,  and  declares  that,  other- 
wise, "  there  is  produced  a  state  of  anarchy  and  confusion  upon  the  subject 
of  this  fundamental  relation  of  society,  whereby  any  State  may  be  compelled 
to  recognize  the  perfect  validity  and  binding  force  of  polygamous  marriages. " 
I  may  add  to  this  statement  of  Story  that  to  grant  that  marriage  is  to  be 
judged  solely  by  the  law  of  the  place  of  contract  might  conceivably  compel 
the  Courts  of  New  York  to  recognize  as  lawfully  married  all  the  forty  wives 
of  Brigham  Young,  or  the  three  thousand  of  the  King  of  Dahomey.  Inces- 
tuous and  polygamous  marriages  must  certainly  be  excepted  from  the  ope- 
ration of  this  rule.  Is  it  not  a  serious  question  whether  marriages  contracted 
outside  this  State  in  fraud  of  our  laws  are  not  also  to  be  excepted  from  its 
operation  ? 

Since  the  cases  which  have  been  cited  have  none  of  them  been  carried  up 
to  the  highest  judicial  tribunal,  it  becomes  matter  of  great  interest  to  know 
what  view  would  probably  be  taken  of  them  by  the  Court  of  Appeals.  There 
are  two  official  utterances  of  this  Court  which  bear  upon  the  present  subject. 
Mr.  Justice  Johnson,  by  way  of  dictum,  not  of  decision,  has  said  of  this 
statute  prohibiting  the  remarriage  of  the  guilty  party  to  divorce  (Gropsey 
vs.  Ogden,  I  Kernan,  228,  235,  236): 

"  Its  subject-matter  is  the  prohibition  of  marriages  within  this  State  to  certain  persons 
who  come  within  its  terms.  It  covers  the  case  of  one  married  abroad  and  divorced 
abroad  for  his  own  adultery,  just  as  plainly  as  it  does  the  case  of  a  marriage  and  divorce 
for  the  same  cause  here." 

Again,  in  the  case  of  The  People  vs.  Baker  (76  JV.  K,  p.  78),  in  which 
the  defendant  had  pleaded  as  a  bar  to  his  conviction  for  bigamy  that  a 
divorce  had  been  decreed  against  him  in  Ohio  for  his  own  adultery,  though 
at  the  time  of  the  decree  he  was  an  actual  resident,  of  this  State,  our  Court 
of  highest  resort,  Mr.  Justice  Folger  delivering  the  judgment,  decided  the 
New  York  Court  could  not  allow  the  status  of  one  of  its  own  citizens  to  be 
determined  by  the  laws  or  decisions  of  Ohio ;  in  other  words,  the  Ohio 
divorce  might  be  valid  in  Ohio  and  as  respects  the  party  that  resided  there, 
but  it  could  have  no  force  in  New  York  and  as  respects  the  party  that 
resided  here.  The  effect  of  this  decision  is  the  present  incarceration  in  the 
Penitentiary  of  a  man  who,  before  his  second  marriage,  and  while  residing 
here,  had  been  divorced  from  his  first  wife  in  Ohio. 

New  York,  in  short,  will  not  judge  the  divorces  of  its  citizens  by  any 
other  law  than  its  own.  But  by  the  same  rule,  must  not  New  York  refuse 
to  judge  the  marriages  of  its  citizens  by  any  other  law  than  its  own  ? 
Judge  Folger  does  not  say  that  marriages  contracted  outside  this  State  in 
order  to  evade  the  prohibition  of  the  New  York  statute,  will  be  null  and 
void,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  this  conclusion  is  implied  in  his  reasoning.  If 
the  law  of  the  domicile  prevails  in  case  of  a  divorce  decreed  against  one  of 
our  citizens  by  the  Court  of  another  State,  then  the  law  of  the  domicile 
ought  also  to  prevail  in  case  of  a  marriage  contracted  by  one  of  our  citizens 
in  another  State ;  and,  since  New  York  is  the  domicile  and  New  York  law 
declares  the  marriage  invalid,  the  Court  of  Appeals  would,  in  consistency, 
seem  compelled  to  decide  that  such  marriage  is  null  and  void. 


436  REMARRIAGE    AFTER    DIVORCE. 

Although,  as  has  been  seen,  I  am  inclined  to  regard  this  as  the  intent  of 
the  law,  and  although  the  tendency  of  the  judicial  decisions  seems  to  me  to 
be  in  this  direction,  there  are  many  competent  critics  (as  Bishop,  2  :  703), 
who  deny  that  the  law  of  domicile  applies  to  marriage,  even  if  it  applies  to 
divorce.  For  my  own  part,  I  must  confess  that  the  question  whether  such 
marriages  are  invalid  is  yet  open  to  doubt  —  a  doubt  which  has  already  led, 
and  may  still  lead,  to  very  unfortunate  practical  consequences.  But  what- 
ever doubt  may  exist  with  regard  to  the  nullity  of  such  marriages,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  as  to  one  thing, — the  guilty  party  to  a  divorce,  who  marries 
again,  is  a  law-breaker,  and  though  the  Courts  may  possibly  be  compelled, 
according  to  our  present  law,  to  recognize  his  unlawful  marriage  as  valid,  yet 
he  is  under  judicial  ban,  and  may  be  made  to  suffer  for  his  wrong  doing. 

It  is  to  be  feared,  however,  that  in  practice  this  suffering  will  be  slight. 
It  seems  on  the  whole,  probable  that  such  transgressors  will  practically  go 
un whipped  of  justice.  To  marry  again  contrary  to  the  express  decree  of  the 
Court,  provided  it  be  done  in  some  other  State  where  the  marriage  of  the 
guilty  party  to  divorce  is  lawful,  will,  of  course,  not  be  recognized  as  bigamy 
by  the  New  York  Courts,  at  least  where  the  divorce  has  been  granted  in  this 
State.  It  is  a  violation  of  New  York  laws  and  a  misdemeanor,  but  it  is  not 
bigamy.  This  Judge  Folger  declares,  in  the  decision  just  alluded  to.  The 
reason  is  set  forth  in  the  case  of  The  People  vs.  Hovey  (5  Barb.,  117), 
and  the  reason  is  that  divorce  frees  both  parties.  There  cannot  be  a  wife 
without  a  husband,  nor  a  husband  without  a  wife.  If  divorce  makes  both 
parties  once  more  single,  then  neither  party  in  marrying  again  can  be  called 
guilty  of  either  bigamy,  polygamy,  or  adultery,  and  therefore  cannot  be 
punished  for  any  one  of  these  crimes. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  no  punishment,  except  in  cases  where  the 
offender  is  compelled  to  ask  for  some  relief  from  the  Court  whose  decree  he 
has  violated,  and  on  account  of  his  contempt  of  court  is  refused.  We  have 
before  us,  indeed,  the  spectacle  of  a  Judge  of  one  of  our  metropolitan  tri- 
bunals, who  in  defiance  of  a  decree  of  the  Courts,  has  contracted  a  foreign 
marriage,  and  who  still,  with  soiled  ermine,  attempts  to  administer  to  others 
the  justice  which  he  himself  has  treated  with  derision.  So  far  as  pains  and 
penalties  are  concerned,  the  prohibition  of  the  Courts  is  only  a  brutum 
fulmen,  "full  of  sound  and  fury,  signifying  nothing."  And  thus  our 
society  is  taught  contempt  for  law.  Is  it  not  evident  that  we  need  both  a 
final  judicial  interpretation  and  a  legislative  modification  of  our  present 
law,  which  shall  on  the  one  hand  give  it  the  definiteness  of  the  law  of 
Massachusetts,  so  that  marriages  contracted  in  evasion  of  our  statutes  shall 
be  expressly  declared  null  and  void,  and  on  the  other  hand  shall  ordain 
fixed  pains  and  penalties  for  disobedience  to  our  judicial  decrees  ?  * 

*  Since  the  above  was  written,  decisions  have  been  rendered  by  the  Court  of  Appeals 
of  the  State  of  New  York,  as  follows  :— 

October  4,  1881,  in  the  case  of  VanVoorhis  vs.  Brintnall  (86  N.  Y.,  p.  18),  to  the  effect 
that  prohibition  of  remarriage  has  no  effect  outside  this  State,  and  does  not  render 
invalid  such  remarriage.  The  child  of  such  second  marriage,  born  in  this  State,  is 
legitimate. 

December  28, 1882,  in  the  case  of  Thorp  vs.  Thorp  ( 90  N.  F.,  p.  602),  to  the  effect  that 
marriage  valid  under  the  law  of  another  State  in  which  it  was  contracted  is  valid  also 
in  New  York,  even  though  it  was  contracted  in  disobedience  of  the  prohibition  of  the 


REMARRIAGE    AFTER   DIVORCE.  437 

But  what  the  law  of  the  State,  on  account  of  its  present  defects,  may  not 
be  able  to  punish,  public  opinion,  and  especially  Christian  sentiment,  can 
punish  and  ought  to  punish.  From  the  law  of  the  State,  therefore,  I  appeal 
to  the  law  of  Scripture. 

It  is  a  remarkable  evidence  of  the  profound  view  which  the  Hebrew  nation 
had  attained  of  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage  relation,  that  the  adulterer  was 
not  simply  divorced, —  the  penalty  was  death.  Such  was  the  provision  of 
the  Mosaic  law ;  and  although  the  corruption  of  the  Jewish  people  led  to 
wide  departures  from  the  original  idea  of  marriage  as  the  union  of  one  man 
and  one  woman,  and  divorce  for  trifling  causes  was  permitted,  we  are  to 
remember  that  this  was  "for  the  hardness  of  their  hearts,"  and  that  " from 
the  beginning  it  was  not  so. " 

Yet  even  during  these  days  of  obduracy  there  was  a  beneficent  and  disci- 
plinary effect  resulting  from  the  Mosaic  legislation.  While  the  wife  had  no 
right  of  divorce,  and  might  be  put  away  for  uncleanuess,  she  could  not  be 
dismissed  except  by  the  writing  &nd  the  delivery  of  a  bill  of  divorcement. 
This  was  intended,  as  a  late  writer  remarks,  "to  restrain  a  bad  practice 
which  had  gone  far  to  annul  the  original  law  of  marriage,  and  which  still 
prevails  among  the  Arabs,  who  by  a  word  may  dissolve  the  marriage  tie. 
To  correct  this  custom,  Moses  allows  a  wife  to  be  divorced  only  by  a  legal 
document,  and  forbids  her  husband  to  take  her  back  after  she  has  been 
married  to  another. "  As  in  those  times  the  preparation  of  such  a  document 
was  not  the  easiest  or  commonest  of  tasks,  this  provision  of  the  law  protected 
the  wife,  by  giving  time  for  the  husband's  anger  to  cool ;  while  the  permis- 
sion accorded  the  woman  to  marry  again,  and  the  irrevocableness  of  the 
decision  when  once  made,  put  serious  hinderances  in  the  way  of  sudden  and 
unjust  separations. 

It  is  not,  however,  to  the  Mosaic  law  that  I  refer,  when  I  speak  of  the 
Scriptural  teaching  with  regard  to  marriage  and  divorce,  but  to  the  original 


New  York  Court,  and  was  contracted  in  that  other  State  for  the  purpose  of  evading  the 
New  York  law. 

October  7, 1884,  in  the  case  of  Erkenhrach  vs.  Erkenbrach  (96  N.  F.,  p.  456),  to  the  effect 
that  Courts  in  New  York  have  no  common  law  jurisdiction  over  the  subject  of  divorce, 
th.  ir  authority  being  confined  altogether  to  the  exercise  of  such  express  and  incidental 
powers  as  are  conferred  by  statute. 

December  22, 1885,  in  the  case  of  O'Dea  tw.  O'Dea  (101 IV.  F.,  p.  23),  to  the  effect  that  a 
husband,  married  in  this  State,  deserted  by  his  wife,  and  obtaining  a  divorce  in  Ohio, 
the  marriage  of  the  wife  subsequently  to  another  man  in  this  State  is  declared  to  be 
void. 

These  decisions  make  it  plain  that  the  hope  expressed  when  the  above  article  was 
written  has  not  been  realized,  and  that  one  of  our  most  respected  Justices  declares 
himself  none  too  strongly,  when,  in  a  letter  to  the  author,  he  speaks  of  these  same 
decisions  as  illustrating  "the  wretched  condition  of  the  law  in  regard  to  the  important 
relations  to  which  they  refer." 

In  the  last  case  cited,  the  Court  of  Appeals  has  itself  added  a  most  significant 
comment.  It  is  as  follows :  "  In  other  States,  judgments  contrary  to  the  authorities  fol- 
lowed in  this  State  have  been  rendered.  This  conflict  of  opinion,  however  much  to  be 
regretted,  continues,  and  it  yet  remains  for  some  ultimate  authority  to  relieve  the  point 
from  the  difficulties  now  attending  it,  and  determine  the  civil  rights  of  parties  whose 
relations,  as  legally  defined  by  different  State  tribunals  are  liable  to  be  regarded  on  one 
side  of  the  State  line  as  matrimonial,  and  on  the  other  side  as  meretricious." 

May  we  not  add  further,  that  national  legislation  seems  the  only  remedy  for  this 
conflict  of  ^tate  laws,  and  that  such  legislation,  if  constitutional  and  practicable,  would 
be  a  most  worthy  subject  for  debate  and  settlement  by  Congress  ? 


438  REMARRIAGE    AFTER    DIVORCE. 

law  of  the  marriage  relation,  instituted  at  the  Creation,  to  which  Christ  goes 
back,  as  to  the  ultimate  norm  and  authority,  and  of  which  we  have  an  exposi- 
tion in  his  own  words  and  in  the  words  of  his  apostles.  In  this  original 
institution  of  marriage  there  is  an  unmistakable  intention  to  define  it  as  the 
union  of  two,  and  of  two  only,  so  that  they  become,  as  it  were,  one  being, 
and  that  for  life.  ' '  Therefore  shall  a  man  leave  his  father  and  his  mother, 
and  shall  cleave  unto  his  wife,  and  they  two  shall  be  one  flesh." 

When  Christ  comes  to  expound  these  words,  it  is  plain  that  he  regards 
the  union  as  dissoluble  only  by  death,  or  by  that  which,  as  respects  the 
meaning  and  purpose  of  the  relation,  is  the  same  as  death.  Let  us  take  the 
fullest  report  of  his  teaching  on  the  subject,  in  Matthew  19  :  9,  by  which  we 
may  fairly  interpret  the  more  condensed  utterances  in  the  other  evangelists. 
"  Whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife,  except  it  be  for  fornication,  and  shall 
marry  another,  committeth  adultery,  and  whoso  marrieth  her  which  is  put 
away,  doth  commit  adultery."  Here  it  is  plain  that  fornication  —  a  general 
term  implying  an  outward  act  wrought  with  a  third  person,  a  term,  more- 
over, which  includes  adultery,  interrupted  or  complete,  or  any  of  the  unname- 
able  and  abominable  vices  —  is,  according  to  Christ's  law,  the  sole  valid 
ground  of  divorce. 

It  has  been  held  by  the  Eoman  Catholic  Church,  otherwise  so  strict  in 
matters  of  divorce,  that  the  apostle  Paul  modifies  Christ's  teaching  by  allow- 
ing both  divorce  and  second  marriage  to  a  Christian  separated  from  a  heathen 
partner  by  the  agency  of  the  latter,  and  many  Protestants  have  drawn  from 
this  an  apostolic  justification  of  divorce  in  case  of  malicious  desertion, 
whether  the  guilty  party  be  heathen  or  not.  In  his  admirable  work  on 
Divorce  and  Divorce  Legislation  ( 66,  71 ),  President  Woolsey  has  shown 
conclusively,  as  I  think,  on  the  one  hand  that  Paul,  like  our  Lord,  started 
out,  in  his  discussion,  from  the  indissoluble  nature  of  marriage,  and  admit- 
ted as  the  only  exception  that  adultery  which  of  itself  caused  the  married 
pair  no  longer  to  be  one  flesh,  and  so  violated  the  very  idea  of  marriage. 
The  only  reason  why  Paul  did  not  mention  the  exception  is,  as  in  the  case  of 
two  of  the  evangelists,  that  he  regarded  the  exception  as  a  matter  of  course, 
and  so  passed  it  over  in  silence. 

Dr.  Woolsey  has  shown,  on  the  other  hand,  that  in  1  Cor.  7  :  15,  as  in  the 
whole  passage  of  which  this  verse  forms  a  part,  the  apostle,  in  case  of  willful 
desertion  of  one  partner  by  the  other,  permits  separation  but  not  remarriage. 
When  he  declares  that  in  case  the  husband  desert  the  wife,  the  latter  ' '  is 
not  under  bondage,"  he  simply  denies  that  the  wife  is  bound  at  all  hazards 
to  continue  living  with  the  quarrelsome  heathen  husband.  As  in  verse  10 
he  had  said  of  the  wife  compelled  to  depart  from  her  husband,  ' '  If  she 
depart,  let  her  remain  unmarried,  or  be  reconciled  to  her  husband,"  so  here, 
where  the  husband  departs  from  the  wife,  the  implication  is  that  she  is  to 
remain  unmarried  also.  Paul  advances  beyond  Christ's  position  in  only  a 
single  particular,  namely,  in  conceiving  of,  and  to  a  certain  degree  author- 
izing, separation  without  license  of  remarriage.  The  unwarrantable  exten- 
sion of  Paul's  principle  so  as  to  include  all  cases  of  desertion  —  we  are  still 
giving  the  substance  of  Dr.  Woolsey's  remarks  —  has  opened  a  wide  door 
of  divorce  in  Christian  countries. 

Let  all  Christians  understand  that  what  Paul  permits  in  cases  of  deser- 


REMARRIAGE   AFTER   DIVORCE.  439 

tion  is  simply  separation  a  mensa  et  thoro,  without  a  separation  a  vinculo 
matrimonii,—in  other  words,  separation  from  bed  and  board,  but  not  abso- 
lute divorce  with  the  right  of  remarriage.  "This  third  state,  midway 
between  full  marriage  union  and  divorce,  has  the  sanction  of  the  apostle 
Paul,  and  may  be  introduced  into  the  law  of  Christian  lands."  Whatever 
legislation  gives  greater  license  than  this,  is  false  in  principle,  and  opens  the 
way  for  all  manner  of  immorality.  For  I  can  only  repeat  the  words  of  Christ 
—  words  whose  reasonableness  and  truth  are  only  made  more  clear  by  the 
pernicious  results  of  recent  experiments  in  law-making  in  the  various  States 
of  the  Union  :  "Whosoever  shall  put  away  his  wife,  except  it  be  for  forni- 
cation, and  shall  marry  another,  committeth  adultery,  and  whoso  marrieth 
her  which  is  put  away,  committeth  adultery."  "And  if  a  woman  shall  put 
away  her  husband  and  be  married  to  another,  she  committeth  adultery." 
(Mat.  19:9;  Mark  10  :  12.) 

We  come  once  more  to  the  case  which  we  set  out  to  examine.  What  is 
the  law  of  Christ  with  regard  to  the  remarriage  of  persons  who  have  been 
absolutely  divorced,  and  divorced  upon  Scriptural  grounds  ?  We  may 
answer  at  once,  that  the  remarriage  of  the  innocent  party  is  permitted.  Our 
Saviour's  words  imply  this  when  he  declares  that,  in  every  other  case  but 
this  one  of  divorce  for  adultery,  remarriage  is  unlawful.  Such  divorce  just 
as  completely  frees  the  woman  as  does  the  husband's  death,  in  which  last 
case,  as  Paul  tells  us,  she  is  free  from  the  law  of  her  husband,  "  so  that  she 
is  no  adulteress,  though  she  be  married  to  another  man  "  (  Rom.  7  :  3). 

But  may  the  guilty  party  marry  again  ?  We  can  only  reply  that  Christ 
says  nothing  about  the  guilty  party,  and  therefore  our  conclusions  with 
iv.rard  to  him  must  be  mainly  inferential  and  conjectural.  We  are  not  on 
this  account,  however,  wholly  without  light  upon  the  question.  It  was  not 
so  necessary  that  our  Lord  should  treat  of  the  rights  of  the  guilty  party  to 
divorce,  for  the  Mosaic  law  was  there  as  the  constant  presupposition  of  his 
precepts  —  a  law  which  he  did  not  come  to  destroy,  but  to  fullfil.  According 
to  that  law,  the  guilty  party  to  a  divorce  had  no  rights,  unless  it  were  the 
right  to  suffer  death  as  the  penalty  of  adultery.  The  case  of  the  woman 
taken  in  adultery,  even  if  we  regard  it  as  belonging  to  the  sacred  narrative, 
is  no  proof  that  Christ  abrogated  that  penalty,  for  it  was  not  solemn  judicial 
process  that  he  discountenanced,  but  the  mob-violence  of  Pharisees,  when 
he  said,  "  He  that  is  without  sin  among  you,  let  him  first  cast  a  stone  at  her  ! " 
Nor  does  the  fact  that  the  power  of  life  and  death  had  been  taken  from  the 
Jews  by  their  Roman  masters  show  that  adultery  was  uniformly  allowed  to 
go  unpunished.  There  were  theocratic  penalties,  such  as  excommunication 
from  the  synagogue,  which  to  a  Jew  had  almost  the  bitterness  of  death. 

Is  it  possible  to  conceive  that  Jesus,  with  the  Mosaic  abhorrence  of  adul- 
tery and  the  remembrance  of  the  Mosaic  command  that  both  parties  to  it 
.should  be  stoned  with  stones  till  they  died  —  is  it  possible  to  conceive,  I 
say,  that  Jesus  could  have  had  it  for  his  intent  to  let  the  adulterer  go 
unscathed,  to  repeat  his  crime,  to  corrupt  others,  and  even  to  consummate 
;a  new  marriage  for  the  very  sake  of  which  his  adultery  may  have  been 
planned  ?  The  supposition  seems  incredible.  If  there  be  any  crime  against 
society  upon  which  civil  law  needs  to  lay  its  hand,  it  would  seem  to  be  that 
•crime  which,  in  its  very  nature,  tends  to  destroy  the  family,  and  turns  the 


440  REMARRIAGE   AFTER   DIVORCE. 

nursery  of  the  child  into  a  haunt  of  defilement  and  shame.  And  can  there 
be  any  penalty  for  this  great  crime  so  obviously  just,  as  to  prohibit  those 
who  have  been  recreant  to  their  trust  from  entering  again  upon  a  relation  to 
which  they  have  been  so  false  ?  It  seems,  therefore,  most  untrue  to  say 
that  Christ's  silence  is  to  be  interpreted  as  granting  permission  to  the  guilty 
party  to  divorce  to  marry  again. 

Here  I  am  happy  to  have  the  strong  support  of  President  Woolsey's  work 
on  Divorce,  to  which  I  have  already  referred.  I  quote  from  him  once  more 
(page  60): 

"  It  has  been  gravely  argued  in  our  country  and  our  time  that,  inasmuch  as  the  married 
pair  are  no  longer  one  flesh  after  crime,  the  guilty  one  is  free  to  marry  again,  yes,  even 
to  marry  the  tempter  or  seducer,  and  that  this  is  no  violation  of  the  law  of  Christ.  We 
admit  that  Christ  observes  silence  on  this  point.  He  could  not  say  that  such  a  guilty 
author  of  a  divorce  committed  adultery  by  marrying  again,  for  she  is  now  free  from  her 
husband.  But  it  would  have  been  idle  to  refer  to  such  a  case,  for  in  the  first  place  it 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  immediate  point  on  which  Christ  expresses  an  opinion,  and 
in  the  second  place  such  a  person  would  have  been  punishable  by  the  Jewish  law  with 
death.  To  claim  for  an  adulterer  and  an  adulteress  the  protection  of  law  in  a  Christian 
State,  so  that,  when  free  through  their  crime  from  former  obligations,  they  may  legally 
perpetuate  a  union  begun  in  sin,  is  truly  to  put  a  premium  upon  adultery.  A  Herod, 
on  that  plan,  after  sinning  with  his  brother's  wife,  would  need  only  to  wait  for  legal 
separation  to  convert  incest  into  legitimate  wedlock."  * 

It  is  by  this  time  sufficiently  plain  that  I  consider  the  guilty  party  to  a 
divorce,  who  marries  again,  at  least  during  the  life  of  the  former  partner, 
as  virtually  becoming  a  breaker  of  the  law  of  Scripture  as  well  as  of  the 
law  of  the  State.  Penitence,  however,  is  possible,  and  good  works  may 
follow  upon  wrong-doing.  Separation  from  the  new  partner,  even  after  the 
State  has  declared  the  marriage  null  and  void,  may  be,  after  years  have 
passed,  a  greater  wrong  to  the  family  than  the  continuance  of  the  relation 
would  be.  After  evidence  of  genuine  contrition,  the  church  may  possibly 
receive  such  a  person  into  its  number,  and  may  be  benefited  in  many  respects 
by  his  influence. 

But  what  shall  we  say,  when  one  who  has  passed  through  this  sad  experi- 
ence feels  himself  called  to  the  ministry,  and  asks  for  ordination  ?  In  the 
view  of  some,  the  same  rule  that  would  bar  him  from  the  ministry  would 
bar  him  from  the  church.  But  we  are  persuaded  that  those  who  reason  thus 
are  in  error.  It  is  clear  from  the  epistles  of  the  New  Testament,  that  there 
were  special  qualifications  required  in  those  who  were  to  be  teachers  and 
leaders  of  the  flock,  which  were  not  demanded  of  others.  The  man  who  is 
to  stand  before  Christians  as  an  example  and  an  instructor  must  be  "blame- 
less," by  which  we  understand  free,  since  his  professed  conversion,  from 
any  such  moral  delinquency  as  would  generate  suspicion  with  regard  to  the 
reality  of  his  Christian  character,  and  so  would  hinder  his  proper  influence. 

There  are  able  interpreters  who  would  give  the  term  "blameless"  a  wider 
comprehension  still,  making  it  include  the  life  before,  as  well  as  after,  con- 
version, and  they  point  to. the  very  striking  fact,  that  in  the  New  Testament 
there  is  no  instance  where  the  hands  of  Paul,  or  of  the  other  apostles,  were 


*  In  a  private  note  to  the  author  of  this  essay,  received  since  the  above  was  written, 
President  Woolsey  intimates  that,  since  his  book  on  Divorce  was  published,  he  has  so 
far  changed  his  view  as  to  hold  that  no  prohibition  of  such  remarriage  can  fairly  be 
drawn  from  Christ's  own  words,  although  he  holds  it  to  be  contrary  to  good  morals  for 
either  civil  law  or  church  law  to  permit  remarriage  in  these  cases. 


REMARRIAGE   AFTER   DIVORCE.  441 

laid  in  ordination  upon  the  head  of  any  man  who  had  led  an  openly  immoral 
life.  I  hesitate,  however,  to  press  an  argument  from  the  silence  of  Scrip- 
ture, and  there  may  be  doubt  with  regard  to  a  rule  which  would  hav.e  cost 
the  church  the  ministerial  service  of  an  Augustine.  But  when  a  man's  earlier 
sin  shows  its  traces  still  in  his  present  spirit  and  conduct,  it  is  impossible  to 
disconnect  the  two  parts  of  his  history  in  judging  of  his  fitness  for  the 
ministry.  In  the  case  we  are  considering,  this  seems  to  be  the  fact.  The 
evasion  of  New  York  law  by  marrying  in  another  State,  the  doing  of  an  act 
in  Connecticut  for  the  sake  of  escaping  a  punishment  which  would  have 
been  visited  had  the  act  been  done  in  the  place  of  his  domicile,  indicates  a 
lingering  of  the  same  disregard  for  law  which  was  manifest  in  the  original 
adultery,  and  compels  us  to  judge  the  last  offense  in  the  light  of  the  former. 

And  what  we  are  compelled  to  do,  the  whole  community  in  which  such  a 
man  should  do  his  ministerial  work,  would  also  be  compelled  to  do.  They 
have  before  them,  as  preacher  of  God's  law,  a  man  who  has  successfully 
defied  those  "powers  that  be  "  which  are  "ordained  of  God. "  His  example 
will  speak  louder  than  his  precepts.  It  will  nullify  his  preaching.  And 
therefore  he  ought  not  to  be  a  minister  of  the  gospel.  "Be  ye  clean,  that 
bear  the  vessels  of  the  Lord,"  was  the  demand  of  the  priests  of  the  Old 
Testament.  "Having  a  good  report  of  them  that  are  without,"  is  the 
demand  of  the  ministers  of  the  New.  Such  a  man  as  we  have  supposed  is 
not  "  blameless,"  and  there  is  no  place  for  him  in  the  Christian  ministry. 

In  the  excellent  little  treatise  of  Dr.  Hovey,  entitled  The  Scriptural  Law 
of  Divorce  (pages  61-70),  I  find  drawn  out  in  full  an  argument  which  I  had 
intended  to  present  in  detail,  but  which,  with  this  reference,  I  must  con- 
tent myself  with  simply  mentioning.  In  the  letters  of  the  apostle  Paul  to 
Timothy  and  Titus,  he  enjoins  that  the  bishop,  presbyter,  pastor,  be  "the 
husband  of  one  wife,"—  that  is,  as  nearly  all  agree,  husband  of  no  more  than 
one  wife.  It  is  evident  that  the  injunction  takes  for  granted  that  there  were 
in  the  church  those  who  were  husbands  of  more  than  one  wife  ;  for  if  this 
were  not  so,  this  distinguishing  requisition  of  pastors  would  be  meaningless. 

Now  it  cannot  be  supposed  for  a  moment  that  actual  polygamists  were 
included  among  the  number  of  the  members  of  Christ's  church.  The  only 
reasonable  inference  is,  that  Paul  alludes  to  the  many  converted  from  among 
the  heathen,  who,  in  their  unregenerate  days,  yielding  to  the  loose  divorce 
practices  of  their  time  —  practices  which  the  Romans  had  apparently  intro- 
duced into  Palestine  as  well  as  into  Greece  —  had  married  different  wives  at 
different  times,  divorcing  one  that  they  might  take  another,  and  so  had 
come  to  have  two  or  more  persons  still  living  to  whom  they  had  sustained 
the  relation  of  husband.  The  danger  arising  from  such  facts  as  these,  and 
the  evidence  these  facts  gave  of  an  unstable  and  sensual  mind,  were  a  suffi- 
cient reason,  in  the  judgment  of  the  apostle,  why  such  persons  should  not 
be  entrusted  with  the  responsibilities  of  government  and  leadership  in  the 
church  of  God. 

Do  I  need  to  apply  these  remarks,  or  to  sum  up  what  I  have  said  ?  I 
consider  that  no  person  who  has  been  a  willful  contemner  of  the  laws  of  the 
State  in  which  he  lives,  and  who  is  now  enjoying  the  fruits  of  this  contempt, 
is  a  proper  candidate  for  ordination  to  the  Christian  ministry.  I  have  grave 
doubts  whether  a  confessed  adulterer,  who  since  his  connection  with  the 


442  REMARRIAGE   AFTER   DIVORCE. 

church  has  by  stratagem  escaped  the  legal  penalty  of  his  crime,  is  a  proper 
person  to  be  ordained  by  an  ecclesiastical  council.  I  deny  that  a  man  who 
knows  of  two  living  persons  whom  he  has  called  his  wife,  can  answer  to 
Paul's  requisitions  of  the  Christian  bishop.  And  it  seems  certain  to  me 
that  no  person  of  whom  all  these  things  are  true  can,  by  any  gifts  or  graces, 
make  up  for  the  lack  of  that  "  blamelessness  "  and  "good  report"  which 
the  New  Testament  requires  of  its  ministers. 

The  matter  which  we  have  thus  discussed  is  one  of  grave  concern,  when 
we  remember  how  rife  in  our  day  is  the  theory  that  marriage  is  merely  a 
civil  contract,  and  that,  like  other  civil  contracts,  it  may  be  dissolved  at  the 
will  of  the  parties  to  it.  But  marriage,  like  the  State,  is  more  than  a  civil 
contract, — it  is  an  ordinance  of  God.  Though  entered  into  of  free  will,  the 
relation,  once  formed,  is  clothed  with  divine  sanctions  and  obligations,  and 
is  nothing  less  than  the  merging  of  the  life  of  the  one  contracting  party  in 
the  life  of  the  other.  The  view  that  marriage  is  a  partnership,  to  be  dis- 
solved for  slight  causes,  if  not  at  will,  is  one  which  in  practice  would  destroy 
the  very  foundation  of  civilized  society.  The  civil-contract  theory  of  mar- 
riage has  in  it  the  germ  of  far  greater  disaster  than  has  the  social-compact 
theory  of  government.  Stringent  divorce  laws  in  protecting  marriage  pro- 
tect the  State,  for  the  purity  of  family  life  is  the  chief  safeguard  of  social 
morality  and  of  public  justice.  Contempt  of  these  laws  is  a  heinous  offense 
against  God  and  man. 

Marriage  is  not  a  sacrament,  as  the  Eomanist  declares  it  to  be,  nor  in  case 
of  adultery  is  it  indissoluble.  But  it  is  indissoluble  for  every  other  cause  ; 
and,  when  dissolved  for  this  reason,  it  should  be  with  penalties  visited  upon 
the  offender  such  as  will  vindicate  God's  law  and  the  law  of  the  State. 
While  we  do  not  hold  it  a  sacrament,  we  may  hold  it  sacred.  And  this  we 
are  bound  to  do,  as  ministers,  by  solemnizing  no  marriages  between  persons 
unlawfully  divorced;  as  members  of  ordaining  councils,  by  refusing  to 
admit  to  the  sacred  office  offenders  against  Christ's  law  and  the  civil  statute  ; 
as  members  of  churches,  by  subjecting  to  discipline  those  who  violate  the 
Scriptural  rule  of  marriage  and  divorce ;  as  citizens,  by  holding  up  the 
teaching  of  Christ  as  the  model  of  human  legislation,  and  by  influencing 
the  makers  of  our  laws  to  conform  their  work  more  perfectly  to  the  divine 
standard.  If  there  is  anything  of  the  Protestant  spirit  left  in  us,  it  is  time 
for  us  to  protest  against  the  incoming  flood  of  immorality  which  takes  the 
guise  of  divorce  law  in  so  many  of  our  States,  and  under  the  leadership  of 
the  Spirit  to  lift  up  a  standard  against  it. 


XLIV. 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.* 


On  the  first  day  of  January,  1827,  Thomas  Chalmers  made  this  entry  in 
his  journal : — "My  chief  earthly  ambition  is  to  finish  a  treatise  on  Political 
Economy  as  the  commencement  of  a  series  of  future  publications  on  Moral 
Philosophy  and  Theology.  Consecrate  this  ambition,  and  purge  it  of  all  sin 
nnd  selfishness,  O  God  !  "  And  Dr.  Chalmers  closed  his  published  work  on 
"  Political  Economy,  in  connection  with  the  Moral  Aspects  of  Society  "  by 
earnestly  recommending  the  lessons  of  this  science  to  all  who  enter  upon 
what  he  was  pleased  to  call  "the  ecclesiastical  profession."  In  all  this, 
however,  he  was  only  acting  upon  the  hint  furnished  him  by  Adam  Smith, 
father  of  the  whole  race  of  modern  investigators  in  Social  Science,  for  Adam 
Smith  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago,  taught  Political  Economy  from  the 
chair  of  Moral  Philosophy  at  Glasgow.  Such  examples  as  these  made  it 
possible  for  Archbishop  Whately  to  say  that  "no  Theological  Seminary 
should  be  without  its  Professorship  of  Political  Economy,"  and  for  Dr. 
Bethune  to  call  Political  Economy  "that  philosophic  science  which  next  to 
the  gospel,  whose  legitimate  offspring  it  is,  will  do  more  than  anything  else 
for  the  elevation  and  fraternization  of  our  race." 

I  mention  these  great  names  as  a  partial  justification  of  the  unusual  theme 
which  I  discuss  to-night,  namely,  the  Relations  between  Christianity  and 
Political  Economy  If  any  doubts  still  exist  as  to  the  reality  of  these  rela- 
tions, I  am  confident  that  a  glance  at  the  nature  and  province  of  Political 
Economy  and  Christianity  respectively,  will  convince  us  of  the  intimate 
connection  between  the  two.  Political  Economy  is  not,  as  some  would  have 
us  believe,  the  science  of  mere  material  values  or  exchanges.  No  writer  has 
ever  yet  been  able  to  exclude  from  his  account  of  it  either  moral  influences 
or  moral  products.  We  cannot  build  it  up  unless  we  combine  with  the  facts 
-of  outward  nature  other  truths  relating  to  human  nature.  No  less  broad  a 
definition  can  embrace  the  matters  discussed  in  the  text  books,  than  that 
propounded  by  Storch,  the  Russian  economist,  when  he  tells  us  that  Polit- 
ical Economy  is  the  science  of  the  natural  laws  which  determine  the  pros- 
perity of  nations,  including  not  only  their  wealth  but  their  civilization. 

That  there  is  such  a  science  as  this,  we  must  maintain  in  spite  of  Mr.  De 
Quincey's  seeming  denial.  When  he  asserted  that  in  Political  Economy 
"nothing  can  be  postulated,  nothing  demonstrated,  for  anarchy  even  as  to 
its  earliest  principles  is  predominant,"  he  undoubtedly  exaggerated  the 
defective  condition  of  economic  knowledge  in  his  day.  John  Stuart  Mill, 
indeed,  had  not  then  published  his  great  work,  and  the  Reformers  had  not 


*  A  Lecture  before  the  Pennsylvania  Ministers'  Institute,  Chester.  Pa.,  June,  1871. 

443 


444  CHRISTIANITY   AND   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

yet  sufficient  strength  to  secure  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws.  But  to  say 
that  Political  Economy  was  not  even  then  a  science,  is  to  forget  Adam  Smith. 
The  analogy  of  history,  of  geology,  of  morals,  should  have  taught  De  Quin- 
cey  better.  All  these  are  sciences,  although  in  each  of  them  many  a  dispute 
is  still  unsettled.  In  each  of  them  there  is  a  body  of  principles  arranged 
and  classified.  And  it  is  true  in  our  day,  if  not  in  De  Quincey's,  that  there 
is  a  general  settling  down  upon  certain  principles  of  Political  Economy,  as 
not  only  abstractly  true  but  as  practically  verified.  The  great  battles  of  the 
science  have  been  fought  out  in  England,  and  fought  out  for  all  time. 

The  day  has  gone  by,  moreover,  when  it  could  be  even  plausibly  main- 
tained that  each  country  must  have  its  own  Political  Economy,  and  that  what 
is  true  in  England  is  not  true  in  America.  Those  who  hold  this  opinion 
assuredly  fail  to  magnify  their  office  as  economists,  for  such  views  reduce  Polit- 
ical Economy  from  a  science  to  an  art.  It  cannot  be  thus  reduced,  because 
it  has  its  foundations  in  the  immutable  laws  of  man's  intellectual  and  social 
being.  While  humanity  remains  the  same,  the  principles  upon  which  man 
acts  in  securing  his  physical  and  social  welfare  will  not  change.  These  prin- 
ciples may  be  ignored  and  denied,  but  results  will  justify  them.  Since  the 
laws  of  nature  and  the  laws  of  mind  are  everywhere  the  same,  there  must  be 
one  Political  Economy,  as  there  is  one  Astronomy  and  one  Moral  Philosophy,, 
for  England  and  for  India,  for  America  and  for  Japan. 

The  fundamental  law  of  mind  with  which  Political  Economy  has  to  deal 
is  the  law  of  self-interest.  Finding  this  principle  of  action  implanted  in  the 
human  constitution  and  serving  as  the  great  motor  in  human  intercourse, 
the  science  seeks  to  determine  the  methods  and  results  of  its  operation, —  in 
other  words,  the  physical  and  social  laws  which  cooperate  with  it,  and  the 
effect  upon  the  individual  and  upon  society  of  hindering  and  counteracting 
its  working  on  the  one  hand,  or  of  allowing  it  the  freest  play  and  develop- 
ment on  the  other. 

With  the  morals  of  self-interest,  Political  Economy,  it  is  true,  does  not 
concern  itself.  And  yet  no  one  can  for  a  moment  doubt  that  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  the  morals  of  self-interest.  Moral  Philosophy,  as  Dugald  Stewart 
assures  us,  must  recognize  self-love  not  as  an  instinctive  but  as  a  rational 
principle,  and  must  fix  its  place  not  simply  among  the  desires  but  among 
the  duties.  For  this  reason,  Political  Economy  is  as  intimately  allied  to- 
Moral  Philosophy  as  it  is  to  purely  physical  science,  and  we  can  say  with 
Dr.  Wayland  :  "  The  principles  of  Political  Economy  are  so  closely  analogous 
to  those  of  Moral  Philosophy,  that  almost  every  question  of  the  one  may  be 
argued  on  grounds  belonging  to  the  other." 

And  here  we  see  how,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  innermost  principle  of  each,, 
there  is  ground  for  suspecting  a  connection  between  Political  Economy  and 
Christianity.  For,  as  the  fundamental  law  of  the  former  is  self-interest,  so- 
that  of  the  latter  is  universal  benevolence.  Love  and  self-love  —  are  they 
necessarily  antagonistic  to  each  other  ?  Because  a  man  loves  his  neighbor, 
must  he  cease  to  love  himself  ?  Or,  does  he  secure  his  own  interest  best,  when 
he  cherishes  affection  and  practices  benevolence  toward  all  ?  These  ques- 
tions at  least  suggest  to  us  that  there  may  be  an  important  and  interesting 
relation  and  cooperation  between  principles  of  our  nature  that  at  first  sight 
seem  so  diverse  in  their  tendencies.  Instead  of  warring  against  each  other,. 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    POLITICAL    ECONOMY.  445 

they  may  be  like  the  centrifugal  and  centripetal  forces  which  result  in  the 
safe  and  harmonious  movement  of  the  earth  in  the  line  of  progress  marked 
out  for  it  by  God. 

But  we  may  go  further  than  this.  Any  true  view  of  the  nature  of  Chris- 
tianity leads  us  to  suspect  a  relation  between  it  and  Political  Economy  far 
higher  and  more  vital  than  that  of  reconciled  antagonism.  For  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  Christianity  in  the  concrete,  as  well  as  Christianity  in  the  abstract. 
Christianity  is  salvation  for  the  body  and  for  society,  as  well  as  salvation  for 
the  individual  and  for  the  soul.  More  and  more  it  is  perceived  that  Chris- 
tianity, instead  of  contravening  natural  law,  is  in  complete  accord  with  natural 
law.  In  the  highest  and  best  sense,  Christianity  is  the  religion  of  nature  — 
of  nature  true  and  perfect  as  it  exists  in  the  mind  of  God.  As  Theology 
becomes  imbued  with  the  realistic  spirit  of  this  new  and  better  age,  it  traces 
more  clearly  the  analogy  between  natural  and  moral  law,  applies  more  thor- 
oughly to  Christian  thought  the  idea  of  law  which  is  the  inspiration  of 
modern  science,  represents  Christianity  more  consistently  as  "the  royal 
law  "  of  which  all  Mosaic  laws  were  the  half-developed  and  half-compre- 
hended germ,  and  of  which  the  physical  and  social  laws  of  God's  universe 
are  but  partial  types  and  illustrations.  With  every  stride  of  the  world's 
thought,  it  is  becoming  more  plain  that  religion  and  morality  are  essentially 
one ;  that  faith  and  works  are  inseparable ;  and  that  a  true  Christianity 
involves  the  highest  physical  and  social,  as  well  as  the  highest  mental  and 
moral,  well-being  of  man. 

I  know  of  no  better  proof  of  the  divine  origin  of  Christianity  than  this, 
that  her  laws  are  little  by  little  found  to  be  laws  of  nature.  And  no  consum- 
mation can  be  more  important  or  fruitful  in  blessing  than  the  determination 
of  the  place  of  the  sciences  in  the  conquering  train  of  Christ.  It  is  no  small 
gain  to  religion  and  to  human  welfare,  when  any  single  department  of  knowl- 
edge confesses  an  humble  relationship  to  Christianity  and  begins  to  serve  its 
progress.  This  I  believe  to  be  already  true  of  Political  Economy.  She  has 
been  more  deeply  indebted  to  Christianity,  in  the  past,  than  she  has  some- 
times been  willing  to  admit.  Just  as  inventions  like  that  of  achromatic 
lenses,  to  which  men  seemed  to  be  led  by  theoretical  study  alone,  have  been 
found  to  be  anticipated  in  the  wonderful  natural  adjustments  and  adaptations 
of  the  human  eye,  so  philosophers  and  statesmen  have  not  seldom  been 
forced  to  accept  broad  and  liberal  theories  of  man's  commercial  and  indus- 
trial relations,  and  after  they  have  accepted  them,  have  found  to  their  sur- 
prise that  these  theories  were  essentially  Christian  theories,  a  legitimate 
outgrowth  of  principles  which  Christianity  had  inculcated  long  before.  If 
Christianity  has  not  furnished  the  germs  of  such  theories,  she  has  at  least 
been  the  main  agent  in  stimulating  inquiry  into  the  social  welfare  of  man- 
kind —  an  inquiry  almost  unknown  in  ante-Christian  times,  —  and  has  often 
furnished  the  moral  power  to  carry  out  true  theories,  when  selfishness  has 
planted  itself  like  a  battery  in  the  way.  And  Political  Economy  has  partially 
repaid  the  debt,  by  furnishing  concrete  illustrations  of  Christ's  laws,  and  by 
preparing  the  way  for  his  triumphs. 

The  need  of  determining  the  relations  between  these  two  great  departments 
of  human  thought,  and  of  adjusting  them  to  each  other,  appears  more  clearly 
when  we  once  consider  the  grievous  results  of  even  a  partial  and  temporary 


446  CHRISTIANITY   AND    POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

war  between  them.  We  all  know  the  harm  that  comes  to  thinking  minds 
from  the  false  impression  that  Social  Science  teaches  the  supreme  and  right- 
ful sway  of  other  laws  than  those  revealed  in  the  gospel, —  we  all  know  how 
vast  a  multitude  of  the  world's  workers  scout  religion  because  it  asserts  a 
natural  inequality  of  gifts  and  station,  and  for  this  reason  put  some  wild 
theory  of  human  rights  in  place  of  it.  For  the  sake  of  men's  souls  then,  as 
well  as  for  the  sake  of  their  temporal  welfare,  we  need  to  show  them  the  folly 
of  putting  Christianity  and  Social  Science  in  antagonism  to  each  other,  or  of 
fancying  that  the  truths  of  the  one  contradict  the  truths  of  the  other.  Min- 
eralogists tell  us  that  there  is  a  crystal  called  tourmaline,  that  has  a  peculiar 
power  of  polarizing  or  twisting  the  rays  of  light  that  pass  through  it.  Let 
a  second  crystal  of  tourmaline  be  added  to  the  first  in  a  transverse  direction, 
and  though  each  taken  singly  is  transparent,  every  ray  of  light  is  stopped  in 
the  passage  through  the  two,  so  that  to  use  the  words  of  a  noted  chemist, 
"the  rays  of  the  meridian  sun  cannot  pass  through  a  pair  of  crossed  tour- 
malines " —  the  two  crystals  shut  out  the  rays  as  perfectly  as  the  closed  slats 
of  your  window  blinds  shut  out  the  sun.  Turn  the  tourmalines  in  the  same 
direction,  and  they  are  transparent  to  the  light, —  cross  them,  and  not  a  ray 
of  light  can  pass  through  them.  I  have  sometimes  fancied  that  Political 
Economy  and  Christianity  were  like  these  tourmalines.  Either  taken  sepa- 
rately will  give  you  the  light  of  truth,  God's  light  from  heaven, —  but  when 
you  have  them  both  together,  you  must  adjust  them  to  each  other,  or  they 
will  refuse  to  transmit  the  light  at  all ;  set  them  in  antagonism  to  each  other,, 
and  the  very  light  that  is  in  them  becomes  darkness. 

We  have  great  reason  to  believe,  then,  that  the  relation  between  Christian- 
ity and  the  science  we  are  considering  is  not  so  much  a  relation  of  reconciled 
antagonism,  as  it  is  one  of  preestablished  harmony  and  cooperation.  Both 
are  parts  of  one  great  system.  We  shall  see  this  more  clearly  if  we  look  at 
certain  elements  in  each  which,  if  not  identical  with,  are  at  least  strikingly 
analogous  to,  corresponding  elements  of  the  other.  First,  there  is  a  human 
element  in  Political  Economy  as  well  as  in  Christianity, —  the  supreme  rank 
of  manhood  is  recognized  in  the  one  as  well  as  in  the  other.  Political  Econ- 
omy teaches  that  the  chief  agent  in  production,  and  the  chief  author  of  wealth, 
is  human  labor.  Mere  natural  gifts  do  not  constitute  wealth, — they  furnish 
utilities  but  not  values.  Air  and  sunshine,  though  very  useful,  will  bring 
no  price,  because  they  are  God's  free  gifts,  and  gifts  to  all  alike.  There  are 
certain  anomalous  cases  of  value,  which  at  first  sight  seem  difficult  to  bring 
under  this  principle,  but  they  are  only  apparent  exceptions  to  the  rule.  The 
diamond,  which  I  find  by  accident  upon  the  sea  shore,  has  as  great  value  as 
if  I  had  obtained  it  with  infinite  toil  by  searching  the  river  beds  of  Brazil. 
The  value  certainly  does  not  lie  in  the  material  itself, —  this  never  costs,  but 
whenever  it  is  given,  is  always  freely  given  by  God, — but  the  value  does 
just  as  certainly,  though  only  partially,  originate  in  the  labor  which  went  to 
the  picking  up  and  appropriation  of  the  stone.  Left  there  upon  the  shore, 
unseen  and  unappropriated,  the  diamond  would  be  as  worthless  as  any  com- 
mon pebble. 

There  is  indeed  another  element  in  value,  soon  to  be  mentioned,  besides 
this  of  human  labor.  Yet  still  there  is  substantial  truth  in  Hobbes's  maxim, 
that  "plenty  dependeth,  next  to  God's  favor,  on  the  labor  and  industry  of 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    POLITICAL   ECONOMY.  447 

man."  And  the  truth  was  never  more  clearly  stated  than  in  the  first  great 
text-book  of  political  economy :  ' '  Labor  was  the  first  price,  the  original 
purchase-money,  that  was  paid  for  all  things.  It  was  not  by  gold  or  by  silver, 
but  by  labor,  that  all  the  wealth  of  the  world  was  originally  purchased." 
Labor  gives  worth  to  all  things  we  possess.  Labor  is  the  alchemist  that 
turns  the  barren  sand  to  gold.  Labor  not  only  originates,  but  it  from  year 
to  year  reproduces,  the  wealth  of  a  country.  Capital  is  being  forever  con- 
sumed, and  as  it  is  consumed  it  must  be  renewed  by  labor.  The  old  com- 
putations of  physiology  made  out  that  the  particles  of  matter  in  our  bodies 
changed  once  in  seven  years,  so  that  not  an  ounce  of  our  weight  was  the 
same  that  it  was  seven  years  before.  Modern  investigations  have  greatly 
shortened  the  period,  but  it  furnishes  still  an  apt  illustration  of  the  way  in 
which  labor  is  perpetually  renewing  the  wealth  of  the  land.  The  whole  cap- 
ital of  this  country  is  only  seven  times  as  great  as  its  annual  production. 
Sweep  away  all  the  wealth  of  the  nation, —  a  few  years  labor  would  produce 
as  much  again.  From  this  fact  Mr.  Mill  explains  the  surprising  rapidity 
with  which  countries  devastated  by  war  recover  themselves.  The  war  only 
consumes,  a  little  earlier,  what  would  have  been  consumed  sooner  or  later  at 
any  rate  ;  a  few  years  of  increased  exertion  make  it  all  up  again. 

So  we  see  the  necessity  and  dignity  of  labor.  Political  Economy  is  far 
from  being  the  materialistic  science  of  which  it  has  often  been  accused.  It 
declares  that  wealth  consists,  not  in  material  products,  but  in  the  manly 
energy  that  has  been  expended  upon  them.  It  assures  us  that  the  strength  of 
a  nation  is  not  in  its  treasures  of  gold  and  silver,  its  fertile  soil,  its  capacious 
harbors,  its  overflowing  granaries,  its  splendid  edifices,  its  parks  for  pleas- 
ure, but  in  the  honest  toil,  the  intelligent  industry,  the  mental  capacity,  the 
moral  energy  of  its  sons. 

"  What  constitutes  a  state? 

Not  high  raised  battlement  or  labored  mound, 
Thick  wall  or  moated  grate; 

Not  cities  proud,  with  spires  and  turrets  crowned ; 
Not  bays  and  armed  ports, 

\Vhrn-,  laughing  at  the  storm,  rich  navies  ride ; 
Not  starred  and  spangled  courts, 

Where  low-browed  baseness  wafts  perfume  to  pride ; 
No,  men  —  high-minded  men  — 

M«-n  who  their  duties  know, 
But  know  their  rights,  and  knowing,  dare  maintain." 

Sir  William  Jones  was  right.  Political  Economy  joins  hands  with  Chris- 
tianity in  making  man  king  of  this  lower  world.  When  it  declares  that  no 
earthly  thing  has  value,  except  it  bear  man's  seal  and  superscription  upon  it, 
it  proclaims  the  self -same  truth  that  Christianity  had  uttered  from  the  first, 
—  namely,  the  dignity  of  manhood,  and  the  essential  grandeur  of  all  faithful 
human  work. 

Let  us  appreciate,  before  we  go  further,  the  significance  and  worth  of  this 
united  testimony.  Let  us  remember  that  this  truth,  so  familiar  to  us  and  so 
vital  to  human  welfare,  is  by  no  means  a  universal  or  intuitive  idea.  Men 
have  not  always  believed  it.  The  greatest  masters  of  ancient  thought,  Plato 
and  Aristotle,  denied  it.  Aristotle  asserted  that  a  mechanical  employment 
was  ignoble  and  destructive  to  virtue,  while  Plato  excluded  husbandmen  and 


448  CHRISTIANITY   AND    POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

artizans  from  all  share  in  his  ideal  government.  Even  Cicero  said  that  all 
artizans  were  engaged  in  a  degrading  profession,  and  that  there  could  be 
nothing  ingenuous  in  a  workshop.  But  now  Social  Science  accepts  the  teach- 
ing of  Christianity  that  labor  is  not  merely  the  appointed  lot  of  man,  but 
that  it  is  the  chief  source  of  human  wealth  ;  that  the  highest  end  of  human- 
ity is  not  mere  production,  but  rather  the  development  of  manhood  ;  that 
man  in  other  words  is  the  centre  and  glory  of  the  world  ;  that  persons  are 
greater  than  things  ;  that  humanity  is  worthy  of  universal  honor.  We  may 
use  natural  agents,  air,  water,  fire,  soil ;  but  we  may  never  use  man, —  treat 
him  as  a  brute  thing,  forget  the  dignity  of  his  being  or  the  nobility  of  his 
labor.  The  Scripture  only  anticipates  the  voice  of  Science,  when  it  declares : — 

"  Thou  hast  made  him  a  little  lower  than  the  angels, 
And  hast  crowned  him  with  glory  and  honor. 
Thou  madest  him  to  have  dominion  over  the  works  of  thy  hands ; 
Thou  hast  put  all  things  under  his  feet." 

Secondly,  there  is  a  social  element  in  Political  Economy,  as  well  as  in 
Christianity.  While  both  recognize  the  importance  of  human  labor  and  the 
dignity  of  the  human  person,  they  also  recognize  the  mutual  needs  and 
dependence  of  men.  Every  man  has  a  multitude  of  desires,  but  he  has  the 
power  to  satisfy  very  few  of  these  desires  by  his  own  labor.  How  many  of 
the  articles  you  consume  do  you  actually  produce  yourself  ?  Exceedingly 
few.  You  may  make  one  or  two  things  well,  but  you  cannot  make  all  things 
well.  Humanity  would  go  back  to  the  savage  state,  if  it  were  not  for  divi- 
sion of  labor,  and  exchange  of  products  one  for  another.  Thus  we  come  at 
once  to  the  provision  in  the  very  constitution  of  man  for  his  social  existence, 
and  civilization  might  be  defined  as  an  organized  recognition  of  this  mutual 
dependence.  From  this  dependence  arises  one  of  the  most  important  ideas  of 
Political  Economy  —  an  idea  first  clearly  announced  by  Bastiat,  the  French 
Economist  —  namely,  the  idea  of  service.  This  supplements  the  idea  of  labor 
which  we  have  just  been  considering,  and,  together  with  that,  makes  up  the 
full  and  correct  notion  of  value.  Value  has  its  source  not  in  labor  alone, 
but  in  labor  so  applied  and  directed  that  it  constitutes  a  service  to  somebody 
«lse.  Service  in  this  way  becomes  the  real  measure  of  value.  Things  are 
valuable,  according  as  they  are  capable  of  ministering  to  other's  good. 

See  then  the  network,  in  one  sense  simple,  yet  in  another  infinitely  intri- 
cate and  ingenious,  which  binds  me,  whether  I  will  or  no,  to  my  neighbor, 
and  makes  it  necessary  that  I  should  maintain  relations  with  him,  and  in  some 
way  serve  him.  My  isolated  and  selfish  notions  of  value  are  of  very  little 
importance  ;  it  takes  two  to  make  a  bargain  ;  I  must  consult  my  neighbor's 
opinion  as  well  as  my  own.  I  may  own  a  gold  mine  in  the  middle  of  Africa, 
or  a  whole  square  league  of  ground  on  Hudson's  Bay,  and  be  none  the  richer 
for  it.  I  may  labor  all  my  days,  but  so  long  as  all  my  efforts  are  spent  upon 
myself,  I  have  accomplished  nothing  toward  the  production  of  value.  Polit- 
ical Economy  rates  me  only  as  an  unproductive  consumer  of  God's  bounty, 
until  I  leave  my  selfishness  and  isolation,  and  begin  by  the  work  of  my  brain 
or  of  my  hands  to  serve  my  fellow-men. 

We  have  seen  that  labor  is  not  dishonorable, —  let  us  learn  the  equally 
important  lesson  that  service  is  no  more  so.  Whether  we  call  it  by  that  name 
or  not,  every  man  who  prospers  in  any  honest  trade  or  profession  does  so  by 


CHRISTIANITY   AND    POLITICAL   ECONOMY.  449 

virtue  of  the  service  he  renders  others.  To  wash  clothes  or  to  black  boots 
for  a  livelihood,  provided  it  be  only  a  willing  and  hearty  service,  is  a  calling 
as  respectable  as  that  of  the  lawyer  or  the  preacher.  It  is  the  very  dignity 
of  the  preacher  that  he  is  a  "  minister,"  or  as  the  word  implies,  a  servant. 
And  a  just  Political  Economy  only  echoes  the  maxims  of  Christianity  : — 
"He  that  will  be  chief  among  you  let  him  be  your  minister  ;"  "no  man 
liveth  unto  himself  ;  "  "by  love  serve  one  another."  And  this  not  simply 
by  furthering  their  temporal  good.  It  is  the  greatest  of  mistakes  to  suppose 
that  Social  Science  recognizes  no  values  but  those  which  are  material.  In  Dr. 
Hanna's  biography  of  his  great  father-in-law,  we  have  an  amusing  instance 
of  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  applied  to  such  a  theory  as  this.  "  Most  of 
Dr.  Chalmers'  students,"  runs  the  biography,  "will  recall  his  triumphant 
overthrow  of  Adam  Smith's  unfortunate  distinction  between  productive  and 
unproductive  labor,  in  which  the  statesman,  the  judge,  the  lawyer,  the 
teacher,  the  clergyman  and  the  man  of  science,  are  all  classed  among  the 
non-producers,  the  nati  consumere  fruges,  because  they  do  not  create  any 
tangible  commodity  :  while  the  pastry-cook,  the  squib-manufacturer,  and 
the  vender  of  quack  medicines  are  exalted  to  the  rank  of  productive  laborers 
because  they  create  tangible  commodities."  But  Dr.  Chalmers  might  have 
made  his  point  clearer,  if  he  had  more  fully  apprehended  the  nature  of  value 
as  consisting  essentially  in  service.  Then  he  might  have  seen  that  Political 
Economy  not  only  recognizes  other  commodities  than  those  which  are  merely 
material,  but  that  it  directly  tends  to  elevate  all  labor  by  the  supreme  value 
it  puts  upon  the  mental  and  moral  qualities  which  enter  into  it.  The  same 
exertion  of  nerve  and  muscle  that  carries  the  savage  in  his  foot-race  may 
carry  the  physician  on  his  errand  of  mercy.  The  same  voice  that  sings  the 
ribald  song  may  come  to  preach  the  everlasting  gospel.  Thus  by  turning 
labor  into  service,  and  by  estimating  its  value  according  to  the  higher  ele- 
ments which  go  to  the  making  of  it,  Political  Economy  unites  with  Clnis- 
tianity  in  teaching  that  an  isolated,  selfish  life  is  worthless,  but  that  the 
service  of  mankind  is  the  end  for  which  we  are  to  live. 

But  a  third  principle  comes  into  view  here,  and  completes  the  circle.  The 
personal  and  social  elements  in  both  Political  Economy  and  Christianity 
harmonize  with  each  other.  The  service  of  others  is  perfectly  compatible 
with  our  own  best  and  highest  interest.  Every  one  knows  the  lamentable 
consequences  of  the  old  Mercantile  Theory,  which  in  effect  said  to  individuals 
and  classes  and  nations:  "Get  money  —  honestly  if  you  can, —  but  get 
money."  It  made  the  great  end  of  life  to  sell  —  and  to  sell  for  coin, —  as  if 
coin  were  of  value  except  for  what  it  would  buy.  It  went  deliberately  upon 
the  principle  that,  in  every  bargain,  one  party  must  always  get  the  better  of 
the  other  ;  that  for  every  gain  there  must  be  somewhere  a  corresponding 
loss.  And  so  there  was,  under  the  forms  of  peace,  a  real  war  between  indi- 
viduals, and  between  classes,  and  between  nations.  Each  felt  that  the  rest 
were  crowding  him,  and  that  he  could  secure  his  own  interest  only  by  crowd- 
ing them.  Governments  interfered  to  prevent  injustice,  but,  by  imposing 
burdens  upon  trade  and  commerce,  only  added  to  the  injustice  they  sought 
to  remove.  There  cannot  be  found  a  more  striking  instance  of  the  practical 
disorganization  and  misery  that  may  result  from  a  false  theory  of  human 
relations.  But,  although  we  still  see  relics  of  this  ancient  absurdity  in  pop- 
29 


450  CHRISTIANITY    AND    POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

ular  theories  of  class-legislation  and  of  foreign  trade,  we  congratulate  our- 
selves that  the  hideous  spectre  appears  very  little  of  late  in  scientific  literature. 
The  whole  doctrine  of  Exchange,  the  central  doctrine  of  Political  Economy, 
is  based  upon  the  idea  that  every  bargain  may  be,  and  should  be,  of  mutual 
advantage  to  both  parties.  And  since  men  form  a  clearer  idea  of  their  own 
interest  than  any  other  man  or  body  of  men  can  form  for  them,  the  State 
can  better  serve  them  and  serve  itself  by  leaving  each  to  follow  his  own  bent,, 
make  his  own  bargains,  engage  in  his  own  trade,  whatever  these  may  be. 
In  other  words,  the  prosperity  of  the  public  is  identical  with  the  prosperity 
of  individuals,  and  the  prosperity  of  one  class  of  the  community  identical 
with  the  prosperity  of  every  other. 

I  cannot  raise  my  own  wheat  or  grind  my  own  flour.  It  is  an  advantage 
to  me  to  pay  the  flour-dealer  for  my  flour,  even  though  I  give  a  price  suffi- 
cient to  compensate  him  for  his  time  and  skill  in  selection,  besides  remuner- 
ating the  farmer  who  raised  the  wheat,  the  miller  who  ground  it,  and  the 
transportation  company  who  brought  it  to  market.  All  these  make  their 
profit,  but  that  does  not  prevent  me  from  making  my  profit  from  the  bargain 
also.  And  no  trade  or  business  in  which  this  principle  of  mutual  advantage 
does  not  apply  is  any  more  expedient  in  economics,  than  it  is  legitimate  in 
morals.  To  sell  adulterated  liquors  is  an  injury  to  public  wealth  as  well  as 
to  public  virtue,  because  no  real  service  is  rendered  for  the  money  received. 
To  grind  the  faces  of  the  poor,  by  extortion  and  usury,  injures  trade  every- 
where by  violating  the  law  of  reciprocal  benefit  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  it. 
A  spirit  of  grasping  selfishness  is  destructive  of  my  own  permanent  interest. 
It  is  for  my  interest  to  encourage  others  to  bring  me  the  best  of  their  pro- 
ducts, and  to  do  this  with  regularity  and  constancy.  They  cannot  do  this 
without  fair  remuneration.  So  that  I  must  not  only  live,  but  let  live.  I 
must  act  on  the  principle  that  what  harms  others  really  does  indirectly  harm 
me.  And  what  is  this,  but  the  Scripture  exhortation  :  "  Look  not  every  man 
upon  his  own  things  but  also  upon  the  things  of  others. "  Political  Economy, 
as  well  as  Christianity,  commands  us  not  to  drive  too  sharp  bargains  ;  not  to 
depreciate  another's  work  ;  not  to  think  that  any  one  class  can  monopolize 
the  profits  of  trade,  without  indirectly  harming  itself  thereby.  Since  many 
sorts  of  men,  many  classes  of  producers,  must  live  together,  it  is  for  their 
interest  not  to  live  in  conflict,  but  to  remember  that  their  interest  and  others' 
good  are  inseparable.  Love  works  no  ill  to  my  neighbor, —  neither  does  it 
work  ill  to  me.  In  the  last  analysis,  self-love  and  Christian  love  teach  the 
same  lesson.  There  is  a  benevolence  inherent  in  all  just  Economy.  It  is 
the  sworn  and  constant  foe  to  all  slavery,  to  all  monopoly,  to  all  prejudices 
and  hatreds,  whether  of  class  or  race.  Social  Science  as  well  as  Christianity 
urges  me  to  give  labor  its  freedom,  its  honor,  its  reward.  When  I  "render 
unto  all  their  dues,"  and  "love  my  neighbor  as  myself,"  I  only  secure  my 
own  interest,  for  the  good  of  each  is  bound  up  in  the  good  of  all. 

Thus  it  is  that  Christianity  and  Political  Economy  not  only  recognize  and 
justify  the  fundamental  principles  of  each  other,  but  confess  that  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  one  are  essentially  the  same  with  those  of  the  other,  the  differ- 
ence between  them  resulting  mainly  from  the  different  points  of  view  from 
which  each  regards  the  facts  common  to  both,  and  from  the  different  spheres 
in  which  religion  and  science  move.  On  the  one  hand,  Christianity  concedes 


CHRISTIANITY   ANJ>    POLITICAL   ECONOMY.  451 

a  place  and  a  large  place  to  self-love, — this  indeed  is  made  the  measure  of 
the  love  due  to  our  neighbor.  On  the  other  hand,  Political  Economy  allows 
that  the  truest  self-love  is  impossible  without  benevolent  regard  for  the 
interests  and  rights  of  others.  And  so,  with  a  little  change  of  phrase,  we  can 
repeat  the  words  of  a  noted  writer  on  Social  Science  :  '*  The  rules  of  Chris- 
tian morality  are  so  far  coincident  with  those  of  utility  that,  long  periods 
and  entire  communities  being  contemplated,  their  precepts  are  the  same." 

The  value  of  such  a  conclusion  as  this  can  hardly  be  overestimated.  Let  me 
illustrate  it.  Many  of  you  are  aware  that  there  once  were  many,  and  still  are 
a  few,  who  deny  the  vegetable  nature  and  origin  of  coal.  The  solid  and 
brittle  blocks  we  put  upon  our  tires  certainly  look  far  more  like  mineral  than 
like  woody  matter.  Theoretically  convinced  as  I  had  always  been  that  these 
blocks  were  the  relics  of  ancient  forests,  I  had  often  longed  for  some  ocular 
demonstration  of  the  fact.  So  I  made  myself  familiar  with  the  look  of  dif- 
ferent woods  under  the  microscope,  and  especially  with  that  of  the  coniferous 
woods,  of  which  the  coal  was  said  to  be  composed.  A  simple  pine-shaving 
presented  a  beautiful  and  striking  spectacle.  There  were  the  multitude  of 
elongated  cells  stretching  often  across  the  whole  field  of  view,  —  each  cell 
with  those  characteristic  internal  markings  which  to  a  practiced  eye  reveal 
the  nature  of  the  wood,  as  plainly  as  the  leaf  and  bark  and  contour  of  the 
stately  pine  reveal  the  nature  of  the  tree  to  the  lumberman  in  the  forest. 
Upon  the  side  of  each  cell,  though  so  minute  as  to  be  utterly  invisible  to 
the  naked  eye,  were  delicate  rows  of  sculptured  circles,  each  with  its  central 
dot,  as  if  some  fairy  had  been  working  at  it  with  tiny  compasses.  And  then 
across  these  tubular  cells,  piled  one  upon  another,  were  seen  at  intervals 
certain  darker  groups  of  perpendicular  bars,  arranged  like  short  horizontal 
ladders.  These  were  the  medullary  rays,  which  serve  perhaps  with  their 
infinitesimal  fibres  to  bind  the  cells  together.  Such  was  the  appearance  of 
the  pine-wood  shaving.  But  this  was  not  enough.  I  obtained  also  a  section 
of  cannel  coal.  It  had  been  fastened  securely  to  a  strip  of  glass,  and  then 
ground  down  so  thin  as  to  be  nearly  transparent.  I  put  this  under  the 
microscope  too, —  and  lo  !  there  were  the  same  elongated  cells,  piled  one  upon 
another, —  there  were  the  evident  traces  of  circular  markings  upon  their  sides, 
—  there  were  the  ladder-like  groups  of  medullary  rays,  —  and  all  as  unmistak- 
able as  they  had  been  in  the  little  pine-shaving  I  had  seen  before.  If  I  had 
had  doubts  before,  I  could  doubt  no  longer  ;  the  pines  of  to-day  had  their 
representatives  ages  upon  ages  ago.  Unlike  as  they  seemed  at  first,  the  coal 
and  the  wood  were  essentially  one.  So  there  is  a  minute  scrutiny  of  the 
facts  of  Social  Science  that  finds  therein  the  proofs  of  its  essential  oneness 
with  Christian  truth.  The  hard,  dark,  dead  mass  of  economic  laws  assumes 
new  beauty  and  significance  when  we  see  in  them  representatives  of  the  same 
life  that  inspires  the  gospel,  and  find  that  the  truths  of  the  one  corroborate 
and  illustrate  the  truths  of  the  other. 

It  would  be  matter  of  great  interest  to  apply  the  principles  I  have 
enunciated  to  one  after  another  of  the  practical  relations  discussed  in  social 
economics,  and  to  verify  them  in  each.  Time,  however,  and  the  patience 
of  my  auditors,  will  prevent  our  glancing  at  more  than  a  single  one.  Let 
us  look  for  a  few  moments  at  the  relation  between  capital  and  labor.  I 
draw  your  attention  to  this,  because  the  questions  at  issue  here  are  among 


452  CHRISTIANITY    AND    POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

the  most  important  and  pressing  with  which  the  nation  and  the  church  have 
at  present  to  do.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  thought  of  the  world  has 
been  turning  of  late  from  political  to  social  questions,  and  that  the  greatest 
secular  movement  of  modern  society  is  that  which  seeks  to  rescue  the  work- 
man from  the  grasp  and  control  of  capital.  With  the  rising  intelligence  of 
the  laboring  classes,  there  is  a  rising  fear  of  the  ultimate  effects  upon  them 
of  the  enormous  aggregations  of  wealth  which  modern  division  of  labor  and 
costly  machinery  seem  to  require  in  all  sorts  of  production.  The  danger 
which  seems  imminent  to  many  thoughtful  minds  among  them,  is  the  danger 
that  capital  may  soon  secure  such  a  monopoly  of  production,  that  all  possi- 
bility of  competition  will  cease,  and  that  with  this  will  be  wrested  from  the 
real  workers  of  the  world  all  hope  of  rising  above  the  rank  in  which  they  were 
born.  To  be  a  proletarian  class,  dependent  for  their  very  breath  upon  the 
favor  of  capitalists,  and  bitterly  conscious  that  their  masters  may  combine 
to  crush  out  of  them  all  independence  and  all  hope, — this  is  the  picture  which 
they  draw  to  themselves  of  the  not  improbable  future,  provided  they  do  not 
bestir  themselves  to  secure  their  rights.  And  we  cannot  wonder  that  they 
love  quite  as  little  the  tyranny  of  gigantic  corporations,  as  they  do  the 
tyranny  of  feudal  lords  from  which  they  have  just  escaped.  France  cares 
more  to-day  about  a  reorganization  of  society  with  reference  to  the  labor- 
question,  than  she  does  about  monarchy  or  democracy.  The  Communists 
of  Paris,  abolishing  rents  as  they  did,  and  demanding  the  use  of  capital 
without  interest,  were  strong  because  they  represented  the  popular  senti- 
ment of  the  metropolis  with  regard  to  the  so-called  rights  of  labor.  And 
their  English  sympathizers  in  Hyde  Park,  only  awhile  ago,  showed  their 
view  of  the  relation  between  capital  and  labor,  by  the  declaration  of  one  of 
their  speakers  that  the  accumulation  of  property  was  robbery,  and  that 
those  who  accumulated  it  were  not  only  thieves  but  murderers. 

Not  all  laborers,  thanks  to  the  intelligence  and  freedom  of  America,  are 
in  such  gross  darkness  as  prevails  in  some  parts  of  Europe.  Yet  there  are 
frequent  indications  of  radically  wrong  thinking  upon  this  subject,  even  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic  —  wrong  thinking  which,  if  not  replaced  by  a  better 
sentiment  may,  sooner  than  we  suppose,  breed  public  trouble.  It  is  of  vast 
importance  to  our  future  peace,  that  pulpit  and  press  alike  should  inculcate 
sound  doctrine  with  regard  to  the  relations  of  Capital  and  Labor.  Let  the 
voice  of  Christianity,  as  well  as  the  voice  of  Economic  Science,  be  heard, 
vindicating  the  principles  which  we  have  seen  to  belong  to  both.  Let 
them  declare  the  mutual  dependence  and  common  interest  of  employer  and 
employed.  On  the  one  hand,  let  them  demand  for  the  laborer  a  fair  share 
in  the  products  of  his  toil.  The  journeyman-mechanic's  work  is  just  as 
important  in  its  place  as  that  of  the  capitalist  who  employs  him.  Capital 
is  dependent  upon  labor,  and  should  recognize  this  dependence.  But  then, 
on  the  other  hand,  let  them  demand  for  the  capitalist,  his  fair  share  also. 
Labor  may  exaggerate  its  claims.  It  may  become  as  arbitrary  and  irre- 
sponsible a  tyrant  as  capital  ever  was.  It  may  make  out  that  it  is  the  only 
agent  in  production,  and  demand  all  the  fruits,  thus  violating  the  rule  of 
Scripture  and  of  Political  Economy  alike.  It  is  of  as  much  importance  that 
the  workman  should  understand  the  nature  and  rights  of  capital,  as  that  the 
capitalist  should  understand  the  nature  and  rights  of  labor. 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    POLITICAL    ECONOMY.  453 

Labor  and  capital, — they  go  together;  both  are  essential,  and  equally 
ntial,  to  production.  As  well  dispute  which  blade  of  a  pair  of  scissors 
lias  most  to  do  with  the  cutting,  as  to  dispute  whether  labor  has  most  to  do 
with  production,  and  deserves  the  greatest  reward,  or  whether  capital  does 
most  and  deserves  most.  Future  production  would  be  impossible,  were  it 
not  for  the  capital  that  in  the  meantime  supports  labor.  Capital  is  nothing 
but  the  accumulations  of  the  past,  applied  as  a  fund  for  new  production. 
Hence  it  is  the  very  store  from  which  the  laborer  draws  his  life.  Capital 
does  not  lie  idle, — the  moment  it  lies  idle  it  really  ceases  to  be  capital, — 
but  is  all  consumed  in  employing  and  sustaining  labor  for  the  harvests  of 
the  future.  Even  the  capitalist  who  does  no  work  himself  gets  interest  for 
the  use  of  his  money.  How  could  he  get  interest  for  it,  if  his  money  were 
not  put  to  use  —  were  not  doing  useful  work  in  the  hands  of  somebody  — 
\\  ere  not  providing  wages  for  laborers  whom  the  capitalist  never  saw  ?  Thus 
capital  is  the  limit  of  industry  ;  when  capital  gives  out,  industry  must  starve. 
Hence,  nothing  is  so  much  to  be  desired  by  the  laborer  as  that  capital  should 
be  abundant,  and  that  its  possession  should  be  safe, —  for  in  this  case  com- 
petition among  capitalists  will  be  most  active,  and  the  wages  of  labor  will 
reach  their  highest  point. 

And  does  not  the  capital,  which  performs  all  this  service,  merit  quite 
as  much  »f  compensation  as  the  labor  which  it  has  employed  ?  How  has 
this  capital  been  accumulated  ?  Only  as  the  result  of  long  abstinence  and 
saving.  The  owner  might  have  spent  it  upon  himself,  his  houses,  his 
grounds,  his  pleasures.  But  he  chooses,  instead,  to  abstain  from  this  per- 
sonal expenditure,  and  to  devote  his  gains  to  the  support  of  labor.  And 
the  proceeds  of  that  labor  he  takes  again,  and  with  them  supports  new  labor, 
so  giving  employment,  and  it  may  be,  happiness,  to  hundreds.  Does  not 
this  abstinence  on  his  part  deserve  to  be  rewarded?  Will  men  continue 
thus  to  abstain,  unless  their  abstinence  meets  with  some  reward  ?  And  then 
the  risks  of  production,  the  chances  of  falling  markets,  and  of  losses  from 
unsold  goods,  the  accidents  of  fire  and  flood,  of  thieves  and  insolvent 
debtors,  of  unsuccessful  ventures  and  ultimate  failure, —  who  will  encounter 
these  without  the  prospect  of  a  corresponding  reward  ?  And  lastly,  the 
skill  and  foresight,  the  knowledge  of  markets,  the  business-training  of  years, 
—  is  all  this  to  pass  for  naught  ?  All  this  goes  to  making  up  the  value  of 
the  product,  quite  as  much  as  the  manual  labor  of  the  workman,—  and  on 
every  principle  of  justice,  as  well  as  of  economics,  it  deserves  its  fair  share 
of  the  profit  and  reward. 

This  slight  consideration  of  the  nature  of  capital  is  at  least  sufficient  to 
show  us  the  folly  of  the  measure  for  which  socialists  often  clamor  so  loudly, 
and  which  they  conceive  to  be  a  permanent  remedy  for  the  evils  cf  poverty, 
and  for  all  inequalities  of  condition  among  mankind.  I  mean  a  compulsory 
division  of  capital  among  all  classes  of  society,  and  the  prevention  by  law 
of  any  but  an  exceedingly  limited  accumulation.  Aside  from  the  impracti- 
cability of  the  scheme,  even  at  the  outset,  and  the  disastrous  effects  upon 
society  of  withdrawing  the  strongest  motives  to  industry,  think  for  a  moment 
of  its  effects  upon  the  condition  of  those  who  received  its  original  benefits. 
Remember  that  capital  is  a  fund  preserved  from  the  inroads  of  personal 
expenditure.  In  order  to  produce  anything,  it  must  be  constantly  consumed 


454  CHRISTIANITY   AND   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

in  paying  wages.  Like  a  river,  it  remains  the  same  only  by  flowing  on  and 
changing  its  place  every  moment.  Divide  up  this  fund  among  the  poor, 
so  that  it  is  consumed  upon  personal  expenses, —  and  it  is  lost.  Suppose'  I 
should  go  to  my  city -market  on  market-day,  and  seeing  the  bountiful  supply 
of  meats  and  vegetables  there,  should  fancy  that  I  had  discovered  a  means 
of  banishing  hunger  from  the  town,  and  with  this  view  should  buy  up  the 
whole  supply  and  order  an  equal  distribution  to  every  family  of  the  popu- 
lation. The  quantity  seems  very  great, — but  how  long  will  it  last?  Have 
I  done  away  with  hunger  forever  ?  Why,  no  !  by  the  time  next  market-day 
came  round,  everybody  would  be  just  as  hungry  as  before.  So  the  capital 
of  a  country  is  no  permanent  thing,  but  a  fund  that  must  be  continually 
renewed  by  labor.  To  make  a  forced  distribution  of  it  among  all  classes, 
would  be  simply  to  waste  the  whole,  to  reduce  all  to  the  same  level  of  pov- 
erty and  starvation,  and  to  deprive  them  of  the  very  motives  and  moans 
which  they  would  need  to  raise  them  above  their  misery. 

A  proper  conception  of  the  nature  of  capital  enables  us  also  to  see  how 
misguided,  and  blind  to  their  own  interest,  are  those  who  look  upon  capital 
as  the  natural  enemy  of  labor.  How  often  do  workmen  regard  their  labor 
as  an  unjust  exaction,  either  in  its  kind  or  in  its  extent,  and  with  that  view 
set  themselves  deliberately  to  do  just  as  little  as  may  be  for  the  money  they 
receive.  I  fear  that  the  idea  of  mutual  advantage  in  a  bargain,  the  idea  of 
just  and  hearty  service,  the  idea  of  wages  honestly  and  fairly  earned,  is 
fading  out  of  the  minds  of  the  workmen  of  this  generation.  And  then  conies 
in  the  notion  that  somehow,  by  artificial  arrangements,  by  combination  or  by 
legislation,  more  money  can  be  got  for  less  work,  labor  of  poor  quality  can 
be  made  to  get  as  much  pay  as  labor  of  good  quality,  and  force  or  threats 
can  be  made  to  accomplish  what  reason  and  the  freedom  of  the  market  cannot 
accomplish.  It  is  not  combination  to  which  we  should  object, — the  laws  of 
demand  and  supply  do  not  execute  themselves  ;  higher  prices  will  never  be 
got  unless  demanded  ; — but  what  is  objectionable  is  the  hampering  of  the 
laborer's  freedom  ;  the  subjection  of  his  will  to  the  irresponsible  and  despotic 
authority  of  trades-unions  and  committees  ;  the  closing  up  of  the  avenues  of 
labor  to  all  but  members  of  a  guild ;  in  other  words,  the  bringing  back  of 
the  restrictions  upon  labor  which  have  so  hindered  human  development  in 
centuries  past.  Free  competition  is  the  life  of  trade, —  and  the  workman, 
in  his  effort  to  get  unjust  advantage  over  the  employer,  only  illustrates  the 
common  doctrine  of  Christianity  and  of  Political  Economy  that  overweening 
selfishness  is  fatal  to  the  interest  and  welfare  of  him  who  indulges  it. 

It  is  interesting  and  hopeful  to  see  that  the  members  of  the  trades-unions 
in  England  are  beginning  to  appreciate  the  great  injustice  and  suicidal  char- 
acter of  forced  strikes  for  higher  wages,  and  are  taking  measures  to  avoid 
them.  It  argues  a  more  intelligent  apprehension  of  the  relations  between 
labor  and  capital,  that  a  recent  Conference  in  London  representing  no  less 
than  700,000  men,  members  of  the  various  trades-unions  all  over  the  country, 
solemnly  resolved  that,  for  the  future,  recourse  should  in  no  place  or  circum- 
stances be  made  to  a  strike,  but  that  all  disputes  should  be  referred,  as  they 
arose,  to  joint  delegations  of  employers  and  employed,  presided  over  by  an 
umpire.  And  the  partial  solution,  by  means  of  arbitration,  of  disputes 
between  the  miners  of  Pennsylvania  and  the  companies  that  employ  them, 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    POLITICAL    ECONOMY.  455 

is  a  mark  of  progress  which  we  may  trust  will  not  be  without  its  lessons  to 
all  departments  of  trade  throughout  our  own  land.  For  labor  to  impose 
arbitrary  exactions  upon  capital,  with  the  hope  that  any  permanent  benefit 
can  be  derived  therefrom,  is  only  to  repeat  the  fallacy  which  ^Esop  ridiculed 
so  long  ago,  when  he  told  about  the  hands  and  feet,  the  hands  and  mouth, 
declaring  that  they  would  no  longer  serve  the  stomach  or  furnish  it  with  its 
supplies.  They  forgot  that  the  stomach  supplied  them  with  strength  and 
sinew,  quite  as  much  as  they  supplied  it  with  food  ;  and  they  saw  their  mis- 
take when  the  hands  and  feet  could  move  no  longer,  and  the  eyes  and  mouth 
had  closed  in  death. 

While  labor  has  its  duties,  however,  it  is  no  less  certain  that  capital  has 
its  duties  also.  As  it  is  for  the  interest  of  labor  to  have  an  eye  to  the  rights 
of  capital,  so  it  is  for  the  interest  of  capital  to  have  an  eye  to  the  rights  of 
labor.  I  think  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  as  labor  becomes  more  intelligent, 
it  will  claim  and  justly  claim  a  somewhat  larger  share  of  profits  than  has  been 
hitherto  awarded  it.  It  will  justly  claim  more,  because  it  will  be  worth  more. 
There  is  a  powerful  tendency  in  this  country  to  independence  among  the 
working  classes.  With  greater  knowledge  of  the  business  they  are  doing, 
they  have  a  stronger  feeling  of  ownership  in  a  part  of  its  products.  There 
was  a  time  when  employers  could  hide  the  amount  of  their  profits, —  could, 
by  combination  among  themselves,  keep  down  the  price  of  labor  while  they 
themselves  were  getting  rich.  But  that  day  is  passing  by.  The  condition 
of  the  various  trades  and  manufactures  is  becoming  a  public  matter,  and 
employers  will  be  obliged,  either  to  give  their  employees  something  equiva- 
lent to  an  interest  in  the  business,  or  to  see  them  set  up  cooperative  estab- 
lishments for  themselves.  We  may  safely  say  that  the  working  men  of  this 
country  are  less  and  less  inclined  to  work  for  mere  wages, — they  will  yet 
demand  with  their  whole  soul  that  they  may  have  an  interest  in  the  things 
they  make.  This  doubtless  will  lead  to  the  formation  of  cooperative  estab- 
lishments in  continually  greater  number  and  on  a  continually  greater  scale. 
The  beginnings  that  have  been  made  in  this  direction,  with  their  weakness 
and  frequent  failure,  ought  not  to  blind  us  to  the  real  value  of  the  principle 
nor  to  the  possibility  of  its  successful  operation.  Paris  has  now  several 
hundred  such  manufactories,  many  of  which  are  leading  houses  in  their 
respective  trades.  England  can  point  to  Briggs's  Colliery  and  to  the  Cross- 
ley  Carpet  Manufactory  as  notable  examples  of  success  in  the  same  line  — 
examples  where  the  accumulated  capital  has  reached  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  pounds.  Cooperation  has  one  great  element  of  success — the  personal 
interest  of  every  man  in  his  work, —  but  it  also  has  one  element  of  weakness 
—the  difficulty  of  securing  competent  management  by  the  payment  of  mere 
salary.  A  man  after  all  manages  his  own  business  best,  and  is  best  trained 
for  his  own  business  by  that  very  management.  If  employers  can  combine, 
with  this  great  advantage  of  personal  supervision,  the  other  advantage  of 
giving  each  workman  some  direct  interest  in  the  profits  of  the  concern,  the 
double  benefit  would,  in  all  probability,  outweigh  any  incidental  evils  or 
difficulties  arising  from  the  union  of  the  two,  and  do  much  to  solve  the  prob- 
lem of  capital  and  labor.  And  examples  of  such  management  are  not  want- 
ing. Leclaire,  a  house  painter  of  Paris,  as  Mr.  Mill  informs  us,  employs  two 
hundred  workmen.  These  he  pays  in  the  usual  manner  by  fixed  wages  or 


456  CHRISTIANITY   AND   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

salaries.  He  assigns  to  himself,  besides  interest  on  the  capital  invested,  a 
fixed  allowance  for  his  labor  and  responsibility  as  manager.  At  the  end  of 
the  year  the  surplus  profits  are  divided  among  all,  himself  included,  in  the 
proportion  of  their  salaries.  He  has  not  only  done  for  years  a  large  business 
and  acquired  a  handsome  competence,  but  has  found  his  account  in  the 
admirable  activity  and  zeal  of  his  workmen,  and  in  the  kindly  relations  that 
have  subsisted  between  himself  and  them.  Dupont,  a  printer  of  Paris, 
employing  three  hundred  men,  has  found  the  distribution  among  them  of 
even  a  tenth  part  of  the  profits,  though  this  does  not  amount  in  a  year  to 
more  than  a  fortnight's  extra  wages,  to  be  a  means  of  stimulating  industry 
and  of  improving  the  products  of  his  office  to  a  degree  which  far  more  than 
repays  the  outlay. 

All  that  is  intended  in  these  remarks,  however,  is  to  draw  attention  to  the 
tendencies  of  the  day  and  to  the  illustration  which  they  furnish  of  the  great 
truth  of  social  and  moral  science,  that  all  classes  of  society,  even  those  which 
commonly  look  most  suspiciously  upon  each  other,  have  a  common  interest 
and  are  bound  to  work  harmoniously  together.  In  the  full  recognition  of 
this  truth  we  see  the  greatest  hope  of  labor.  The  increase  of  capital  ought 
not  to  be  matter  of  apprehension  to  the  laborer  since,  with  every  increase, 
there  must  be  greater  competition  among  capitalists,  and  a  consequent 
advance  in  the  workman's  share  of  profits  in  every  branch  of  trade.  In  this 
fact  of  Political  Economy,  that  capital  increases  faster  than  population,  lies 
a  prophecy  of  the  gradual  advance  of  the  laboring  classes  in  comfort  and 
intelligence,  since  this  secures  for  them  the  certainty  of  a  constant  increase 
of  wages.  And,  as  for  the  great  evils  expected  to  result  from  the  combina- 
tion of  capitalists  and  the  restriction  of  manufactures  to  vast  establishments, 
we  may  set  over  against  these,  the  principle  of  association,  which  enables 
workmen  also  to  combine,  not  to  secure  by  threats  or  violence  what  does  not 
belong  to  them  by  right,  but  to  unite  the  little  fragments  of  capital  which 
each  possesses,  until  they  form  a  fund  large  enough  for  successful  competition 
with  the  capitalists  themselves.  The  only  remedy  for  the  evils  of  coopera- 
tion is  cooperation  —  cooperation  either  of  capitalists  with  laborers,  so  that 
the  one  share  to  some  fair  degree  the  profits  of  the  other,  or  cooperation  of 
laborers  with  one  another,  so  that  they  virtually  become  capitalists  them- 
selves, working  for  their  own  interest  most  effectually  when  they  work  for 
the  body  to  which  they  belong. 

The  realization  of  this  hope,  upon  any  large  or  general  scale,  may  seem  to 
many  to  be  impracticable,  or  at  least  very  far  away.  Many  will  insist  that 
neither  the  laws  of  Political  Economy,  nor  of  Christianity,  will  ever  really 
regulate  the  action  of  mankind.  Selfishness  rules  the  day,  they  will  say  : 
and,  the  more  grasping  and  unprincipled  it  is,  the  greater  will  be  its  success. 
They  will  point  to  merchant  princes  whose  wealth  has  been  coined  out  of 
the  hearts  and  brains  of  ten  thousand  toilers  —  toilers  whom  they  have 
remorselessly  trampled  under  foot.  But  these  are  the  exceptions,  not  the 
rule,  and  the  real  lesson  they  teach  is  a  far  different  one  from  this.  For  one 
who  has  reached  a  competency  by  iniquity,  a  hundred  have  failed, —  and 
the  noblest  successes  have  been  successes  of  another  sort.  A  Brassey  in 
England,  and  a  Krupp  in  Germany,  have  shown  that  whole  armies  of  work- 
men may  be  managed,  not  as  machines,  but  as  sentient  and  moral  agents,,. 


CHRISTIANITY   AND    POLITICAL   ECONOMY.  457 

with  the  highest  advantage  to  the  governing  power  that  directs  them.  In 
the  general,  and  in  the  long  run,  honesty  and  kindness  are  the  best  policy. 
God  has  not  disjoined  the  physical  from  the  moral  laws  of  his  universe,  nor 
made  it  best  that  men,  even  so  far  as  worldly  prospects,  are  concerned, 
should  play  the  villain.  The  highest  prosperity,  whether  for  the  individual 
or  society  is,  in  spite  of  temporary  and  insignificant  exceptions,  conditioned 
upon  obedience  to  God's  laws.  And  it  does  good  to  proclaim  these  laws. 
It  will  benefit  the  working-classes  to  know  that  their  true  interest  lies  in 
their  own  hands  —  in  frugality,  intelligence,  union  with  others.  Only  as 
they  save  the  proceeds  of  their  labor,  and  associate  themselves  with  their 
fellows,  will  they  lift  themselves  up  to  comfort  and  independence.  It  will 
benefit  the  holders  of  capital  to  know  that  they  owe  a  duty  to  workmen 
beyond  that  of  mere  payment  of  wages, —  namely,  the  duty  of  doing  what 
they  can  to  elevate  the  general  character  of  those  whom  they  employ, — 
and  that  this  duty  is  identical  with  their  own  ultimate  and  highest  interest. 
There  may  be  difficulties  in  the  way  of  applying  just  principles, — but  if 
capitalists  and  workmen  can  be  only  educated  into  a  right  disposition,  we 
may  be  sure  that,  where  there  is  a  will,  there  is  also  a  way. 

I  have  confidence  that  Providence  is  turning  the  thoughts  of  both  the 
scientific  and  religious  world  to  these  questions,  in  order  that  the  relations 
between  capital  and  labor  may  be  settled  upon  a  just  and  enduring  basis. 
There  may  be  temporary  strife  and  chaos  of  opinions,  but  out  of  all  this 
light  will  come.  Nothing  is  so  much  to  be  deprecated  as  the  haste  and 
jiiission  and  ignorance  on  the  one  hand,  or  the  short-sighted  avarice  on  the 
other,  which  would  precipitate  conflict  between  these  two  great  factors  of 
production.  Nothing  is  more  to  be  desired  than  such  a  thorough  inculca- 
tion of  correct  principles,  and  such  a  growth  in  mutual  respect  for  each 
other's  rights,  that  war  between  them  will  be  impossible.  Neither  the 
demands  of  Political  Economy,  nor  of  Christianity,  will  be  satisfied  until 
both  perceive  that  their  interests  are  one,  begin  to  se«k  each  other's  good, 
and  bring  in  benevolence  as  an  element  in  all  their  relations.  Then  will  be 
brought  about  the  glorious  deliverance  and  crowning  of  labor,  to  which  so 
many  noble  hearts  have  looked  forward,  and  for  which  so  many  have  vainly 
sighed.  Who  can  refuse  to  add  his  prayer  for  that  consummation,  when  he 
reads  the  sorrowful  but  inspiring  song  of  that  poet  of  labor,  Gerald  Massey  : 

"  High  hopes,  that  burned  like  stars  sublime, 

Go  down  in  the  heavens  of  freedom ; 
And  true  hearts  perish  in  the  time 

We  bitterliest  need  them  ; 
But  never  sit  we  down  and  say, 

There's  nothing  left  but  sorrow  ; 
^'r  walk  the  wilderness  to-day 

The  promised  land  to-morrow. 

"  Through  all  the  long  dark  night  of  years. 

The  people's  cry  ascendeth : 
And  earth  is  wet  with  blood  and  tears,— 

But  our  meek  sufferance  endeth ; 
The  few  shall  not  forever  sway, 

The  many  moil  in  sorrow : 
The  powers  of  hell  are  strong  to-day 

But  Christ  shall  rise  to-morrow. 


458  CHRISTIANITY   AND   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

"  Build  up  heroic  lives,  and  all 

Be  like  a  sheathen  sabre, 
Ready  to  flash  out  at  God's  call, 

O  chivalry  of  labor ! 
Triumph  and  toil  are  twins,  and  aye 

Joy  suns  the  cloud  of  sorrow, 
And  't  is  the  martyrdom  to-day. 

Brings  victory  to-morrow." 

The  same  principles  might  be  applied,  as  I  have  intimated,  and  in  an 
extended  discussion  should  be  applied,  to  other  relations  than  those  between 
Capital  and  Labor.  There,  for  example,  is  the  relation  between  luxurious 
consumption  and  the  productive  industry  of  a  country,  between  the  desire 
for  unlimited  accumulation  and  the  educational  or  aesthetic  needs  of  society, 
between  the  great  corporations  which  threaten  to  control  our  legislation  and 
the  public  whose  franchise  they  have  obtained,  between  the  security  of  the 
national  creditor  and  the  financial  prosperity  of  the  land,  between  the  free- 
dom of  commerce  from  all  needless  restrictions  of  impost  or  tax  and  the 
merging  of  all  race-hatreds  in  a  universal  human  brotherhood.  The  mere 
mention  of  these  various  relations  suggests  the  vastness  of  the  field  over 
which  Political  Economy  and  Christianity  hold  joint  jurisdiction,  and  the 
greatness  of  the  service  which  the  one  may  render  to  the  other.  Political 
Economy  has  limits  beyond  which  it  cannot  go.  Upon  those  boundaries  it 
stands  and  calls  for  Christianity  to  be  its  helper.  I  find,  in  Mr.  Walker's 
"  Science  of  Wealth,"  a  quotation  from  Bastiat,  which  plainly  shows  this 
with  regard  to  the  single  matter  of  value.  "In  order,"  he  says,  "that  a 
service  should  possess  value,  in  the  economical  sense  of  the  word,  it  is  not 
at  all  indispensable  that  it  should  be  real,  conscientious  and  useful  service. 
It  is  sufficient  that  it  is  accepted  and  paid  for  by  another  service.  It 
depends  wholly  on  the  judgment  we  form  in  each  case ;  and  this  is  the 
reason  why  morals  will  always  be  the  best  auxiliary  of  Political  Economy. 
Economic  Science  would  be  impossible  if  we  admitted  as  values  only  values 
correctly  and  judiciously  appreciated."  It  is  at  just  this  point,  indicated 
by  the  French  economist,  that  Christianity  comes  in  to  rectify  our  ideas  of 
value.  It  sets  up  its  spiritual  standards  over  against  the  materialism  which 
would  make  earthly  wealth  the  supreme  and  only  good.  Political  Economy, 
left  to  itself,  can  never  reach  the  ends  which  it  proposes.  Man's  highest 
self-interest  is  often  in  conflict  with  a  lower  self-interest,  which  contradicts 
the  first,  and  the  lower  obscures  the  higher, — the  speck  upon  the  window- 
pane  is  larger  to  the  sight  than  the  house  upon  the  distant  mountain-side. 
What  can  correct  the  errors  of  a  narrow  self-interest,  that  looks  only  to  the 
near  and  the  present,  but  that  faith  which  is  "  the  substance  of  things  hoped 
for,  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen,"  and  the  love  whose  arms  take  into 
their  broad  embrace  the  whole  universe  of  things,  and  the  whole  eternity  of 
God? 

Thus  Political  Economy  gives  us,  on  a  lower  plane,  the  same  truths  which 
the  gospel  had  uttered  long  ago.  Thus  Political  Economy  illustrates  Chris- 
tianity, and  proves  it  to  have  the  same  Author  with  the  laws  of  nature.  Thus 
Political  Economy  prepares  the  way  for  Christ,  by  laying  down  demands 
which  require  the  gospel  as  their  natural  complement.  Economical  laws 
indeed  serve  much  the  same  purpose  as  was  served  by  the  Mosaic  law.  That 


CHRISTIANITY    AND    POLITICAL   ECONOMY.  459 

law  prevented  depraved  humanity  from  sinking  so  low  as  it  would  have  sunk 
without  restraint  or  tutelage  ;  yet,  with  all  this  negative  service,  the  law  had 
no  power  to  lift  man  up  to  a  higher  life.  In  like  manner,  the  laws  of  self- 
interest,  to  use  the  language  of  Professor  Bascom,  "catch  man  when  he 
falls  from  God's  life  and  love,"  and  prevent  him  from  going  so  far  toward 
ruin  as  he  otherwise  would  do,  yet  they  have  no  power  of  themselves  to 
restore  him  to  the  height  from  which  he  has  fallen.  Though  self-interest 
and  true  benevolence  speak  the  same  language,  and  seek  the  same  thing, 
self-interest  lays  down  a  law  which  she  is  powerless  of  herself  to  obey. — The 
Mosaic  law,  again,  prepared  the  way  for  the  gospel,  by  foreshadowing  its 
truths,  and  pointing  away  from  itself  to  Christ  as  the  only  source  of  life 
and  power.  So  Social  Science  prepares  the  way  for  Christianity  by  dimly 
foreshadowing  its  truths  and  pointing  away  from  itself  to  another,  who 
alone  can  complete  what  it  lacks  and  furnish  the  fulfillment  of  its  demand4*. 
Human  nature  can  fulfill  the  demands  of  the  highest  self-interest  only 
through  the  access  of  a  higher  power  —  a  power  of  love  and  life.  In  this 
way,  the  social  laws  which  govern  mankind  interlock  with  the  moral  laws, 
and  require  these  to  complement  their  own  insufficiency  and  weakness. 
How  could  this  be,  if  religion  were  not  from  the  same  source  as  nature  ? 
How  could  this  be,  if  both  were  not  true  and  both  divine  ? 

Thus  Political  Economy  and  Christianity  are  indissolubly  wedded. 
"  What  God  hath  joined  together,  let  not  man  put  asunder. "  But  let  us  not 
mistake  their  relative  rank  and  importance.  Although  Political  Economy 
helps  and  furthers  the  cause  of  true  religion,  her  place  is  second,  not  first. 
And  in  this  we  get  a  glimpse  of  the  relation  of  science  in  general  to  the 
religion  which  we  profess.  Social  Science  stands  only  as  the  representative 
of  all  the  sciences,  when  she  acknowledges  her  own  inferiority,  and  serves 
as  a  school-master  to  bring  the  world  to  Christ.  Uttering  a  stern  and  inex- 
orable law,  she  knows  of  none  but  Christ  in  whom  that  law  may  become  a 
law  of  liberty  and  the  hardness  of  self-interest  melt  into  the  round  soft 
shape  of  love.  And  therefore,  not  science,  but  Christianity,  is  the  hope  of 
mankind.  No  powers  of  merely  natural  progress  can  ever  lead  humanity 
to  its  goal.  The  race,  like  the  individual,  must  have  a  higher  guidance  than 
that  of  its  own  instincts  and  intuitions.  Even  the  earthly  Paradise  of  the 
philosopher  and  the  poet  can  never  be  reached  by  the  help  of  science  alone. 
And  the  heavenly  Paradise, — how  infinitely  far  away,  how  barred  to  all 
access  it  is,  until  Christ  comes  out  from  the  golden  doors  to  take  us  with  his 
pierced  hand  and  lead  us  thither  ! 

The  banyan-tree  of  the  East  Indies,  is  distinguished  from  other  trees  in 
this,  that  it  never  ceases  growing.  Travelers  tell  us  that  its  branches  throw 
out  new  roots,  at  first  consisting  of  slender  fibres,  hanging  in  the  air  and 
growing  downward,  but  ultimately  reaching  the  earth's  surface  and  striking 
in,  until  they  themselves  become  minor  trunks  which  send  out  new  branches 
in  their  turn.  At  length  the  great  parent  trunk  comes  to  resemble  the 
central  column  of  a  cathedral  chapter-house,  with  scores  of  subordinate 
shafts  around  it,  each  helping  to  support  the  vaulted  canopy  above,  and 
adding  grace  and  beauty  to  the  leafy  temple.  In  some  such  way  as  this, 
we  may  picture  to  ourselves  the  connection  between  Christianity  and  the 
sciences  which  tend  to  ameliorate  human  conditions.  In  a  true  sense  they 


460  CHRISTIANITY    AND    POLITICAL    ECONOMY. 

are  the  offspring  of  Christianity  itself.  Sent  forth  at  first  as  aerial  rootlets, 
they  have  at  last  found  resting  place  and  new  foundation  in  the  solid  ground 
of  fact,  and  from  that  time  serve  as  independent  witnesses  to  the  truth  and 
supporters  of  it.  They  are  not  to  be  dissevered  from  it,  for  their  life  and 
the  life  of  the  great  central  trunk  is  one.  Thus,  receiving  strength  as  well 
as  giving,  all  human  knowledges  stand  humbly  and  reverently  around  the 
religion  of  love,  the  religion  of  the  cross.  Evermore  shall  Christianity,  in 
its  everlasting  growth,  send  down  new  roots  of  arts  and  science  and  civiliza- 
tion, and  these  shall  repay  their  debt  by  guarding  and  strengthening  their 
common  mother,  until  the  giant  tree  shall  have  embraced  in  itself  all  the 
results  of  the  broadest  and  noblest  human  thought,  reducing  them  to  order 
as  subordinate  parts  of  one  great  system  of  which  it  is  the  centre,  sancti- 
fying and  pervading  them  with  its  own  divine  life,  and  uniting  all  in  one 
organic  structure  of  faith  and  knowledge,  so  vast  and  so  free,  that  all  man- 
kind may  come  beneath  its  branches  and  enjoy  its  shade  and  blessing. 
And  so,  "In  the  midst  of  the  street  of  it,  and  on  either  side  of  the  river, 
shall  be  the  tree  of  life,  which  beareth  twelve  manner  of  fruits,  and  yieldeth 
her  fruit  every  month  ;  and  the  leaves  of  the  tree  shall  be  for  the  healing  of 
the  nations." 


XLV. 

GETTING  AND  SPENDING.* 


Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : —  I  thank  you  for  this  most  kind 
and  cordial  greeting.  These  lights  and  flowers,  this  handsome  entertainment 
and  pleasant  talk,  represent  to  me  the  social  side  of  Christianity.  I  do  not 
wonder  at  the  tendency  of  our  population  to  the  cities.  The  human  heart 
feels  the  need  of  stir  and  sympathy.  I  am  glad  that  when  we  get  to  heaven 
we  are  not  to  live  in  the  country.  The  book  of  Revelation  tells  us  that  the 
New  Jerusalem  is  a  city,  and  I  suppose  our  business  is  to  make  life  here  an 
earnest  and  type  of  that  closeness  of  Christian  companionship,  and  that  inten- 
sity of  loving  activity,  which  belong  to  the  city  of  God. 

A  Social  Union  cannot  further  this  end  in  any  better  way  than  by  encour- 
aging the  quiet  and  unpartisan  discussion  of  social  questions  —  especially 
such  questions  as  the  pulpit  finds  it  difficult  to  treat.  Well-to-do  people 
have  problems  of  their  own.  The  answers  which  they  give  are  not  the  same 
answers  that  were  commonly  given  fifty  years  ago,  but  they  are  given  just 
as  conscientiously.  What  position  shall  we  take  with  regard  to  new  social 
customs  which  challenge  either  our  acceptance  or  rejection?  How  shall  we 
admit  all  the  real  sweetness  and  light  of  a  refined  civilization,  while  yet  we 
keep  our  hearts  safe  from  the  serpent  and  the  sting,  that  lurk  beneath  the 
flowers?  How  shall  we  keep  an  independent  judgment  amid  the  clamorous 
petitioners  for  our  benevolent  contributions,  and  yet  never  say  :  ' '  Get 
thee  behind  me,  God  !  "  instead  of  "  Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan  ?  "  We  hear 
much  about  the  trials  of  poverty.  Something  needs  to  be  said  about  the 
trials  of  wealth.  It  is  out  of  what  I  may,  without  much  of  jest,  call  a  heart 
of  deep  sympathy  for  the  rich,  that  I  propose  to  speak  to  you  for  a  moment 
or  two  of  The  Christian  Law  of  Getting  and  of  Spending. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  Christianity  requires  a  man  to  be  poor. 
Abraham  was  a  good  Christian, —  at  least,  he  was  the  father  of  all  believers, — 
and  yet  he  was  very  rich.  Job  had  a  large  property,  and,  though  he  lost  it 
all,  it  was  all  returned  to  him,  and  more.  I  have  no  idea  that  the  young  man 
in  the  gospels  would  have  been  compelled  to  sell  all  that  he  had,  if  he  had 
been  willing  to  sell  all  that  he  had.  Riches  are  recognized  in  Scripture,  not 
only  as  a  good,  but  as  a  means  of  doing  good.  Men  may  misuse  them,  but 
wealth  is  a  blessing,  an  opportunity,  an  honor,  a  power.  It  is  not  money, 
but  the  supreme  love  of  money,  that  is  the  root  of  all  evil.  Christianity  pro- 
motes the  virtues  that  make  wealth  —  temperance,  industry,  foresight,  self- 
denial.  If  all  men  were  Christians,  all  men  would  be  rich.  Some  day  the 
meek  will  inherit  the  earth.  The  church  is  poor,  mainly  because  she  is 


*An  Address  at  the  "Ladies'  Meeting"  of  the  New  York  Baptist  Social  Union, 
Delmonico's,  November  1, 1883. 

461 


462  GETTING   AND   SPENDING. 

stingy.  When  she  consecrates  her  all  to  God,  God  will  give  all  to  her ;  the 
kings  of  the  earth  —  among  whom  are  included  capitalists  —  shall  bring  their 
glory  and  honor  into  her  ;  the  riches  of  the  world  shall  be  brought  into  her 
treasury,  because  her  treasury  and  the  treasury  of  Christ  shall  be  one. 

This  is  not  only  good  Christianity,  but  it  is  good  Political  Economy.  There 
is  a  certain  dignity  in  the  origin  of  capital,  for  it  is  the  produce  of  past  labor, 
and  is  the  result  of  saving.  Capital  never  could  have  come  into  existence, 
except  through  a  sacrifice  of  present  good  for  the  sake  of  the  future.  It 
takes  a  certain  measure  of  intellectual  and  moral  development  to  make 
accumulation  possible.  Bagehot,  the  English  economist,  says  that  all  the 
Bourses,  Exchanges,  Chambers  of  Commerce,  ought  to  erect  statues  to  the 
man  who  first  taught  his  fellows  to  live  a  year  in  advance  by  casting  seed 
into  the  ground, —  for  he  was  the  most  daring  and  original  of  all  speculators. 
Our  savings  banks  prove  that  large  classes  of  people  have  advanced  to  what, 
economically  considered,  is  a  high  level  of  patience  and  thoughtfulness  and 
faith.  You  never  heard  of  a  savings  bank  among  the  Hottentots.  And  to 
accumulate  great  properties,  and  to  hold  them  together,  involve  the  exercise 
of  these  same  virtues  in  a  yet  larger  degree. 

Capital  has  a  dignity  due  to  its  origin  in  labor  and  saving.  But  it  has  also 
a  dignity  derived  from  the  use  to  which  it  is  put.  It  is  the  help  and  support 
of  labor.  Everything  saved  from  the  produce  of  past  labor,  and  made  to  help 
in  new  production,  is  of  the  nature  of  capital.  Even  the  workman  who  merely 
owns  his  tools  is  an  incipient  capitalist.  And  the  great  capitalist  is  only  a 
man  who,  as  the  result  of  his  own  or  others'  savings,  has  got  into  his  posses- 
sion a  larger  set  of  tools.  As  no  trade  can  be  earned  on  without  tools,  so  no 
business  can  be  carried  on  without  capital,  and  no  great  business  can  be  car- 
ried on  without  great  capital.  Capital  is  a  fund  that  employs  workmen. 
The  capitalist  therefore  is  the  greatest  friend  that  the  laborer  has,— for  you 
cannot  have  any  more  industry  than  you  have  capital  to  support  it.  It  is 
for  the  interest  of  the  world  that  some  men  should  have  great  wealth, —  for 
that  wealth  is  productive  to  the  owner  only  by  performing,  like  the  waters 
of  the  earth,  a  constant  circuit.  Now  it  is  the  rain  that  fertilizes  the  fields 
of  agriculture  ;  now  it  is  the  mountain  stream  that  drives  the  mill-wheel  of 
manufactures ;  now  it  is  the  broad  sea  that  bears  upon  its  bosom  the  fleets 
of  commerce.  Without  the  principle  of  accumulation,  without  aggregations 
of  capital,  without  rich  men,  great  public  works  would  be  impossible,  the 
progress  of  the  race  would  cease,  and  mankind  would  go  back  to  barbarism. 

It  is  well  to  be  rich,  and  neither  Christianity  nor  Political  Economy  has 
anythiDg  to  say  against  it.  But  how  rich  is  it  well  to  be  ?  What  is  the  law 
an  1  limit  of  accumulation  ?  I  am  not  now  asking  with  regard  to  limitations 
from  without,  in  the  shape  of  legal  provisions,  though  John  Stuart  Mill 
thought  that  the  excessive  concentration  of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  a  few 
should  be  guarded  against  by  limiting  the  amount  which  one  can  acquire  by 
inheritance.  This  reminds  me  of  Dr.  Johnson's  peculiar  eulogy.  Dr.  John- 
son praised  the  English  system  of  primogeniture,  because  ' '  it  made  only  one 
fool  in  a  family, " —  all  but  the  eldest  son  had  to  work  for  their  living.  There 
is  a  tyranny  over  the  markets  which  is  as  arbitrary  as  the  rule  of  the  Sultan, 
and  it  is  a  question  whether  this  tyranny  ought  not  to  be  rendered  less  dan- 
gerous to  the  public  by  practically  limiting  estates  to  the  amount  which  each 


GETTING    AND   SPENDING.  46$ 

man  can  acquire  by  his  own  industry  during  a  single  life-time.  Nor  am  I 
asking  now  with  regard  to  the  limitations  imposed  by  merely  economical 
considerations,  such  as  the  shortness  of  life,  the  decay  of  one's  own  powers^ 
the  increasing  burdens  that  attend  upon  increasing  wealth,  and  the  uncer- 
tainty whether  others  who  come  after  us,  and  who  legally  inherit  our  estates, 
will  be  able  to  manage  the  property  which  we  get  together.  You  remember 
the  merchant  in  the  Arabian  Nights  who  let  loose  an  imprisoned  Genie,  only 
to  find  that  the  Genie  stood  over  him  with  drawn  sword  threatening  his  life. 
Should  not  this  consideration  that  the  wealth  we  create  may  become  master 
instead  of  servant,  to  our  children  if  not  to  ourselves,  have  something  to  do 
in  determining  when  we  should  cease  to  accumulate,  and  should  begin  to 
give  away  ? 

But  the  question  which  I  wish  to  ask  is  this  :  What  limitations  upon 
accumulation  should  a  sense  of  our  relation  to  Christ  impose  ?  I  take  it  for 
granted  that  we  all  agree  with  regard  to  the  spirit  and  aim  with  which  the 
acquisition  of  wealth  should  be  conducted.  We  are  not  to  make  money  for 
money's  sake.  That  makes  a  man  an  idolater,  just  as  much  as  if  he  wor- 
shiped a  god  of  gold.  Nor  are  we  to  make  money  simply  to  gratify  a  selfish 
ambition.  The  love  of  power  grows  by  what  it  feeds  on  ;  it  would  not  be 
satisfied,  even  if  the  world  lay  at  its  feet ;  it  is  a  consuming  passion,  and  all 
the  generous  and  spiritual  elements  of  character  melt  in  its  fervent  heat.  We 
are  equally  agreed  that  a  Christian  man  belongs,  with  all  that  he  has,  to 
Christ ;  that,  as  Christ  has  given  him  his  talent  for  money-making,  he  is  to 
use  this  talent  in  the  interest  of  the  Giver.  I  should  say  that  he  has  no  right 
to  retire  from  business  simply  to  save  himself  trouble,  and  no  right  to  do  a 
small  business  when  he  can  just  as  safely  do  a  large  one.  He  is  bound  to 
make  what  he  has  of  property  and  ability  productive  for  the  great  Owner  of 
whom  he  is  only  steward  and  trustee, —  and,  not  only  productive,  but  pro- 
ductive in  the  highest  degree  possible  to  the  powers  with  which  Christ  has 
endowed  him. 

Some  of  you  may  think  that,  in  saying  this,  I  am  removing  all  limits  to 
accumulation.  Not  so.  It  is  the  utmost  possible  production,  to  which  we 
are  bound,  not  the  utmost  possible  accumulation.  And  production  of  what? 
Woolen  goods  and  railroad  dividends  ?  Oh  no !  there  was  a  higher  sort 
of  production  to  which  you  devoted  yourself  when  you  became  a  Chris- 
tian man,  namely,  the  production  of  holiness  in  the  earth.  Keeping  your 
money  going  as  capital  is  not  enough,  if  you  are  a  Christian.  You  might  as 
well  have  it  sunk  in  the  sea,  as  to  have  it  producing  nothing  in  the  way  of 
the  furtherance  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  And  productiveness  in  this  sense 
must  limit  the  principle  of  mere  accumulation. 

Suppose  we  test  this  matter  by  applying  the  rule  in  other  departments  of 
human  activity.  Here  is  a  man  eager  for  knowledge.  His  temptation  is  to 
seclude  himself  from  his  fellow-men,  and  to  forget  both  God  and  humanity 
in  his  avidity  for  learning.  How  much  knowledge  may  he  rightfully  accumu- 
late ?  You  answer  at  once  :  Just  so  much  as  is  consistent  with  a  healthy 
recognition  of  God's  claims  upon  his  soul,  and  the  world's  claims  upon  his 
service.  In  other  words,  he  must  make  his  learning  productive, — as  Lord 
Bacon  says,  "a  rich  storehouse  for  God's  glory  and  man's  relief," — or  his 
learning  will  eat  into  his  soul  like  a  canker.  Accumulation  of  knowledge, 


464  GETTING   AND   SPENDING. 

to  be  Christian,  must  be  not  only  with  a  view  to  ultimate  wider  distribution, 
but  it  must  be  accompanied  by  continual  distribution.  The  trustees  of  a 
hospital  who  should  allow  its  funds  to  accumulate  without  end,  instead  of 
appropriating  them  to  the  relief  of  the  wounded  and  the  sick,  would  be 
unfaithful  to  their  trust.  So  to  accumulate  knowledge  without  end  is 
unfaithfulness  to  a  higher  trust,  and  to  accumulate  wealth  without  distrib- 
uting is  equal  malfeasance  in  the  office  of  a  steward. 

What  I  have  said  about  capital  will  show  you  that  I  have  no  sympathy 
with  the  popular  prejudice  against  capitalists  which  regards  them  as  mere 
blood-suckers  fastened  upon  the  body  politic.  No,  their  money,  whether  lent 
out,  or  invested  in  stocks,  or  put  into  trade,  is  doing  work,  and  in  an  eco- 
nomical sense  is  producing  something  continually,  however  little  it  may  be 
producing  in  a  spiritual  sense.  Every  capitalist  is  a  business  man.  When 
we  come,  therefore,  to  the  practical  application  of  this  doctrine  of  producing 
for  God,  the  question  is  substantially  this  :  What  proportion  of  my  property 
and  its  income  may  I  properly  use  in  business  ?  how  large  a  business  may  I 
conduct  ?  how  great  a  capital  may  I  use  ?  how  great  an  estate  may  I  gather  ? 
These  questions  are  all  practically  the  same.  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  day 
of  small  things  has  gone  by.  Daniel  Safford,  that  model  of  benevolence  of 
whom  we  heard  so  much  when  we  were  boys,  vowed  to  God  that  he  would 
never  be  worth  more  than  $50,000,  and  all  that  he  made  over  and  above  that, 
he  faithfully  gave  away.  But  by  limiting  his  capital,  he  limited  its  produce, 
and  so  limited  his  gifts.  If  a  man's  powers  are  equal  to  the  larger  produc- 
tion, I  have  grave  doubts  whether  he  has  a  right  to  put  the  limits  of  his 
fortune  where  Daniel  Safford  put  it.  For  some  men,  it  would  be  wrong  to 
stop  even  with  $  500, 000  or  $  5, 000, 000.  But  let  us  be  sure  about  our  powers, 
and  about  our  motive.  Are  we  gathering  for  God,  or  for  ourselves  ?  Is  pro- 
duction in  an  economical  sense  subserving  the  other  sort  of  production  — 
production  in  the  religious  and  spiritual  sense  ?  Do  not  tell  me  that  you 
intend  to  make  it  so  by  and  by.  You  never  will  be  any  better  than  you  are 
now, —  at  least  you  have  no  right  to  presume  that  you  will  be.  Unless  you 
make  the  principle  of  accumulation  subservient  to  the  principle  of  benevo- 
lence now,  you  have  no  right  to  believe  that  you  ever  will,  or  that  your  wealth 
will  be  other  than  a  curse  instead  of  a  blessing. 

Have  I  seemed  to  imply,  in  this  address,  that  we  are  all  millionaires? 
Well,  we  certainly  look  as  if  we  were.  But,  lest  there  should  be  a 
single  unfortunate  exception,  who  has  not  yet  received  his  portion  of  meat 
from  this  feast  of  reason,  let  me  say  a  word  or  two  about  spending  as  I 
have  already  about  getting.  We  all  must  spend.  We  are  all  consumers. 
It  takes  only  a  little  while  for  the  world  to  eat  itself  up.  "Though  full 
of  useful  and  precious  goods,"  says  Dr.  Walker,  without  constant  new 
production  "the  world  would  be  seedy  within  ten  years,  and  beggarly 
within  the  life  of  man."  And  we  consume  luxuries  as  well  as  necessaries, — 
in  fact,  in  our  modern  days  a  great  many  things  once  called  luxuries  have 
become  necessaries.  And  this  is  perfectly  right.  God  does  not  bring  about 
a  high  development  of  our  faculties  without  providing  a  corresponding 
nutriment  and  supply.  The  talk  about  "plain  living  and  high  thinking," 
is  mostly  talk.  An  active  brain  needs  good  food.  A  hard-worked  man  will 
live  longer  for  having  a  good  bed.  Good  fires  and  good  clothes  are  dimin- 


GETTING   AND   SPENDING.  465 

isking  the  chances  of  death  arid  are  enriching  the  life  insurance  companies. 
And  God  cares  for  men's  tastes,  for  he  has  created  them  in  the  image  of  his 
own.  He  himself  loves  beauty,  and  he  has  made  us  to  love  it  —  the  beauty 
of  nature  not  only,  but  the  beauty  of  art — symphonies  and  statues,  pictures 
and  noble  piles  of  architecture.  It  is  just  as  right,  within  certain  limits,  to 
spend  money  for  such  things,  as  it  is  to  spend  it  for  daily  bread.  But  as 
Christian  people,  it  is  very  important  to  understand  the  principle  and  the 
limit  of  this  luxurious  consumption. 

I  hear  a  false  principle  frequently  advocated.  I  do  not  say  that  any  of  us 
advocate  it.  I  will  illustrate  it  by  the  court  of  the  third  Napoleon.  When 
a  lady  of  the  court  appeared  a  second  time  in  the  same  dress,  the  Empress 
Eugenie  gently  admonished  her  that  she  had  "admired  that  dress  before." 
And  the  wasteful  extravagance  of  the  Tuilleries  was  defended,  upon  the 
ground  that  it  kept  a  great  many  silk  manufacturers  and  milliners  at  work, 
and  so  encouraged  industry.  Well,  it  would  keep  men  at  work,  to  some 
extent,  if  we  spread  gold  broad-cast  over  our  walls,  and  had  for  our  dinners, 
as  the  Romans  did,  dishes  composed  of  the  brains  of  birds  of  Paradise.  But 
who  does  not  see  that  it  will  keep  more  men  at  work,  and  for  a  longer  time, 
to  put  the  same  sum  into  productive  business?  $1,000,  spent  in  luxury, 
will  pay  $  1,000  of  wages.  $  1,000,  employed  as  capital,  will  in  ten  years  pay 
$20,000  of  wages,  and  will  go  on  increasing  its  power  of  supporting  labor  so 
long  as  it  is  thus  employed.  As  a  celebrated  economist  has  said  : —  "Wealth 
spent  in  luxury  is  the  fierce  blaze  of  the  burning  house,  which  may  warm  a 
few  for  a  moment,  but  which  soon  goes  out,  leaving  only  desolation. " 

And  so  we  see  the  Christian  limit  of  luxurious  consumption.  We  must 
be  able  to  show  that  our  spending  does  the  greatest  possible  good.  Though 
we  were  worth  a  hundred  millions,  it  never  would  be  right  to  waste.  We 
are  stewards  of  God's  estate  ;  we  own  nothing  in  fee -simple  ;  we  are  set  to 
administer  our  earthly  property  for  God.  Now  a  temperate  and  well  pro- 
portioned luxury,  by  which  I  mean  a  proper  provision  for  the  satisfaction 
of  our  tastes  and  social  instincts,  does  bring  forth  fruit  for  God,  both  in 
ourselves  and  in  others.  Such  luxury  is  a  spring  of  beneficent  activity  ;  it 
stimulates  men  for  life's  toils  ;  it  repairs  life's  waste  ;  it  lets  loose  our  higher 
powers  ;  it  repays  its  cost  many  times  over.  The  Athenian  Stoic  was  content 
with  "figs  and  philosophy."  We  need  something  more.  I  once  saw  a 
Christian  home,  where  I  thought  luxury  and  principle  went  hand  in  hand. 
It  was  a  solid,  spacious,  English-like  structure.  There  were  servants,  and 
there  was  plate.  There  were  pictures  of  worth,  and  costly  books.  But  there 
was  not  the  slightest  ostentation.  One  would  have  thought  the  family  had 
lived  there  a  thousand  years.  And  when  the  son  of  the  family  greeted  me  — 
a  beautiful  youth,  six  feet  and  two  inches  tall  and  straight  as  an  arrow, 
ingenuous  and  modest,  yet  with  a  natural  distinction  of  manner  that  showed 
that  he  was  "  to  the  manor  born,"  I  recognized  the  fact  that  wealth  had  not 
spoiled,  but  had  helped,  education. 

You  say  I  have  not  yet  told  you  how  far  this  expenditure  may  go.  I  will 
tell  you  now.  Just  so  far  as  is  consistent  with  loving  God  supremely,  and 
your  neighbor  as  yourself.  No  luxury  can  be  Christian,  that  tends  to  lead 
my  neighbor  into  sin.  The  traveler  on  one  of  the  splendid  steamers  of  the 
river  Rhine  sometimes  observes  that  the  engines  have  suddenly  stopped. 
30 


466  GETTING   AND   SPENDING. 

Looking  ahead  he  perceives  a  low,  grimy  coal-barge,  so  heavily  laden  that 
her  gunwales  are  near  the  water's  edge.  The  swell  in  the  wake  of  the  great 
steamer,  if  she  kept  up  her  full  speed,  would  be  sufficient  to  wash  over  the 
sides  of  the  barge  and  sink  her.  So  the  larger  vessel  stops  her  engines  and, 
with  the  momentum  already  gained,  glides  quietly  by  till  the  barge  is  out  of 
danger.  We  are  to  consult  the  interests  of  others,  and  not  to  please  our- 
selves. Let  us  be  sure  that  the  swell  and  bravery  of  our  display  and  indul- 
gence does  not  sink  some  humbler  craft,  which  otherwise  might  have  reached 
its  destined  haven. 

No  luxury  can  be  Christian,  that  hardens  the  heart  against  the  calls  of 
distress.  When  the  heavy  draperies  of  our  curtains  become  so  thick  as 
wholly  to  shut  out  the  wail  of  the  great  suffering  and  sinning  race,  then  the 
curtains  had  better  come  down.  No  luxury  can  be  Christian,  which  makes 
this  life,  with  its  glitter  and  its  pleasure,  the  be-all  and  the  end-all  of  existence. 

"  This  life  of  mortal  breath 
Is  ante-chamber  to  the  life  Elysian, 
Whose  portal  we  call  death." 

The  luxury  that  would  persuade  us  to  find  our  Paradise  here,  and  to  forget 
the  Paradise  beyond,  is  a  false  luxury,  and  full  of  poison  to  the  soul.  Beauty 
and  pleasure  are  not  ends  in  themselves,  but  means  to  a  higher  end  —  the 
production  of  the  true  and  the  good,  and  the  preparation  of  our  souls  for 
heaven.  As  Bonar,  the  sweetest  religious  poet  of  Scotland,  has  sung  : — 

"  '  Tis  first  the  true  and  then  the  beautiful, 

Not  first  the  beautiful  and  then  the  true ; 
First  the  wild  moor,  with  rock  and  sedge  and  pool, 
Then  the  gay  garden,  rich  in  scent  and  hue. 

"  '  Tis  first  the  good  and  then  the  beautiful, 

Not  first  the  beautiful  and  then  the  good : 
First  the  rough  seed,  sown  in  the  rougher  soil, 
Then  the  flower  trellis,  and  the  branching  wood. 

"  Not  first  the  glad  and  then  the  sorrowful, 

But  first  the  sorrowful  and  then  the  glad  ; 
Tears  for  a  day  — for  earth  of  tears  is  full,— 
Then  we  forget  that  we  were  ever  sad. 

"  Not  first  the  bright  and  after  that  the  dark, 

But  first  the  dark  and  after  that  the  bright ; 
First  the  black  cloud,  and  then  the  rainbow's  arc, 
First  the  dark  grave,  then  resurrection  light. 

"  ' Tis  first  the  night—  dark  night  of  storm  and  war, 

Thick  night  of  heavy  clouds  and  veiled  skies ; 
Then  the  fair  sparkle  of  the  morning  star, 
That  bids  the  saints  awake,  and  dawn  arise." 

And  so  Christianity  bids  us  bear  one  another's  burdens,  and  so  fulfill  the 
law  of  Christ.  Are  you  rich  ?  Then  it  would  seem  to  me  that  you  ought 
not  to  spend  more  upon  yourself,  than  you  spend  on  others.  And  if  you  are 
very  rich  why  should  you  not  use  your  opportunity  to  give  all  your  increase 
to  God,  that  with  it  he  may  send  the  gospel  into  the  heart  of  some  heathen 
empire,  or  build  up  some  great  institution  that  shall  train  the  future  teachers 
of  the  church?  And  still  you  wish  to  ask  me  further  questions  —  about 
horses,  and  pictures,  and  yachts  ?  Well,  I  am  glad  that  I  am  not  set  to  be 
the  keeper  of  your  conscience,  or  any  other  human  being's  but  my  own. 


GETTING    AND    SPENDING.  467 

God  gives  us  his  law  of  love  and  the  example  of  Christ's  sacrifice, —  and  he 
says  to  us  :  "As  I  have  loved  you,  so  love  my  cause.  Do  all  to  the  glory  of 
God.  He  that  soweth  sparingly  shall  reap  sparingly,  but  he  that  soweth 
bountifully  shall  reap  bountifully.  As  the  Lord  hath  prospered  you,  so  give. 
Be  good  stewards  of  the  manifold  grace  of  God."  It  indicates  the  rank  and 
dignity  of  each  of  us  in  the  creation  that,  with  these  principles  before  us,  we 
are  left  to  determine  our  duty  solitarily  before  God.  Life  is  a  probation, — 
our  characters  are  revealing  themselves, —  we  are  fixing  our  place  and  des- 
tiny for  eternity.  But  nothing  in  our  earthly  life  will  better  show  what  we 
are,  and  where  we  belong  forever,  than  our  getting  and  spending. 


XLVI. 

RECOLLECTIONS  OF  THE  EAST.* 


The  subject  of  this  lecture  is  Egypt  and  Palestine.  But  do  not  mistake 
me, —  I  do  not  mean  the  Egypt  and  Palestine  about  which  you  have  heard 
so  much,  and  upon  which  it  is  so  eminently  proper  to  deliver  lectures.  That 
is  very  commonly  an  ideal  Egypt  and  Palestine.  The  subject  of  my  lecture 
is  only  the  Egypt  and  Palestine  that  I  saw.  Cicero  says  that  "the  eye  sees 
only  that  which  it  brings  with  it  the  power  of  seeing,"  and  such  as  I  have 
I  give  you, — namely,  a  few  personal  Recollections  of  the  East.  I  shall  not 
imitate  a  former  townsman  of  mine,  who  began  his  history  of  Eochester 
with  an  account  of  the  glacial  epoch,  nor  shall  I  follow  the  example  of 
Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York,  which  commences  with  the  Creation. 
I  shall  take  you  at  once  to  the  gates  of  the  Orient.  I  shall  claim  the  privi- 
lege of  being  as  uninstructive  as  I  please.  If  any  of  you  have  ever  read 
Mr.  Kinglake's  Eothen,  that  rose-colored  but  fascinating  book  of  Eastern 
travel,  you  have  not  forgotten  the  solemn  strain  in  which  the  author  warns 
his  readers,  in  the  preface,  that  from  all  useful  information,  from  all  valu- 
able statistics,  and  from  all  moral  and  religious  reflections,  his  work  will  be 
thoroughly  free.  I  am  half  inclined  to  begin  my  lecture  with  a  like  warn- 
ing. I  wish,  at  least,  to  bar  all  disappointment,  by  premising  that  I  am  to 
give,  not  an  elaborate  and  logical  and  scientific  account  of  Egypt  and  the 
Holy  Land,  but  simply  a  few  jottings  of  what  I  saw,  and  how  I  felt,  as  I 
wandered  through  those  regions  of  ancient  story. 

Very  early  one  morning,  in  the  latter  part  of  March,  the  Frenchman  who 
occupied  the  lower  berth  of  the  state-room  woke  me  with  the  words  :  "  Alex- 
andrie, — Alexandrie  !  "  We  had  been  steaming  it  all  the  way  from  Naples  and 
Malta  for  the  last  four  days,  and  I  had  got  quite  a  sufficient  idea  of  the  extent 
of  the  Mediterranean.  I  needed  no  second  call,  and  in  a  few  moments  was  on 
deck.  During  the  night  we  had  anchored  in  the  harbor,  and  now,  as  the  sun 
rose  and  the  morning  breeze  played  upon  the  surface  of  the  water,  I  took  my 
first  view  of  Alexandria.  The  picture-books  were  all  true,  and  more  than 
true.  Unmistakably  Egyptian  was  the  long  low  shore-line  of  yellow  sand, 
and  the  long  yellow  line  of  city  houses.  Here  and  there  an  isolated  palm 
tree  seemed  like  an  emerald  in  a  golden  setting,  while  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
city  were  patches  of  green  grass  and  groves  of  palms  whose  trunks  looked 
like  slender  columns  of  a  temple,  supporting  a  roof  of  Gothic  fan-work. 
The  golden  glow  of  the  East  was  over  all.  The  morning  was  warm,  but 
bright  and  cloudless  —  a  perfect  Egyptian  spring  morning.  In  four  days  I 
had  journeyed  from  April  to  June.  I  began  to  realize  how  that  person 

*  A  Lecture  before  the  Robinson  Rhetorical  Society  of  the  Rochester  Theological 
Seminary,  February  25,  1878. 

468 


RECOLLECTIONS    OF   THE    EAST.  469 

must  feel  who  is  knocked  into  the  middle  of  next  week.  One  can  live  in 
a  perpetual  spring,  if  he  will  only  chase  it  wherever  it  flies.  Yet  I  must 
confess  to  something  like  a  smiting  of  conscience,  as  I  stood  on  the  deck  of 
Her  Majesty's  steamer  and  remembered  how  I  had  cast  contempt  on  the 
almanac,  and  substituted  one  long  May  for  December,  January,  February, 
and  March. 

The  sun  had  hardly  emerged  above  the  horizon,  before  a  dozen  boats, 
manned  by  natives,  put  out  from  shore  to  welcome  us.  And  what  a  wel- 
come !  Such  yelling  and  gesticulation  !  I  once  thought  that  American 
hotel-runners  could  get  up  as  perfect  an  extempore  Babel  as  any  set  of 
mortals,  but  I  believe  now  that  they  must  yield  the  palm  to  these  Egyptians. 
An  overwhelming  torrent  of  Arabic  jargon,  bearing  on  its  bosom  the  dis- 
jecta membra  of  murdered  French,  English,  and  Italian  words  !  With* 
voices  keyed  at  the  highest  pitch,  and  with  faces  apparently  frantic  with 
excitement,  each  one  of  these  swarthy  creatures  begged,  besought,  implored 
you,  to  take  his  boat.  We  looked  on  as  placidly  as  possible  for  awhile  ;  but 
a  his,  the  harbor  was  shallow  ;  the  steamer  could  not  get  nearer  shore  ;  we 
had  come  to  see  Egypt ;  we  must  leave  the  vessel ;  we  could  not  swim  ashore  ; 
\vc  were  shut  up  to  taking  a  boat ;  and  so,  after  driving  the  best  bargain  we 
could,  we  committed  ourselves  to  the  mercies  of  half  a  dozen  stalwart  tatter- 
demalions, with  much  the  same  feelings  that  one  would  have  on  resigning 
himself  to  a  lot  of  Comauches,  to  be  scalped  or  to  be  set  up  as  a  mark  for 
juvenile  savages  to  shoot  at.  Once  in  the  boat,  the  uproar  quieted  down  so 
much  that  we  began  to  think  our  tribulations  over.  As  we  approached  the 
shore,  however,  I  lifted  my  eyes,  and  to  my  dismay  beheld  a  regiment  of 
Arab  donkey-drivers,  the  only  hackmen  of  the  East,  lining  the  whole  shore 
where  we  were  to  land,  and  stretching  out  their  arms  towards  us,  while  they 
uttered  such  ominous  cries  as  "Mosu  !  Mosu  !  want  a  donkey  ?  "  Here  my 
French  friend  was  invaluable.  I  had  seen  him,  a  number  of  times  on  the 
voyage,  affectionately  fondling  a  good  stout  shillalah.  I  had  asked  him  what 
the  purpose  of  the  stick  was,  but  he  had  only  replied  that  he  had  a  little 
grudge  to  settle  with  the  donkey -boys  at  Alexandria.  Now  I  saw  the  admir- 
able results  of  living  on  the  maxim:  "Forewarned,  forearmed," — for,  no 
sooner  had  the  Frenchman  leaped  on  shore,  than  he  began  to  lay  about  him 
like  mad,  right  and  left,  front  and  rear,  till  the  donkey -boys  fell  back  in 
utter  confusion,  and  he  led  us  in  triumph  through  the  routed  host. 

We  next  fell  into  the  clutches  of  the  Custom  House  Inspector,  an  officer 
whose  chief  end  is  to  collect  "baksheesh,"  or  tribute-money,  for  not  examin- 
ing baggage.  We  propitiated  His  Excellency  with  a  sixpence,  and  escaped 
scot-free.  Then  a  lot  of  Arab  porters  surrounded  us.  The  moment  the 
Custom  House  Examiner  signified  that  the  baggage  was  all  right,  half  a 
dozen  squalid  wretches  made  a  dive  for  each  separate  article,  and  in  less 
time  than  it  takes  to  tell  it,  our  baggage  was  scattered  to  the  four  winds, 
and  nothing  was  to  be  heard  but  yells  of  "  Mosu  !  hotel  ?  "  It  was  a  flank 
movement  on  the  Frenchman,  for  his  back  was  turned  at  the  moment.  It 
was  only  a  temporary  reverse  however,  for  the  thick  stick  came  to  the 
rescue.  It  brought  the  most  obstinate  to  terms,  and  sent  the  rest  flying. 
In  a  few  minutes,  we  were  hurrying  after  two  or  three  Arabs  who  contracted 
to  serve  as  baggage-wagons,  and  who  succeeded,  to  our  surprise,  in  shoulder- 


470  RECOLLECTIONS   OF   THE   EAST. 

ing  all  our  trunks,  hat-boxes,  and  valises.  When  we  reached  the  hotel  we 
found  it  completely  full.  On  seeking  another,  we  discovered  the  case  to  be 
the  same  there.  A  host  of  English  passengers  were  in  town  on  their  way 
to  India,  via  Suez.  It  was  on  toward  noon  before  we  succeeded  in  getting 
breakfast,  and  the  crowd  so  completely  destroyed  all  comfort  that  we  con- 
cluded to  take  the  railway  that  afternoon  to  Cairo. 

That  railway  ride  gave  us  a  fine  chance  to  see  the  Egyptian  landscape. 
The  country  is  very  flat.  Nothing  like  a  hill  is  to  be  seen.  Meadows  clothed 
in  the  most  beautiful  verdure  alternate  with  sandy  plains  and  desolate  yel- 
low mounds  —  the  only  remains  perhaps  of  ancient  cities, —  but  mounds  on 
which  are  now  clustered  the  mud-huts  of  the  modern  Egyptians.  Now  and 
then  a  grove  of  palms  varied  the  monotony  of  the  scene,  and  twice  between 
Cairo  and  Alexandria  the  railway  crosses  the  Nile.  I  shall  never  forget  the 
awe  with  which  I  first  looked  upon  this  mighty  and  mysterious  river,  on 
whose  banks  early  idolatry  built  its  temples  and  the  first  great  empire  of  the 
earth  arose.  Here  was  the  source  of  Greek  mythology,  and  the  home  of  the 
oldest  science  and  civilization.  Wonderful  river  !  emblematic  of  the  history 
and  influence  of  the  land  through  which  it  flows.  With  sources  lost  in  dis- 
tance, and  fertilizing  vast  spaces  of  otherwise  desert  land,  it  leaves  its  home 
at  last,  and  mingling  with  the  sea  bears  Egyptian  waters  to  Greece  and 
Italy.  The  Nile  was  very  low,  but  its  current  was  swift  and  broad,  and  even 
in  crossing  it  by  railway  we  could  see  that  it  was  one  of  the  grandest  of 
rivers.  Railroading  in  Egypt  never  exceeds  fifteen  miles  an  hour,  and  long 
before  we  reached  Cairo  at  midnight,  we  had  lost  all  recollections  of  our 
breakfast.  We  did  what  we  could  to  console  ourselves  with  oranges,  which 
the  Arab  boys  sold  at  three  for  a  penny.  When  we  reached  the  great  Hotel 
of  Cairo,  all  was  dark.  Just  inside  the  door  a  great  stout  negro  porter  was 
lying  in  true  eastern  fashion  across  the  threshold,  fast  asleep.  After  kick- 
ing him  about  like  a  foot-ball  for  a  few  minutes,  we  managed  to  wake  him, 
and  it  was  not  long  before  a  number  of  tired  howadji  were  slumbering  safely 
inside  the  mosquito-nets. 

Two  days  in  Cairo  —  and  two  days  only, —  for  the  season  was  late,  and 
Palestine  was  before  us.  We  had  to  see  the  greatest  amount  possible  in  the 
smallest  possible  time.  So,  at  seven  o'clock  the  next  morning,  we  started 
for  the  pyramids.  My  dragoman  Selim,  as  is  invariably  the  case,  was  the 
prince  of  interpreters  and  guides.  Each  ©f  us  mounted  a  stout  donkey,  uu<  I 
behind  the  donkeys  followed  the  inevitable  donkey-boy,  armed  with  a  long 
stick.  We  had  no  more  to  do  with  the  running  of  the  donkeys  than  a  pas- 
senger has  to  do  with  the  running  of  a  railway  train, — the  donkey-boy  was 
both  engineer  and  conductor.  Our  business  was  simply  to  hold  on,  and  to 
let  the  animals  run.  They  were  sometimes  disinclined  to  go  faster  than  a 
walk,  and  then  the  donkey-boy's  stick  was  very  efficacious.  Though  you 
may  scarcely  believe  it,  we  rode  the  donkeys  and  the  donkey -boy  ran  behind, 
thirty-six  miles  that  day,  in  twelve  hours,  including  at  least  an  hour  and  a 
half  of  stoppages.  That  day  I  visited  the  pyramids,  the  Apis-Cemetery  of 
Sakkara,  and  the  remains  of  Memphis,  and  returned  at  night  to  Cairo,  the 
sorest  mortal  that  ever  dismounted  from  a  donkey. 

The  ride  for  the  first  few  hours  was  very  delightful.  Every  step  showed 
something  new  in  Oriental  life  or  customs  or  scenery.  The  narrow  and  dirty 


RECOLLECTIONS    OF   THE    EAST.  471 

streets  of  Cairo,  sometimes  roofed  over  with  matting  to  exclude  the  sun,  the 
bazaars,  with  a  sober,  squatting,  cross-legged  Egyptian  smoking  his  chibouk 
at  the  entrance  of  every  little  shop,  the  women  with  faces  half -covered  after 
the  eastern  custom,  but  with  sharp  black  eyes  that  still  glanced  at  the  Frank 
over  the  edges  of  the  dark  veil,  the  Arab  jargon  of  quarreling  ferrymen,  the 
camels  with  their  long  necks  and  ungainly  strut  and  enormous  burdens, 
taking  up  the  whole  street  as  they  walked,  the  noble  gateways  adorned  with 
Arabesques  and  inscriptions  from  the  Koran,  which  now  and  then  appeared 
among  the  squalid  and  ugly  habitations  of  the  poor,  —  all  these  were  new  to 
me.  I  was  in  the  midst  of  the  Orient.  I  saw  dozens  of  boys  who  might 
have  served  for  excellent  Aladdius,  and  it  was  no  small  task  at  times  to 
repress  the  fancy  that  I  was  some  personage  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  and  liv- 
ing "  in  the  days  of  good  Haroun  al  Raschid."  All  round  me  were  sights 
and  sounds  utterly  different  from  the  sights  and  sounds  of  Europe  ;  it  was 
all  a  new  world  and  a  new  age, —  no,  not  that, —  it  was  the  old  world  and  the 
old  age,  which  we  moderns  have  so  far,  far  outgrown. 

Outside  the  city  the  road  wound  through  endless  groves  of  palm  and  tam- 
arisk and  cassia.  The  grass  was  green  and  fresh,  but  the  flowers  were  all  of 
novel  shape  and  hue, —  everywhere  the  brilliant  and  luxurious  vegetation  of 
the  tropics.  So,  until  we  stood  almost  under  the  solemn  shadow  of  the 
P\  ramids,  the  morning's  ride  was  a  continual  succession  of  beauties  and 
surprises.  Then  came  a  change.  In  a  few  minutes,  we  had  passed  from 
greenness  and  tropical  beauty  to  long  tracts  of  desert  sand.  The  Pyramids 
stand  on  the  very  edge  of  the  desert.  As  you  toil  up  the  steep  sand-covered 
bank  on  which  they  are  built,  they  seem  to  rise  before  you  as  giant  warders 
of  that  vast  region  of  sterility  and  death. 

The  ascent  of  the  great  Pyramid  was  rather  comical.  As  we  passed  the 
last  straggling  collection  of  mud-huts  on  our  way  to  them,  two  or  three  Arabs 
from  each  village  started  up  from  the  ground  where  they  had  been  lying  in 
the  sun,  and  followed  us,  as  persistently  as  hounds  would  follow  a  hare. 
When  we  arrived  at  the  foot  of  the  great  Pyramid,  we  had  about  twenty  of 
them  about  us,  as  rascally  a  set  in  appearance  as  one  often  sees.  The  regu- 
lar charge  of  the  Sheikh  for  ascending  the  Pyramid  and  exploring  the  inte- 
rior is  five  English  shillings,  and  for  this  sum  he  is  compelled  to  furnish 
three  stout  Arabs  to  assist  and  guide  each  traveler.  A  dozen  others,  however, 
always  beset  you  with  offers  of  aid  and  demands  of  "baksheesh,"  and  their 
importunities  are  not  so  easy  to  resist,  especially  when  they  have  you  com- 
pletely in  their  power,  as  they  do  at  some  stages  of  your  explorations. 
Determining  in  my  own  mind  that  I  would  yield  to  no  such  demands,  and 
leaving  all  superfluous  clothing  and  all  my  money  behind  me  for  safe  keeping 
with  the  dragoman,  I  gave  each  hand  to  a  lank  Arab,  who  looked  as  if  he 
would  gladly  cut  my  throat  for  a  sixpence,  and  began  the  ascent.  A  third 
Arab  followed,  and  furnished  the  "  boosts  "  from  behind.  All  this  assistance 
is  very  necessary, —  for  the  outside  of  the  Pyramid,  though  it  was  originally 
smooth,  is  now  a  series  of  rough  steps  about  three  feet  high. 

With  the  help  of  the  Arabs,  the  ascent  at  first  seemed  quite  novel  and 
amusing.  As  they  pulled  me  up  they  sang  a  sort  of  chant  together,  the 
words  of  which  were  of  all  languages,  and  ran  somewhat  as  follows  :  '  *  Mosu 
.good  —  hard  work  —  no  'f raid  —  Jack  and  Jill  —  baksheesh  ;  —  Mas'r  rest  — 


472  RECOLLECTIONS   OF   THE   EAST. 

take  care  —  not  far  —  Mosu  good  —  hard  work  —  baksheesh. "  They  sang  it 
over  and  over  again,  with  all  sorts  of  variations,  but  I  noticed  that  the  most 
enthusiastic  part  of  the  song  was  always  the  "baksheesh."  As  we  neared 
the  half-way  station,  the  chorus  on  "  baksheesh  "  became  quite  overpowering. 
When  I  sat  down  on  a  stone  to  rest,  the  Arab  rascals  surrounded  me,  stuck 
their  fists  nearly  into  my  face,  and  demanded  a  donation.  Whereupon  I 
smiled  very  graciously,  and  told  them  I  was  ready  to  go  on  again.  It  was 
not  so  graciously  that  they  consented,  but  finally,  consent  they  did,  and  in 
a  few  minutes  I  was  upon  the  summit  of  the  Great  Pyramid  of  Cheops,  four 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  above  the  plain  below. 

Of  course  I  meditated  more  or  less, —  as  much  as  the  hot  day  and  the 
fatiguing  ascent  and  the  bothersome  Arabs  would  allow.  Beneath  my  feet 
was  the  monument  of  one  of  earth's  oldest  dynasties  —  the  appropriate  record 
of  a  crushing  despotism  that  fortunately  ceased  to  curse  the  world  as  many 
as  forty  centuries  ago.  And  yet  what  a  monument  it  is  —  this  great  stone- 
mountain  on  the  sandy  plain  !  There  is  a  science  exhibited  in  its  construc- 
tion, which  has  never  been  surpassed.  It  is  the  recorded  verdict  of  competent 
engineers,  "that,  with  all  the  progress  of  modern  knowledge,  it  would  be 
even  in  our  days  a  problem  difficult  to  solve,  to  construct  as  did  these 
Egyptian  architects  of  the  fourth  dynasty,  in  such  a  mass  as  that  of  the 
Pyramid,  chambers  and  passages  which,  in  spite  of  the  seven  millions  of 
tons  pressing  upon  them,  have  for  four  thousand  years  preserved  their  orig- 
inal shape  without  crack  or  flaw."  But  what  shall  be  said  of  the  view  from 
the  summit  ?  It  certainly  reveals  to  you  the  vanity  of  human  ambition. 
The  vast  pile  that  was  once  reared  in  the  midst  of  life  and  beauty  now  stands 
alone  in  the  desert.  The  encroaching  sands  have  flowed  in,  till  around  this 
mausoleum  of  Egypt's  greatest  monarch,  all  is  now  a  solitude.  The  dreary 
yellow  plain  stretches  away  on  one  side,  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach.  But 
while  on  one  side  all  is  silent  and  desolate  as  the  grave,  on  the  other  side 
the  distant  prospect  is  as  bright  and  beautiful  as  ever  presented  itself  to 
Moses  upon  Pisgah.  There  is  the  soft  green  of  meadow  and  field,  of  wav- 
ing wheat  and  stately  palm,  all  growing  by  the  banks  of  the  unfailing  river, 
while  the  minarets  of  Cairo  shine  in  the  sunlight  miles  away.  Who  could 
help  making  the  one  side  a  picture  of  the  end  of  earthly  greatness,  and  the 
other  a  picture  of  the  life  and  beauty  that  shall  perpetually  abide  upon  the 
banks  of  the  river  of  the  water  of  life  on  high  ? 

Why  should  we  ever  come  down  from  Pisgah  ?  Why  should  there  be  such 
tribulations  as  Arab  guides  ?  The  rest  of  my  meditations  are  not  recorded, 
because  there  were  none.  The  three  cut-throat-looking  rascals  became  too 
obstreperous.  They  demanded  "baksheesh."  There  was  no  escape  but 
in  starting  down  again  —  the  Arabs  looking  daggers  enough,  though  they  did 
not  go  so  far  as  to  show  any.  And  I  found  my  account  in  not  yielding  to 
them.  When  we  came  to  the  narrow  passage-way  more  than  half-way  down, 
which  leads  you  into  the  very  heart  of  the  Pyramid,  I  was  relieved  of  the 
company  of  a  dozen  or  more  supernumerary  savages  who  were  waiting  there 
for  the  opportunity  of  entering  with  me.  Woe  to  the  man  to  whom  that 
happens  !  Woe  to  the  man  who  has  to  witness  an  Arab  dance  in  the  King's 
Chamber,  through  the  stifling  dust  kicked  up  by  a  score  of  naked  feet,  and 
then  has  to  pay  for  it  roundly  or  submit  to  have  his  lights  blown  out,  and  be 


RECOLLECTIONS    OF   THE   EAST.  473 

left  to  find  his  way  to  the  open  air  alone  !  Such  things  have  been.  Upon 
this  occasion,  however,  only  two  Arabs  accompanied  me.  I  saw  the  interior 
of  the  Pyramid  under  quite  favorable  circumstances.  I  confess  that  I  have 
no  desire  ever  to  see  it  again.  Of  all  places  in  the  world  detestable  to  sen- 
sitive knees  and  nostrils,  commend  me  to  the  passages  of  the  great  Pyramid. 
The  entrance-passage  is  only  four  feet  high,  and  as  we  held  our  candles  in 
our  hands  and  went  bending  half  double  all  the  way,  through  an  air  in  which 
seemed  concentrated  all  the  heat  of  Egypt's  suns  and  all  the  choking  dust  of 
Egypt's  deserts,  the  impressions  we  received  were,  to  say  the  least,  not  wholly 
agreeable.  On  reaching  the  bottom  of  the  first  passage,  which  inclines  down- 
ward for  sixty  feet  or  so,  a  turn  to  the  right  brings  you  to  a  place  where  you 
are  obliged  to  ascend  a  perpendicular  wall  for  a  little  distance,  by  putting 
your  feet  into  the  crevices  of  the  stones.  This  brings  you  to  the  second 
passage,  which  takes  you  up  a  steep  incline  a  hundred  and  twenty  feet  long, 
and  as  low  and  fatiguing  as  the  first.  Here  you  pass  the  entrance  to  what 
was  once  called  the  great  well  of  the  Pyramid  —  a  well  that  was  said  to  pen- 
etrate far  below  its  foundation  and  to  connect  with  the  Nile,  but  which  more 
recent  investigations  have  shown  to  lead  to  a  subterranean  chamber,  and 
which,  with  the  chamber  itself,  is  above  the  highest  level  of  the  overflow  of 
the  river.  After  this  comes  a  third  low  horizontal  passage-way  which  con- 
ducts you  to  the  King's  Chamber,  a  room  thirty-four  feet  long  by  seventeen 
broad  and  nineteen  in  height.  Lighted  only  by  a  couple  of  candles,  this 
apartment  seemed  dusky  enough.  The  air  was  thick  and  heavy,  and,  though 
it  was  a  relief  to  stand  upright  once  more,  the  gloom  and  undefined  extent 
of  this  dark  and  silent  chamber  were  quite  oppressive.  I  was  scarcely  in  it 
before  I  should  have  been  glad  to  be  out.  At  one  end  are  still  the  remains 
of  a  sarcophagus,  hacked  and  hammered  at  by  tourists,  in  which  a  king  of 
Egypt  lay  undisturbed  so  many  centuries.  The  first  plunderers  of  the  Pyra- 
mids doubtless  stole  the  wooden  coffin,  with  the  mummy  and  treasures  it 
contained,  and  thus  prevented  it  from  gracing  the  shelf  of  some  foreign 
Museum.  Old  Sir  Thomas  Brown  said  well :  "In  vain  do  men  hope  for 
preservation  below  the  moon.  Mummy  has  become  merchandise,  and  Pha- 
raoh is  sold  for  balsams." 

But,  not  to  describe  the  exit  from  the  Pyramid  and  the  hot  ride  over  the 
scorching  sand  to  Sakkara  and  Memphis,  let  me  simply  say  that  it  was  quite 
late  when  we  got  back  to  Cairo.  The  sun  went  down  in  a  cloudless  sky,  and 
yet  the  sunset  was  peculiarly  deep  and  glowing.  The  air  itself  seemed 
tinged  with  yellow  and  crimson,  and  the  whole  west  was  radiant  with  golden 
light.  There  was  no  twilight.  Scarcely  had  the  sun  set,  when  it  was  already 
dark  and  cold.  The  stars  came  out,  with  that  intense  and  piercing  lustre 
that  is  never  seen  save  in  an  Eastern  clime.  I  could  not  wonder  that  Astron- 
omy was  first  of  sciences,  or  that  the  wandering  tribes  who  watched  their 
flocks  by  night  could  gaze  upon  these  stars  in  their  long  walks  through  the 
sky,  and  could  imagine  that  they  had  peculiar  and  intimate  relations  with 
all  human  fortunes.  I  could  have  looked  at  them  myself  till  they  paled 
before  the  rising  day.  We  made  a  triumphal  entry  into  Cairo  after  the  suc- 
cessful accomplishment  of  that  day's  tour, —  an  entry  that  deserves  to  be 
commemorated.  The  donkey-boy,  after  his  thirty-six  miles'  run,  kept  the 
donkeys  still  at  full  speed,  and  trotted  behind,  panting  like  a  dog,  and 


474  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  THE   EAST. 

belaboring  the  beasts  as  he  went.  The  streets  of  Cairo  were  crowded  with 
men,  women  and  children, — many  of  them  with  what  looked  like  Chinese 
paper  lanterns  in  their  hands.  It  was  a  regulation  of  the  police,  in  fact,  that 
no  person  should  walk  the  streets  at  night  without  one.  But  police  were  not 
worth  much  in  Cairo.  There  was  no  gas,  and  many  of  the  streets,  especially 
the  less  important  and  more  narrow  of  them,  though  full  of  human  beings, 
were  wrapped  in  the  blackest  darkness.  I  first  understood  that  evening  what 
"dark  as  Egypt  "meant.  Down  these  streets  our  donkey -boy  propelled 
the  donkeys  at  full  gallop.  Commanding  us  to  let  go  the  reins,  and  nourish- 
ing his  big  stick,  he  ran  behind  us,  yelling  at  the  top  of  his  lungs  to  all  who 
valued  their  lives  to  get  out  of  the  way.  How  many  fathers  and  mothers  of 
families  we  ran  over,  in  that  headlong  race,  I  cannot  say.  I  know  we  did  run 
over  some,  and  were  followed  by  deluges  of  Arabic  curses,  as  we  swept 
through  the  dark  and  narrow  streets.  But  what  possibility  was  there  of 
resistance  ?  what  use  of  remonstrance  ?  The  donkey -boy  was  evidently  out 
of  his  head.  Spite  of  all  our  appeals  to  him,  nothing  could  stop  his  yells 
and  his  slashing  of  the  beasts,  and  we  had  to  resign  ourselves  to  a  ride  that 
seemed  like  the  mythical  gallop  by  the  side  of  the  Black  Huntsman.  The 
donkey-boy  certainly  did  not  make  his  appearance  next  day.  Whether  he 
ever  survived  his  long  run,  and  still  preserved  the  use  of  his  faculties  after 
acting  so  like  mad  that  night,  has  remained  a  most  profound  mystery  until 
this  very  day. 

But  enough  for  Egypt.  Two  days  after,  we  sailed  from  Alexandria  in  a 
steamer  of  the  Austrian  Lloyds.  Another  two  days  of  windy  weather  brought 
us  to  Beyrout,  where  our  journey  in  the  Holy  Land  was  to  begin.  Few 
cities  of  the  world  are  more  beautifully  situated.  The  majestic  mass  of 
snow-crowned  Lebanon  was  in  full  view,  and  the  yellow  houses  of  merchants 
and  missionaries  scattered  among  the  groves  and  gardens,  on  the  slopes  of 
the  bay,  gave  the  town  an  air  of  unusual  elegance  and  prosperity.  The 
weather  was  delightfully  warm,  clear  and  bright,  with  comfortable  nights 
and  cloudless  blue  skies.  On  the  flat  roof  of  the  hotel  we  walked  up  and 
down,  in  the  moonlight  evening,  and  laid  our  plans  for  the  journey  before  us. 
Some  delay  was  necessary  before  our  arrangements  were  perfected.  The 
first  essential  was  to  secure  a  good  dragoman,  for  on  the  possession  of  a 
competent  and  experienced  interpreter,  steward  and  guide,  all  your  comfort 
and  security  depend.  We  engaged  a  man  at  last  who  agreed  to  furnish 
horses,  baggage-mules,  tents,  servants,  cook,  and  all  the  requisites  of  a  good 
living  on  the  way.  The  contract  was  that  he  was  to  pay  all  expenses  of  every 
sort,  taking  us  wherever  we  pleased  to  go,  for  an  English  pound  a  day  for 
each  person.  There  was  a  time  when  the  traveler  had  to  rough  it  in  Pales- 
tine. Except  at  Beyrout,  Jaffa,  Jerusalem  and  Damascus,  there  are  no  such 
things  as  hotels.  You  must  carry  tents  with  you,  and  buy  and  cook  your 
own  provisions  on  the  way.  But  modern  science  has  reduced  all  this  to  a 
system.  The  dragoman  surprises  you  with  a  set  of  beautifully  embroidered 
and  ornamented  tents  —  a  sleeping-tent,  a  dining- tent,  and  a  cooking-tent. 
The  first  two  are  furnished  with  Persian  carpets,  and  the  sleeping-tent  is 
provided  with  light  iron  bedsteads,  mattresses  and  linen,  camp-stools  and  all 
the  ordinary  apparatus  for  performing  the  toilet.  You  can  have  five  courses 
for  your  dinner,  got  up  by  your  French  cook,  if  you  desire  it  and  are  willing 


RECOLLECTIONS    OF   THE    EAST.  475 

to  pay  for  it, —  and  so  you  may  fare,  though  you  camp  in  the  desert.  And 
you  will  have  appetite  enough  to  eat  through  all  the  live,  if  your  experience 
is  like  mine.  A  ride  of  thirty  miles  on  one  of  those  Arab  horses  will  give  a 
keen  relish  when  you  sit  down  to  dinner  at  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening. 
The  horseback  riding  is  indeed  the  great  benefit  to  health,  of  a  tour  in  Pal- 
estine. The  horses  may  not  be  remarkable  for  beauty,  but  if  they  are  of 
real  Arab  blood,  they  will  show  an  amount  of  spirit  and  fire  that  will  delight 
you.  An  Arab  horse  before  starting  may  seem  a  tame  and  homely  creature. 
After  the  start  he  seems  to  have  changed  his  nature.  At  the  least  touch  of 
the  whip,  he  flies  like  the  wind.  Remember  that  there  are  no  roads  in  Pales- 
tine. Mountain  mule-tracks  are  the  only  approach  to  them.  The  Arab  horse 
has  never  traveled  except  under  the  saddle, —  the  very  sight  of  a  wagon  or 
carriage  is  so  novel  that  it  frightens  him, —  but  his  kindness  and  gentleness 
are  beyond  all  praise.  His  step  is  proud  and  elastic,  and  he  will  go  up  and 
down  places  in  those  rocky  mountain-paths  where  the  rider  holds  his  breath. 
Sharp-sighted  and  sure-footed,  he  will  carry  you  ten  hours  a  day,  and  look 
as  well  at  the  end  of  a  month's  journey  as  he  did  at  the  beginning. 

It  takes  no  long  time  to  see  the  chief  things  of  note  in  Palestine.  We 
often  form  quite  an  erroneous  notion  of  the  extent  of  the  Holy  Land.  A 
naiTow  region  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  in  length  by  fifty  miles  in  breadth 
includes  all  the  celebrated  spots  of  sacred  story.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
our  Savior,  during  his  public  ministry,  ever  traversed  an  extent  of  territory 
;is  large  as  the  State  of  Connecticut  or  New  Hampshire.  The  whole  of 
Palestine  could  be  put  between  Rochester  and  Albany,  and  you  would  still 
have  fifty  miles  to  spare.  From  three  or  four  elevations  you  can  see  the 
whole  of  it, —  and,  if  there  were  any  lofty  mountain  near  the  centre  of  the 
country,  you  could  see  the  whole  land  from  one  single  point  of  view.  But, 
A\liile  Palestine  is  a  small  land,  it  is  so  situated  as  to  be  a  meeting-place  for 
other  lands.  The  great  caravan-route  between  Egypt  and  Assyria  passed 
up  her  western  coast  and  south  of  Lebanon  through  Damascus.  In  times  of 
peace,  Palestine  was  a  thoroughfare  for  the  traffic  of  the  world  ;  in  times  of 
war,  the  great  heathen  monarchies  on  either  side  of  her  contended  for  the 
possession  of  her  territory,  as  a  strategic  point  from  which  to  conduct  tbeir 
military  operations.  So  far  from  being  true  is  the  old  notion  that  Palestine 
was  a  country  chosen  by  God  as  a  place  of  seclusion  for  his  people, —  it  is 
rather  true  that  it  was  a  converging-point  for  the  influences  of  civilization 
—  a  sort  of  highway  of  the  nations. 

I  do  not  mean  that  every  inhabitant  of  Palestine  lived  a  public  life,  but  I 
do  mean  that  the  land  itself  was  so  shaped  at  the  beginning  as  to  draw  into 
it  the  currents  of  the  world's  trade — hence  the  wealth  of  Solomon  and 
Hezekiah  ;  so  shaped  as  to  give  out  religious  and  moral  influence  —  hence 
the  Hebrew  culture  of  Alexandria  and  of  Babylon.  Palestine  was  a  narrow 
land  —  and  yet  the  only  practicable  and  easy  path  for  land- travel  between 
the  east  and  the  west.  Bounded  on  the  west  by  the  Great  Sea,  the  mod- 
ern Mediterranean,  and  on  the  east  by  the  desolate  table-lands  of  Bashan 
and  Perea, — with  the  great  mountain  ranges  of  Lebanon  and  Anti-Lebanon 
at  the  north,  and  the  Arabian  desert  at  the  south,  it  might  at  first  seem  as 
if  it  were  a  land  separated  from  all  other  lands.  But  no,  there  were  loop- 
holes through  which  trade  could  pass  and  did  pass,  —  and  through  these 


476  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  THE   EAST. 

loop-holes  ran  the  only  practicable  avenue  for  commerce.  Jerusalem  lay 
among  the  hills  to  the  east  of  this  traffic,  and  usually  was  not  disturbed  by 
it ;  but  Jerusalem  was  too  near  not  to  feel  its  influence.  No  one  can  study 
the  surroundings  of  Palestine  in  connection  with  its  history,  without  being 
convinced  that  God  formed  the  land  at  the  creation,  not  only  to  be  the 
theatre  of  a  divine  revelation,  but  also  to  be  the  centre  from  which  that  rev- 
elation should  be  disseminated  through  the  world.  God  called  Abraham 
out  from  among  the  heathen,  and  in  this  land  educated  him  and  his  de- 
scendants to  the  belief  in  the  divine  unity,  spirituality,  and  holiness,  so 
that  he  might  in  this  way  be  prepared  to  communicate  the  blessings  of  true 
religion  to  the  whole  earth.  The  interest  we  have  in  Palestine  to-day 
is  this,  that  it  constitutes  the  school-house  where  the  teachers  of  the  world 
were  taught ;  the  stage  upon  which  the  mightiest  scenes  of  human  history 
were  acted  out ;  the  presence-chamber  where  God  revealed  himself  to  patri- 
archs, kings  and  prophets  ;  the  sacred  soil  which  Jesus'  feet  once  trod,  and 
on  which  the  cross  was  erected  for  the  redemption  of  mankind  ;  the  starting- 
point  from  which  the  apostles  of  the  gospel  of  peace  set  forth  for  the  con- 
quest of  the  world. 

How  wonderfully  fitted  Palestine  was  for  all  these  purposes  of  divine 
revelation,  you  can  hardly  realize  till  you  travel  over  it  from  end  to  end. 
For  it  is  not  only  a  small  land,  and  a  meeting-place  for  other  lands, —  it  is, 
besides,  as  Isaac  Taylor  has  said,  a  sample-land  of  all  lands.  Every  trav- 
eler can  find  the  climate  and  scenery  of  his  own  country  in  Palestine.  The 
Hebrew  poet  found  near  at  hand  the  materials  which  the  poet  of  other 
lands  must  seek  by  distant  travel.  Follow  the  course  of  the  Jordan  from 
the  spot  where  it  springs  from  the  rocks,  a  full-grown  river,  until  it  emp- 
ties into  the  Dead  Sea,  and  you  pass  from  the  Arctic  cold  of  Hermon's- 
glaciers  to  the  torrid  heats  of  the  plains  of  Jericho,  where  in  summer  it  is 
hotter  than  in  any  other  place  on  earth  except  Aden.  There  are  mountain 
and  plain,  stream  and  forest,  thunders  and  floods,  lakes  and  flowers.  The 
sun  flares  up  from  behind  the  mountain-wall  of  Edom,  rejoicing  as  a  bride- 
groom, and  that  same  sun  sets  in  the  Great  Sea.  Surrounded  with  this 
wonderfully  transparent  air,  and  under  the  brightness  of  these  stars,  the 
writers  of  the  Bible  lived  and  thought  and  prayed.  This  wonderful  variety 
of  scenery  and  imagery  renders  the  Bible  intelligible  and  vivid  in  its  des- 
criptions to  the  inhabitants  of  all  other  lands.  "  Think,"  says  the  writer  we 
have  quoted,  "what  the  Bible  would  be,  if  it  had  been  written  in  Iceland,'" 
and  how  much  of  it  would  be  impossible  for  us  to  understand, —  and  you 
will  begin  to  admire  the  wisdom  of  God  in  selecting  Palestine  as  the  theatre 
for  his  revelation. 

Our  first  route  was  along  the  shore  of  the  Mediterranean,  almost  the 
whole  length  of  the  land  to  Jaffa,  the  ancient  Joppa.  Compared  with  the 
common  route  through  the  interior  which  we  were  afterwards  to  traverse, 
the  ride  was  one  of  considerable  sameness,  and  yet  how  strong  and  deep 
were  the  feelings  which  were  called  forth  by  the  broken  columns  of  Sidon 
and  Tyre,  of  Caesarea  and  Joppa  !  And  then  Mount  Carmel  by  the  sea,  with 
the  spot  of  Elijah's  sacrifice,  and  Sarepta,  a  city  of  Sidon,  where  the  prophet 
dwelt  with  the  poor  widow,  and  whither  Christ  himself  once  came.  Our 
track  lay  along  the  very  margin  of  the  sea,  so  that  now  and  then  our  horses* 


RECOLLECTIONS   OF   THE   EAST.  477 

hoofs  were  bathed  in  the  foam  of  the  Mediterranean  waves.  Then,  for  a 
number  of  miles,  we  would  leave  the  smooth  but  dreary  sand,  and  cut  off  some 
promontory  by  going  inland.  In  climbing  the  Tyrian  ladder,  our  horses 
carried  us  over  a  steep  and  frightful  path  cut  in  the  edge  of  the  rocky  prec- 
ipice where  it  projects  over  the  sea,  so  that,  while  we  stumbled  up  the  giddy 
steps,  the  hoarse  waves  sounded  from  the  rocky  caverns  beneath  our  feet. 
We  generally  succeeded  in  reaching  a  village  by  nightfall,  and  in  rinding  a 
good  camping-place  in  the  vicinity.  At  Sidon  we  camped  on  the  edge  of  a 
Mohammedan  graveyard.  By  common  report  the  graveyard  was  haunted 
by  Ghouls.  We  heard  jackals  howling  there  all  night  with  long  and  piteous 
cries.  In  the  morning,  dozens  of  Mohammedan  women  came  to  the  grave, 
as  Mary  and  Martha  did  of  old,  to  weep  there.  And  a  mournful  noise  they 
made  ;  though,  after  the  weeping  was  concluded,  they  came  over  to  the  edge 
of  our  camp  and  gazed  at  our  breakfast  preparations  for  a  half  hour  to- 
gether. As  we  got  further  south,  leaving  Acca  and  Carmel  behind  us,  our 
company  was  enlarged  by  the  addition  of  two  other  parties,  who  joined  us 
for  safety.  Our  retinue  was  rather  an  imposing  one.  It  consisted  of  twenty 
ladies  and  gentlemen,  half  a  dozen  dragomans  and  servants,  and  some  sixty 
baggage-mules  and  horses.  The  coast  here  was  swarming  with  Bedouin 
robbers,  and  the  travel  was  as  dangerous  as  in  any  part  of  Palestine.  A 
merciless  set  they  were.  Only  the  day  before  our  arrival,  a  German  gentle- 
man straying  from  his  party  was  plundered  and  stripped  by  the  Arabs,  and 
reached  the  convent  on  Carmel  entirely  naked.  The  gentlemen  of  our  party 
were  almost  all  armed  with  revolvers,  however,  and  we  were  quite  equal  to 
any  attack. 

The  ruins  of  Csesarea  are  the  most  extensive  and  striking  of  any  in  Pales- 
tine. The  scene  is  one  of  perfect  desolation.  Not  a  house  or  hut  exists 
within  miles  of  the  place.  The  remains  of  the  ancient  city  are  colossal. 
Immense  fragments  of  the  old  mole,  into  which  are  built  splendid  granite 
columns  of  earlier  edifices,  lie  heaped  one  upon  another,  while  the  shore  is 
strewn  with  a  wreck  of  marble  pillars  and  massive  walls.  Csesarea  is  full  of 
interest,  even  in  its  utter  solitude.  Here  lived  Cornelius,  and  here  first  the 
Holy  Spirit  was  poured  out  upon  the  Gentiles.  Here  Herod  met  his  ter- 
rible death,  in  the  city  which  he  deemed  the  most  splendid  monument  of 
his  greatness.  Here  Paul  was  imprisoned  two  long  years,  made  his  noble 
defense  before  Felix  and  Agrippa,  and  from  this  very  port  he  set  out  on  his 
eventful  voyage  to  Rome.  The  wild  flowers  are  growing  now  amid  the 
ruins  of  Csesarea's  temples,  the  waves  are  dashing  over  the  remains  of  its 
ancient  wealth  and  glory,  and  Paul  and  his  judges  have  long,  long  ago  been 
summoned  before  another  and  a  grander  tribunal. 

So  we  passed  on  to  Jaffa,  the  ancient  Joppa,  and  the  next  day  we  climbed 
the  steep,  rugged,  barren  road  that  leads  up  and  up  to  the  summit  of  the 
great  rocky  water-shed  of  Palestine,  and  then  over  its  crest  to  Jerusalem,  the 
Holy  City.  No  one  who  has  not  seen  Palestine  with  his  own  eyes  can  com- 
prehend the  excessively  mountainous  character  of  the  country.  There  are 
only  a  few  square  miles  of  level  land  from  one  end  of  it  to  the  other.  Ever- 
lasting masses  of  yellow  limestone  hills  succeed  one  another  as  you  go,  for 
the  most  part  devoid  of  all  appearance  of  greenness  or  beauty,  except  where 
here  and  there  you  light  upon  a  lot  of  straggling  gray  olive  trees.  After  a 


478  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  THE   EAST. 

long  ride  under  a  hot  sun,  the  approach  to  any  city  would  have  roused  our 
enthusiasm,  but  what  shall  I  say  of  the  approach  to  Jerusalem  ?  It  will  live 
in  memory,  as  long  as  memory  lasts.  In  our  anxiety  to  catch  the  first  glimpse 
of  the  Holy  City,  we  had  pushed  our  horses  on  far  ahead  of  the  baggage- 
mules,  and  one  or  two  of  us,  more  eager  than  the  rest,  and  unable  any  longer 
to  endure  a  slow  trot,  galloped  on  alone  to  the  last  ridge  which  separated  us 
from  the  city  to  which  so  many  for  ages  have  made  pilgrimage.  A  moment 
more  and  the  domes  and  minarets  and  battlemented  walls  of  Jerusalem  lay 
before  us,  and  beyond,  the  long  yellow  mass  of  the  Mount  of  Olives,  dotted 
here  and  there  with  the  trees  from  which  it  takes  its  name.  One  has  not 
from  this  side  the  finest  or  even  a  fine  view  of  the  city,  and  yet  the  feelings 
with  which  we  approached  it  were  not  renewed  in  their  freshness  and  fullness 
when  we  gazed  on  it  afterwards,  from  other  points  of  view.  Even  here,  as 
we  saw  the  hills  that  shut  it  in  on  every  side,  it  was  easy  to  feel  the  force  of 
David's  words  :  '  'As  the  mountains  are  round  about  Jerusalem,  so  the  Lord 
is  round  about  his  people."  Zion  and  Moriah,  the  western  and  eastern 
mounts  on  which  the  city  is  built,  and  the  dome  of  the  Mosque  of  Omar, 
which  stands  on  the  site  of  the  ancient  temple,  were  all  clearly  visible,  and 
over  walls  and  ramparts  and  towers,  as  well  as  over  the  whole  city  enclosed 
within  them,  lay  a  warm,  golden  sunshine,  so  silent  and  calm  that,  as  we 
looked  down  upon  it  from  a  distance,  it  almost  seemed  deserted,  like  a  city 
of  the  dead.  Imagination  was  busy,  however,  and  it  was  easy  to  picture  it 
out  in  its  ancient  magnificence,  as  it  was  when  he,  whose  feet  trod  these 
very  paths,  lived  and  taught  within  it. 

The  sublime  and  the  ridiculous  lie  very  close  together.  Our  meditations 
were  disturbed  by  the  performances  of  a  crowd  of  pilgrims  near  us.  They 
too  had  pressed  on  to  catch  the  first  glimpse  of  the  Holy  City.  They  were 
a  carious  set  —  men,  women  and  children.  Every  man  had  a  donkey,  but 
not  every  man  rode  his  beast.  This  seemed  reserved  for  the  women  and 
children.  And  the  method  of  loading  the  animals  was  curious.  Over  the 
back  of  the  creature  was  slung  what  looked  like  an  enormous  pair  of  saddle- 
bags. In  one  side  the  wife  and  mother  curled  herself  up,  while  half  a  dozen 
children,  more  or  less,  big  or  little,  were  thrown  in  on  the  other  side,  as  a 
makeweight  to  balance  her.  Imagine  the  scene,  when  every  man,  woman 
and  child  was  alive  with  excitement,  and  each  wanted  to  be  first  in  bowing 
the  knees  at  first  sight  of  the  city,  and  crying  out  "El  Khuds  !  El  Khuds  !  " 
"the  Holy,  the  Holy  !  "  Such  a  tumbling  head  over  heels  out  of  saddle- 
bags, and  such  an  indiscriminate  mess  of  children,  women,  men  and  donkeys, 
alas  !  I  shall  never  see  again.  And  what  had  all  these  pilgrims  come  for  ? 
Most  of  them  had  come  to  spend  Holy  Week,  and  to  attend  the  ceremonies  in 
the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  What  these  were,  we  understood  better 
a  few  days  afterwards,  when  we  witnessed  them  ourselves.  On  the  evening 
of  Good  Friday,  the  church  was  filled  with  an  ignorant  and  fanatical  crowd, 
whom  even  the  guard  of  Turkish  soldiers  could  scarcely  keep  in  order.  An 
image  of  the  Savior,  half  the  size  of  life,  a  shriveled,  shrunken,  puny  figure 
of  wax,  was  nailed  to  a  cross,  exposed,  carried  in  procession,  taken  from  the 
cross,  anointed  and  laid  in  the  sepulchre,  in  presence  of  a  dense  multitude 
of  noisy  fanatics,  who  worshiped  it  as  a  fetich  is  worshiped  in  the  south 
of  Africa.  The  whole  performance  was  a  sickening  one,  and  all  that  was 


RECOLLECTIONS   OF   THE    EAST.  479 

impressive  about  it  was  the  singing  of  a  company  of  monks  and  the  response* 
of  a  choir  of  boys.  It  was  the  grand,  solemn  chant  of  an  Italian  composer, 
the  pathos  of  which  not  even  the  grating  voices  nor  the  stupid  indifference 
of  the  singers  could  entirely  obscure. 

One  soon  gets  enough  of  holy  places  at  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre. 
Most  of  them  are  evidently  mere  figments  of  the  imagination.  It  was'  more 
convenient  for  the  monks  who  showed  them  to  have  them  close  together, 
and  so,  they  have  put  them  close  together.  It  was  better  for  their  pockets- 
to  have  many  of  them  for  which  to  charge  an  admission-fee,  and  so,  many  of 
them  were  invented.  They  not  only  show  the  sepulchre  where  Christ  was 
laid,  but  the  spot  of  the  Crucifixion  and  the  holes  in  the  rock  into  which  the 
three  crosses  were  thrust  that  day.  And  yet  the  whole  Chapel  where  these 
are  shown  is  an  upper  chamber,  standing  on  no  rock  at  all !  A  little  further 
on  you  see  the  Chapel  of  Adam,  where  the  monks  say  his  skull  first  leaped 
out  of  the  earth ;  then  the  tomb  of  Melchisedek  ;  and  again,  the  very  spot 
where  the  cock  stood  when  he  crowed  to  Peter.  A  little  experience  in  the 
hands  of  the  monks  convinces  you  that  the  less  confidence  you  put  in  their 
stories,  the  more  apt  you  will  be  to  learn  the  truth.  Our  religion  gives  little 
heed  to  special  places,  and  it  is  a  merciful  ordering  of  God  that  none  of  the 
spots  where  the  great  events  of  Jesus'  life  occurred  can  be  certainly  identi- 
fied, for  the  history  of  Palestine  abundantly  demonstrates  that,  if  they  could 
be  certainly  identified,  they  would  just  as  certainly  be  the  objects  of  idola- 
trous worship.  The  object  of  a  journey  to  Palestine  is  not  to  identify  these 
sites,  but  rather  to  fix  in  mind  the  general  features  of  the  land  and  the  char- 
acter of  its  scenery.  The  hills  about  Jerusalem,  and  those  on  which  the  city 
is  built,  remain  just  as  they  were,  and  though  there  is  at  first  a  feeling  of 
disappointment  at  the  wretchedness  and  misery  that  now  meet  your  eye  on 
every  side,  and  especially  at  the  lying  and  superstition  of  those  who  inhabit 
this  once  favored  land,  still  the  great  events  of  Scripture  all  fit  wonderfully 
into  the  scenes  before  your  eyes,  and  you  leave  the  country  more  thoroughly 
convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  Bible,  and  with  far  more  vivid  conceptions  of 
its  narratives,  than  you  could  possibly  have  had  before  you  came. 

After  a  few  days'  sojourn  in  the  City,  we  went  through  the  Wilderness  of 
Judea  to  the  Jordan  and  the  Dead  Sea.  The  hills  and  valleys  where  John 
preached  and  Christ  was  tempted  are  melancholy  wastes.  Scarcely  a  blade 
of  grass  grows  upon  them,  and  the  bronze-colored  mountain -sides  reflect 
upon  you  with  tenfold  heat  the  rays  of  a  burning  sun.  Down,  down  we 
went,  a  long  and  desolate  ride,  till  we  stood  by  the  ruins  of  Jericho,  and 
drank  of  the  brook  which  the  prophet  healed.  There  we  encamped  for  the 
night,  near  a  large  party  of  pilgrims  who  had  come  to  wash  in  the  Jordan. 
Long  before  light  next  morning  we  set  off  for  the  river,  and  an  hour  after 
our  arrival  at  the  narrow,  rushing  stream,  the  pilgrims  came  trooping  after 
us.  Then  followed  a  scene  that  baffles  all  description.  Men,  women  and 
children,  draped  and  undraped,  rushed  to  the  water  to  plunge  themselves 
three  times  beneath  the  surface.  Many  were  clad  in  the  grave-clothes  which 
they  had  purchased  long  before  the  time,  and  had  come  to  consecrate  by  a 
wetting  in  the  Jordan.  Fathers  ducked  their  wives  and  children,  while  the 
wives  shrieked  fearfully  and  the  children  yelled.  All  was  excitement  and 
confusion,  and  a  source  of  no  small  amusement  to  the  howadji  who  waa 


480  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  THE   EAST. 

looking  on.  By  and  by  the  sun  rose,  and  we  pushed  on  over  the  level,  sandy 
plain  to  the  Dead  Sea.  The  landscape  about  it  was  deathlike.  The  sea  was 
motionless.  Complete  silence  reigned.  Not  a  living  thing,  beast  or  bird  or 
fish,  was  visible.  The  mountains  rose  steep,  bare  and  yellow,  from  both 
sides,  and  when  the  sun  got  high,  the  whole  region  was  hot  as  a  furnace. 
The  water  was  more  bitter  and  disgusting  to  the  taste  than  one  can  previ- 
ously conceive.  Sea- water  is  very  palatable  compared  with  it.  On  the  shore 
we  sat  down  and  breakfasted,  after  six  hours  riding,  and  then  prepared  to 
ascend  the  mountains  to  Mar  Saba,  on  our  way  back  to  Jerusalem. 

All  that  day  we  rode  under  a  scorching  sun,  over  a  succession  of  yellow 
hills,  whose  leafless  desolation  was  like  death  itself  —  a  horrible  country. 
Bare  cliffs  of  rock  alternated  with  rounded  hills,  covered  thick  with  yellow 
stones.  No  sign  of  water  or  life  —  not  a  blade  of  grass,  not  a  breath  of  air, 
—  only  a  stagnant  atmosphere  seven  times  heated.  Our  horses  grew  faint, 
and  we  grew  sick,  long  before  we  reached  our  camping-place.  Yet  all  day 
long  our  Arab  guards  seemed  strangely  frightened.  Now  and  then  we  saw 
straggling  Bedouin  posted  on  the  heights  above  our  road,  and  these,  they 
told  us,  were  spies.  We  saw  no  cause  for  alarm,  however,  until  after  we 
reached  our  camping-place  at  the  bottom  of  a  deep  valley,  and  dusk  came 
on.  Then  we  saw  numbers  of  Bedouin  horsemen  filing  along  on  the  edges 
of  the  hills  far  above  us.  Our  muleteers  had  taken  off  the  horses  and  mules 
to  a  spring,  some  distance  up  the  side  of  one  of  the  hills,  in  order  to  give 
them  water.  Suddenly,  as  evening  came  on,  we  heard  numerous  reports 
of  guns  in  that  direction,  and  saw  frequent  flashes  through  the  darkness.  A 
man  comes  flying  to  the  camp  with  the  intelligence  that  a  large  party  of 
Bedouin  have  seized  upon  our  mules  and  horses,  and  have  run  away  with 
them  to  the  mountains.  The  men-servants  catch  up  all  the  arms  they  can 
lay  hands  on,  and  rush  off  up  the  hill  to  help  their  comrades.  The  gentle- 
men are  requested  to  get  their  pistols  ready  in  case  of  emergency.  Soon 
flashes  and  reports  again  on  the  hills  —  here  a  flash  and  there  a  flash,  bang  ! 
bang  !  —  till  the  hill-side  seems  to  be  the  scene  of  quite  a  battle.  All  of  a  sud- 
den our  dragoman  gallops  into  the  camp  in  a  state  of  the  wildest  excite- 
ment, exclaiming  that  the  Bedouin  have  beaten  our  muleteers,  and  that 
there  is  great  danger  of  their  making  a  descent  upon  us  in  the  camp. 
"  Ladies  to  the  tents  !  "  and  in  an  instant,  having  obtained  a  supply  of  am- 
munition, our  heroic  commander  gallops  off  again  into  the  darkness.  The 
half  dozen  ladies  crouch  together  in  one  of  the  tents,  in  no  very  peaceful 
state  of  mind,  while  the  gentlemen  of  the  party  exert  themselves  to  calm 
them,  and  at  the  same  time  load  all  the  guns  and  revolvers  within  reach. 
While  this  is  going  on,  one  of  them  shoots  himself  accidentally  through 
the  hand.  Then  the  ladies  in  the  presence  of  real  suffering  come  to  their 
senses,  and,  while  the  doctor  extracts  the  ball,  they  lend  all  their  aid  and 
sympathy.  A  muleteer  comes  in  with  his  head  broken  in  with  a  stone,  an- 
other with  his  hand  fractured,  another  with  a  wound  in  his  arm.  The  scene 
by  this  time  becomes  sufficiently  exciting.  The  firing  on  the  hills  has  not 
ceased,  but  it  is  not  so  frequent.  A  messenger  soon  comes  to  tell  us  that  our 
men  have  fought  most  bravely,  have  recovered  the  animals,  and  are  now  lead- 
ing them  back  in  safety  to  the  camp.  Nobody  is  killed,  though  some  are 
slightly  injured. 


'UHIVEBSITY; 


RECOLLECTIONS   OF   THE   EAST.  481 

It  seems  amusing  to  look  back  upon,  and  yet  I  should  hardly  care  to  pass 
that  night  again.  No  one  knew  that  the  Bedouin  would  not  come  down 
upon  us  in  the  darkness.  No  one  could  be  certain  that  in  their  anger  they 
would  not  lire  into  our  tents  from  the  rocks  above  us.  Yet  we  stationed  a 
strong  guard,  and  all  of  us  slept  soundly.  No  attack  was  made,  and  we  rose 
in  the  morning  very  thankful  that  all  was  safe.  For  several  hours  after 
starting  from  the  night's  camping  ground  we  saw  companies  of  Bedouin 
posted  on  the  tops  of  the  hills  about  us,  but  they  did  not  dare  to  attack  us. 
They  looked  ugly  enough,  however,  with  their  Arab  horses  and  their  long 
guns.  They  were  greatly  superior  to  us  in  numbers,  and,  if  they  had  been 
only  a  little  less  afraid  of  Frank  arms,  we  might  have  had  more  trouble.  As 
it  was,  their  caution  was  very  well  advised,  for  we  all  had  revolvers,  and 
their  long  match-locks  would  have  been  almost  worthless  in  a  combat  with 
foreigners.  All  this  country  through  which  we  passed  before  we  reached 
Jerusalem  again  is  celebrated  for  the  robberies  and  murders  which  have 
been  perpetrated  by  the  lawless  Bedouin.  In  fact  it  has  an  ancient  reputa- 
tion of  this  sort,  for  it  was  this  very  wilderness  of  Judea  that  the  man 
whom  the  good  Samaritan  relieved,  passed  through,  when  he  went  down  to 
Jericho  and  fell  among  thieves. 

On  our  way  back  to  Jerusalem  we  visited  Bethlehem.  It  is  pleasant  to 
find  such  places  as  Bethlehem  and  Nazareth,  so  far  superior  to  the  ordinary 
•  •astern  towns  in  cleanliness  and  decency.  The  inhabitants  of  both  are 
almost  all  Christians,  and  both  are  distinguished  in  Syria  for  the  beauty  of 
the  women.  The  grotto  of  the  nativity  at  Bethlehem,  with  its  golden  lamps 
and  silken  hangings,  did  not  interest  me  half  so  much  as  the  sight  of  the 
hillsides  where  David  tended  his  father's  flocks,  and  the  shepherds  saw  the 
multitude  of  the  heavenly  host  on  the  night  that  Christ  was  born.  The 
grotto  is  probably  an  imposture,  but  the  hills  and  valleys  about  are  the  same 
that  we  read  of  in  most  ancient  story.  That  same  evening  we  made  our 
way  north  ward,  past  the  spot  where  Rachel  died,  and  where  her  tomb  now 
stands,  until  the  Holy  City  lay  spread  out  before  us  on  the  opposite  heights, 
and  we  felt  the  truth  of  the  Psalmist's  words,  "Beautiful  for  situation,  the 
joy  of  the  whole  earth  is  Mount  Zion,  on  the  sides  of  the  north,  the  city  of 
the  great  King."  Down  the  deep  vale  of  Hinnom,  and  through  the  Valley 
of  Jehoshaphat, —  until  we  crossed  over  and  pitched  our  tents  for  the  night 
upon  the  Mount  of  Olives. 

Memorable  evening  !  It  was  the  Mohammedan  feast  of  Ramadan,  and  at 
the  firing  of  the  sunset  gun,  circlets  of  lamps  were  lit,  upon  the  minarets  of 
all  the  mosques,  that  shone  through  the  growing  darkness  like  crowns  of 
glory.  Beneath  our  feet  was  the  sacred  city, —  where  David  reigned,  and 
where  Jesus  taught.  Somewhere  in  this  lowly  valley  the  Savior  passed  that 
last  most  bitter  night  of  agony  in  the  garden, —  up  that  steep  path  he  was 
taken  to  his  trial, —  on  one  of  those  mounds  outside  the  walls  he  hung  those 
six  long  hours,  parched  with  thirst  and  quivering  with  intensest  pain,  under 
the  blazing  noon-day  sun.  Who  could  lie  down  to  sleep  without  most  solemn 
.and  grateful  thoughts  that  night  ?  And  when  the  morning  dawned  and  all 
the  splendor  of  the  great  temple  enclosure  dawned  upon  us,  who  could  help 
being  half  intoxicated  with  the  imaginations  of  the  hour  ?  There,  across  the 
valley,  was  the  place  where  the  cloud  of  glory  descended  upon  the  temple, 
and  Solomon  dedicated  to  God  the  courts  of  the  house  of  the  Lord.  The 
31 


482  RECOLLECTIONS   OF   THE   EAST. 

great  open  area  of  these  courts  now  occupies  a  space  of  fifteen  hundred  feet 
in  length  by  a  thousand  feet  in  breadth,  and  contains  thirty-four  acres.  The 
temple  of  God  has  given  place  to  a  Mohammedan  mosque,  but  the  broad 
courts  are  beautiful  still.  The  massive  and  lofty  walls,  the  mosaic  pave- 
ments, alternating  with  plots  of  fresh,  green  grass,  the  dark  olives,  the  taper- 
ing cypresses,  the  marble  fountains,  the  broad,  elevated  platform  encircled 
by  airy  arches,  the  richly  carved  pulpits  and  prayer-niches  and  miniature 
cupolas,  the  great  mosque  with  its  noble  dome  glittering  with  enameled 
tiles,  in  arabesques  of  rainbow-hues,  the  secluded,  sacred  air  that  seemed  to 
belong  to  all,  the  white  figures  of  veiled  women  stealing  from  one  mass  'of 
foliage  to  another,  the  turbaned  heads  bowed  low  in  prayer, —  all  this  was 
deeply  impressive.  But  what  must  it  have  been,  when  these  enclosing  walls 
were  hid  by  triple  rows  of  marble  columns  a  hundred  and  twenty  feet  in 
height  and  a  thousand  feet  in  length,  forming  arched  colonnades  grander 
than  those  of  the  grandest  cathedral  of  modern  days  !  What  must  it  have 
been  when,  in  place  of  this  mosque,  stood  the  magnificent  structure  of  the 
temple,  with  its  lofty  portico  towering  above  all  the  rest !  What  must  it  have 
been,  when  a  hundred  thousand  worshipers  joined  in  the  solemn  chants  of  the 
sanctuary —  a  multitude  whose  voice  was  like  the  sound  of  many  Avaters,  and 
which  furnished  John  in  the  Apocalypse  with  his  imagery,  when  he  described 
the  worship  of  the  temple  on  high  !  Ah,  Jerusalem  is  beautiful,  but  the  beauty 
of  the  past  has  gone  forever.  Only  in  the  heavenly  Jerusalem,  and  in  the  song 
of  the  multitude  that  no  man  can  number,  will  it  ever  be  restored. 

But  time  would  fail  me  to  tell  the  whole.  Jerusalem  must  be  left  behind 
us.  Northward,  past  Mizpeh  and  Gibeon,  through  Bethel  and  Shiloh,  to 
Jacob's  well,  and  Sychar,  a  city  of  Samaria.  Here,  at  the  foot  of  Mount 
Ebal  and  Mount  Gerizim,  and  between  them  both,  we  passed  a  quiet  Sab- 
bath day.  We  joined  in  worship  with  a  number  of  parties  encamped  near 
us.  Before  we  left  the  place,  we  visited  the  small,  plain,  white- washed  cham- 
ber which  constitutes  the  Samaritan  Synagogue,  and  gazed  from  a  respectful 
distance  upon  the  great  roll  containing  the  precious  Samaritan  Pentateuch, 
which,  though  not  written,  as  they  relate,  by  the  grandson  or  great-grand- 
son of  Aaron,  may  yet  date  back  to  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era. 
Then  we  clambered  to  the  top  of  Gerizim,  and  inspected  the  pit  and  the 
stones  where  the  passover-lambs  are  killed  and  roasted  every  spring,  and 
where  twelve  men,  in  white  surplices  and  turbans,  representing  the  twelve 
tribes  of  Israel,  still  from  year  to  year  maintain  the  ancestral  Samaritan  wor- 
ship. Then,  descending,  we  made  our  way  northward,  by  way  of  Samaria 
and  Dothan,  to  Jezreel  and  Shunem,  Nain  and  Endor,  all  situated  at  the 
east  of  that  great  plain  of  Megiddo  or  Esdraelon,  which  we  saw  three  weeks 
before,  in  all  its  grandeur  and  desolation,  from  Mount  Carmel.  Thence  we 
climbed  the  hill  and  stood  in  Nazareth,  the  scene  of  thirty  years  of  Jesus'  life. 

The  appearance  of  the  little  town  is  very  pleasing,  with  its  dazzling  white 
walls  embosomed  in  a  green  framework  of  cactus-hedges,  and  of  fig  and 
olive  trees.  The  House  of  the  Virgin  we  were  not  able  to  see,  because,  as 
tradition  relates,  the  sacred  dwelling  was  carried  off  in  the  thirteenth  century 
by  angels,  in  order  to  prevent  its  desecration  by  the  Moslems.  This  may  be 
regarded  as  authentic,  for  during  the  Pontificate  of  Paul  II,  that  infallible 
head  of  the  Church,  this  miracle  was  solemnly  confirmed  and  vouched  for 
by  the  Papal  See.  For  reasons  which  may  be  imagined  as  well  as  they  can 


RECOLLECTIONS   OF   THE   EAST.  483 

be  described,  we  neglected  to  visit  the  workshop  of  Joseph,  although  the 
sight  was  offered  us  at  so  low  a  price  as  three  piastres.  But  two  things  we 
did  see  which  were  much  better  worth  seeing,— first,  the  spring  outside  the 
village,  with  its  many  maidens  drawing  water,  much  as  Laban's  daughters 
did  of  old ;  and,  secondly,  the  hill  to  the  southwest  of  the  town  which,  from 
a  height  of  eighteen  hundred  feet,  commands  a  lovely  view  of  the  vale  of 
Nazareth,  together  with  the  distant  prospect  of  Carmel  and  the  great,  wide 
sea  beyond.  To  this  spring  where  the  women  gathered,  Mary  the  Virgin 
must  have  often  led  the  steps  of  her  infant  Son,  and  from  that  summit  the 
youthful  Jesus  must  often  have  looked  off  toward  the  horizon  which  marked 
for  him  the  farthest  limit  of  the  visible  world,  while  he  pondered  upon  the 
work  for  the  world's  deliverance,  which  even  then  began  to  spread  out  like 
this  grand  panorama  before  him. 

From  Nazareth  we  passed  on  to  Mount  Tabor  and  the  Lake  of  Galilee, 
and  past  the  ruins  of  the  cities  on  which  the  curse  of  Jesus  rested  because 
they  repented  not.  Then  to  Safed,  Ceesarea-Philippi,  and  Damascus.  And 
with  Damascus  we  must  close  our  journey.  It  is  a  fitting  close.  The  famous 
view  of  Damascus,  from  the  ridge  north  of  the  city,  has  been  celebrated  by 
every  traveler,  yet  it  has  never  been  praised  enough.  It  is  the  most  beauti- 
ful vision  that  strikes  the  eye  of  the  traveler  in  the  east.  The  plain  of 
Damascus  is  covered  with  foliage,  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach.  The  endless 
orchards  of  fig,  pomegranate,  mulberry,  almond,  apricot,  orange  and  olive, 
form  an  unbroken  sea  of  green,  that  surrounds  the  city  and  washes  its  very 
walls.  The  minarets  and  domes  of  Damascus  rise  in  slender  and  swelling 
beauty  from  the  midst  of  the  green,  and  no  language  can  do  justice  to  the 
exquisite  contrast  between  the  white  spires  and  the  verdure  that  surrounds 
them.  This  plain  of  waving  leaves  is  bounded  by  high  and  barren  moun- 
tains. The  snowy  crest  of  goodly  Hermon,  and  its  subject  hills,  fill  all  the 
north  and  west.  It  is  a  legend  of  the  Moslems  that  Mohammed,  the  prophet, 
never  entered  Damascus,  exclaiming  as  he  passed  by,  "Man  can  have  but 
one  Paradise, —  I  will  not  take  mine  on  earth."  Alas,  that  the  beauty  of  the 
outside  show  is  so  belied  by  squalor  and  wretchedness  within  !  But  so  it  is 
with  all  the  land  of  Palestine.  The  prospect  often  pleases, —  and  only  man 
is  vile.  Neither  Damascus  nor  Jerusalem  can  satisfy.  And  there  was  no 
lesson  that  I  learned  in  the  Holy  Land,  more  impressive  and  lasting  than 
this  :  There  is  no  earthly  city,  however  famed  in  story  or  sacred  from  asso- 
ciations of  the  past,  where  the  soul  can  rest  and  say,  Here  I  will  abide,  here 
I  will  dwell  forever.  If  we  would  find  rest,  it  must  be,  not  in  the  earthly 
but  in  the  heavenly  Canaan,  not  in  the  Holy  City  where  prophets  spake  and 
Jesus  walked  while  here  in  mortal  flesh,  but  only  in  that  city  which  hath 
foundations,  whose  builder  and  maker  is  God.  It  was  only  this  common 
feeling  of  us  all  that  the  old  mediaeval  poet  expressed,  in  those  most  sweet 

and  sacred  lines : 

"  O,  mother  dear,  Jerusalem ! 

When  shall  I  come  to  thee? 
When  shall  my  sorrows  have  an  end? 
Thy  joys  when  shall  I  see? 

"  O,  happy  harbor  of  God's  saints! 

O,  sweet  and  pleasant  soil ! 
In  thee  no  sorrow  can  be  found, 
Nor  grief,  nor  pain,  nor  toil !  " 


XLVII. 

THE  CRUSADES: 


The  subject  of  this  paper  illustrates  the  powerful  effects  of  the  law  of 
association.  Important  events  invest  the  spots  where  they  occur  with  a 
peculiar  sacredness.  This  is  true  not  only  in  individual  experience,  but  in 
general  history.  The  principle  has  special  application  to  religion.  Every 
great  religion  has  attracted  popular  devotion  to  its  birthplace  or  its  shrines, 
its  ritual  or  its  pilgrimages.  Even  Christianity  is  not  without  its  holy 
places  ;  for  the  very  reason  that  it  is  a  historical  religion,  as  distinguished 
from  a  system  of  priestly  ceremonial  or  of  abstract  doctrine,  it  bestows  upon 
these  holy  places  a  genuine  and  a  reasonable  regard  ;  the  places  are  helps 
to  its  influence  and  verifications  of  its  truth.  The  Jew  looked  with  affec- 
tion to  the  city  where  David  built  his  capital  upon  the  rugged  heights  of 
Zion,  and  the  Christian  looks  with  an  equal  though  a  different  interest  to 
that  other  hill  where  the  Son  of  David  was  crucified  and  buried. 

Christianity,  however,  differs  from  other  religions,  in  that  it  is  pre-emin- 
ently the  religion  of  the  Spirit.  It  accepts  the  help  of  the  outward  and 
visible  so  far  as  these  can  minister  to  inward  devotion,  but  it  counts  these 
idolatry  when  they  usurp  the  thought  and  worship  that  belong  to  God.  It 
has  felt  at  every  step  of  its  history  the  common  tendency  of  human 
nature  to  exalt  the  means  above  the  end,  the  form  above  the  substance. 
And  there  have  been  whole  generations  in  which  the  religion  of  Christen- 
dom, so-called,  has  well-nigh  fallen  back  to  the  plane  of  the  earthly  and 
material.  There  were  two  hundred  years  of  the  middle  age,  when  the 
church  forgot  her  living  Lord  in  her  jealousy  for  the  possession  of  his  sepul- 
chre. As  Hegel  has  well  expressed  it  in  his  Philosophy  of  History,  * '  She 
sought  the  truth  of  spirit  in  a  tomb ;  she  was  met  by  the  old  words  :  Why 
seek  ye  the  living  among  the  dead  ?  He  is  not  here  but  is  risen  !  "  This 
mighty  movement  and  culmination  of  an  externalized  Christianity  we  call 
the  .Crusades.  My  purpose  is  briefly  to  review  the  occasions,  causes  and 
results  of  the  Crusades,  with  special  reference  to  ecclesiastical  history  and 
to  European  civilization. 

In  the  eleventh  century  pilgrimage  was  a  thing  of  ancient  date.  It  had 
begun  even  under  the  heathen  emperors.  Though  Titus  had  burned  the 
temple  at  Jerusalem  and  drawn  the  ploughshare  over  its  ashes,  and  though 
Hadrian  had  founded  a  pagan  colony  on  Mount  Zion  and  built  a  temple  to 
Yenus  on  the  hill  of  Calvary,  Christians  even  thus  early  found  their  way 
to  the  Holy  City.  The  conversion  of  Constantine,  and  the  royal  progress 
of  Helena,  the  mother  of  the  emperor,  with  the  breaking  down  of  heathen 


*An  Essay  read  before  The  Club,  Rochester,  February  15, 1876. 

484 


THE    CRUSADES.  485 

altars  and  the  discovery  of  the  Savior's  tomb  which  followed,  rendered  pil- 
grimage both  common  and  fashionable.  Constautine  erected  the  church  of 
the  Holy  Sepulchre  ;  his  mother  marked  the  path  of  her  pilgrimage  by  the 
churches  which  she  built ;  it  is  only  a  natural  result  that  we  should  possess, 
from  a  date  so  far  back  as  the  fourth  century,  an  itinerary  designed  for  the 
use  of  pilgrims  from  Bordeaux,  by  way  of  Constantinople,  to  Jerusalem. 

The  more  sagacious  and  spiritual  Fathers  of  the  church,  such  as  Gregory 
of  Nyssa,  Augustine  and  Jerome,  protested  against  these  pilgrimages  as 
needless  and  dangerous.  But  the  tide  soon  became  too  strong  for  resist- 
ance. The  number  who  set  out  for  the  east  continually  increased.  Hos- 
pitals were  founded  for  the  refreshment  and  care  of  the  pilgrims.  They 
were  exempted  from  tolls  and  taxes.  The  staff  and  wallet,  the  scallop-shell 
upon  the  hat,  from  the  shore  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  the  palm-branch 
from  Jericho  in  the  hand,  became  insignia  of  a  lower  order  of  nobility,  to 
which  the  poor  as  well  as  the  rich  might  aspire.  Not  only  were  there 
rewards  at  the  hands  of  men.  The  journey  to  Palestine  became  a  work  of 
merit  which  availed  with  God.  In  connection  with  the  growing  faith  in 
works  of  supererogation,  thousands  persuaded  themselves  that  bathing  in 
the  Jordan  was  a  baptism  which  washed  away  all  sins,  and  that  the  shirt 
in  which  they  entered  the  Holy  City,  if  only  preserved  for  a  winding-sheet, 
would  in  the  last  great  day  ensure  them  a  blessed  resurrection. 

In  the  year  637,  only  five  years  after  Mohammed's  death,  the  wave  of  Sar- 
acenic invasion  under  the  Caliph  Omar  swept  over  Syria  and  Egypt,  and  for 
a  century  thereafter  it  rolled  onward  almost  without  a  check.  But  almost 
the  last  great  act  of  the  undivided  Roman  Empire  was  the  repulse  of  the 
> '  lems  from  Constantinople  in  718  by  sturdy  Leo,  the  Emperor  of  the  East. 
But  for  this  staggering  blow,  and  that  other  crushing  defeat  which  they  suf- 
fered at  the  hands  of  Charles  Martel  a  little  later  at  Tours  (732),  the  Sar- 
acens might  have  descended  upon  Christendom  while  her  social  and  gov- 
ernmental institutions  were  yet  unformed,  and  we  might  be  the  heirs  of  an 
Asiatic  instead  of  a  European  civilization.  When  the  empire  was  actually 
divided,  and  Charlemagne  united  the  western  lands,  the  crisis  of  Saracen 
fury  and  ambition  had  passed.  Pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem,  not  wholly  inter- 
rupted by  the  recent  wars,  began  anew  and  with  redoubled  enthusiasm. 
The  very  hazards  of  an  expedition  to  a  foreign  land  and  among  the  infidels 
stimulated  the  imagination.  The  holy  places  of  the  Christian  were  holy 
places  of  the  Moslem  also.  Though  hatred  of  the  western  image-worship 
was  difficult  to  conceal,  Saracen  thrift  seemed  to  get  the  better  of  Saracen 
bigotry.  Or,  did  the  Moslems  learn  courtesy  from  their  Caliph  Haroun  al 
Raschid,  who  assured  all  Franks  of  safety,  and  in  token  thereof  sent  to 
Charlemagne  the  keys  of  the  church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre?  Whatever 
.may  be  the  explanation,  it  is  certain  that  the  great  Charles  helped  on  the 
growing  tendency  of  the  times  by  proclaiming  in  the  eighth  century  that 
throughout  his  whole  realm  pilgrims  to  Palestine  should  be  gratuitously 
provided  for,  at  least  to  the  extent  of  lodging,  fire  and  water. 

No  proper  estimate  of  the  events  that  followed  can  be  formed,  without 
taking  into  account  the  traditional  hold  which  pilgrimage  had  come  to  have 
upon  people  of  every  class,  the  almost  unobstructed  freedom  of  it  from  the 
first  to  the  tenth  centuries,  and  the  sacrilege  which  seemed  involved  in 


486  THE   CRUSADES. 

every  attempt  to  prevent  or  hinder  it.  There  were  indeed  occasional  out- 
bursts of  Saracen  insolence  from  the  time  of  the  Fatimite  Caliphs,  descendants 
of  Fatima,  daughter  and  only  child  of  Mohammed,  in  972.  But  it  was  not 
until  1063  that  the  real  persecution  of  pilgrims  began.  In  that  year  the 
Seljuks  —  for  the  Turks  proper  did  not  appear  until  the  thirteenth  century  — 
pressed  down  upon  the  empire  of  the  Saracens,  as  the  Teutonic  tribes  had 
pressed  down  upon  old  Borne, —  though  Findlay  tells  us  that  they  did  not 
take  Jerusalem  till  1076.  They  were  half  heathen  and  utterly  barbarous. 
They  had  embraced  Mohammedanism  in  its  bigotry  and  its  warlike  spirit,  but 
they  had  not  yet  imbibed  the  Mohammedan  civilization.  In  one  vast  horde 
they  poured  in  from  the  east  and  north,  overran  all  Palestine,  put  an  end  to 
the  Saracen  dominion  in  Syria,  and  threatened  the  very  existence  of  the  East- 
ern Empire  at  Constantinople.  They  scorned  the  Christians,  whom  they 
knew  only  from  the  degraded  Syrians  and  Greeks,  and  from  the  dust-stained 
pilgrims  who  thronged  the  roads  to  Jerusalem.  Then  came  the  first  real 
and  protracted  suffering.  The  unsettled  and  despotic  nature  of  the  Turkish 
rule,  the  barbarity  of  Turkish  manners,  the  extortions,  robberies  and  out- 
rages perpetrated  either  by  fanatical  zeal  or  by  native  cruelty  upon  Chris- 
tians of  both  sexes  and  of  every  European  land,  were  deeper  wrongs  than 
had  been  suffered  by  the  church  since  the  persecutions  of  the  Pagan  Em- 
perors. These  were  the  more  intolerable  and  roused  the  deeper  indignation 
throughout  the  west,  from  the  fact  that  the  idea  of  the  outward  unity  of 
the  church,  and  its  supreme  authority  over  all  earthly  powers,  had  nearly 
reached  its  final  height, —  or,  to  put  it  in  fewer  words,  it  was  the  time  of  the 
great  Hildebrand,  known  to  history  as  Pope  Gregory  the  Seventh. 

Yet  Hildebrand  was  not  the  leader  of  the  movement  which  followed.  Let 
us  appreciate  his  position.  He  did  not  underestimate  the  danger  of  this 
new  onset  of  barbarism.  The  swift  advances  of  the  Turkish  power  excited 
his  grave  apprehensions.  Nor  was  the  project  of  a  united  movement 
against  the  infidels  a  new  one  to  him.  A  century  before,  the  indignities 
put  upon  pilgrims  by  the  Fatimite  Caliphs  had  led  Gerbert,  Archbishop  of 
Bavenna,  to  write  an  address  in  the  name  of  the  church  of  Jerusalem,  exhort- 
ing all  Christians  to  take  arms  for  its  rescue.  Even  thus  early  the  Pisans 
had  sent  out  a  fleet  and  had  invaded  Syria  with  such  effect  that,  for  a  little 
time,  the  Saracens  supposed  all  Christendom  was  arming  against  them.  And 
now  the  Byzantine  emperor,  fearing  an  attack  of  the  Turks  upon  his  capital, 
sent  an  embassy  to  Gregory,  entreating  his  assistance.  Gregory  entered  into 
the  plan.  With  the  two-fold  aim  of  driving  back  the  Turks  and  of  bring- 
ing the  Eastern  Empire  into  the  Latin  fold,  he  addressed  the  rulers  of  the 
European  states,  urging  a  common  war  upon  the  Turks,  and  foreshadowing 
the  Crusades.  He  showed  that  the  Eastern  Empire  was  but  a  feeble  barrier 
against  the  infidel  and  barbarian  enemy,  and  that  if  the  west  did  not  go  to 
the  east,  the  east  would  come  to  the  west. 

But  the  civil  powers  of  Europe  had  learned  to  be  suspicious  of  Gregory's 
uncompromising  logic.  They  feared  that  the  rousing  of  Europe  against 
Asia  might  be  only  another  scheme  for  enlarging  and  centralizing  the  papal 
power.  They  refused  to  second  his  plans,  and  thus  in  all  probability  was 
prevented  that  complete  swallowing  up  of  Europe  in  the  Papacy,  which 
would  have  resulted  if  the  Crusades  had  been  under  the  control  of  the  great 


THE    CRUSADES.  487 

Hildebrand.  Great  revolutions  break  out  from  below.  Rulers  may  guide 
them  ;  they  cannot  originate  them  ;  they  can  seldom  precipitate  them.  And 
Gregory  found  it  so.  Though  the  struggle  with  regard  to  the  investitures 
was  over,  and  Henry  the  Fourth  had  done  his  three  days  penance  in  the 
winter's  cold  at  Gregory's  gate,  and  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  had  well-nigh 
yielded  its  claim  of  independent  sovereignty  to  the  Holy  Roman  Church, 
yet  all  the  power  of  the  Pope  was  inadequate  to  the  stirring  up  of  practical 
interest  in  the  proposed  undertaking  —  a  practical  interest  which,  when 
kindled  twenty  years  later  among  the  people,  swept  over  all  Europe  like  a 
prairie-fire  in  the  drought  of  summer. 

Thus  forty  years  passed  after  the  Seljuk  conquest  of  Palestine,  before 
any  general  effort  was  made  to  rescue  Christ's  sepulchre  from  the  infidels, 
or  to  renew  the  conflict  between  two  great  religions,  which  had  ceased  four 
centuries  before.  But,  during  those  forty  years,  every  city  and  castle  in 
Europe  had  received  back  its  maltreated  pilgrims,  some  of  them  maimed  and 
just  escaped  with  life,  and  all  of  them  narrating  their  sufferings  with  the 
fervor  of  personal  experience.  In  the  preaching  of  these  pilgrims  we  must 
find  the  immediate  occasion  of  the  Crusades.  Foremost  among  them  was 
Peter  of  Picardy.  A  youth  of  fiery  spirit,  he  had  been  bred  to  the  profes- 
sion of  iii'ins.  But  he  left  the  sword  for  the  crucifix,  and  a  high-born  wife 
for  what  in  less  stirring  times  might  have  been  called  a  passionless  bride, 
the  Church.  In  a  secluded  hermitage  he  buried  himself  from  the  world. 
Self- mortification  and  intense  meditation  wrought  their  natural  effects  upon 
an  ;irdeut  and  imaginative  nature.  Christ  himself,  as  he  believed,  appeared 
to  him  in  visions.  He  talked  familiarly  with  the  holy  apostles.  A  letter 
from  heaven  fell  at  his  feet.  He  made  a  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem,  and,  yet 
more  aroused  by  the  sufferings  and  outrages  which  he  observed  and  experi- 
enced, he  solemnly  announced  to  the  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem  that  he  was 
commissioned  by  God  to  rouse  the  western  nations  to  drive  out  the  infidel 
oppressors. 

Returning  to  Europe,  Peter  brought  letters  from  the  Patriarch  to  Urban 
II,  the  successor  and  imitator  of  Hildebrand.  His  recitals  were  received 
with  tears.  His  general  scheme  was  sanctioned,  and  he  was  sent,  as  special 
envoy  of  the  Papal  See,  to  preach  the  deliverance  of  the  Holy  Land  through 
^11  the  countries  of  Europe.  Urban  seconded  his  efforts  with  the  utmost 
vigor.  The  Council  of  Piacenza  united  the  Italians  ;  the  Council  of  Cler- 
mont,  in  France,  united  the  Transalpine  peoples.  At  this  latter  gathering, 
after  the  Byzantine  ambassadors  had  pleaded  their  country's  cause  and 
Peter  had  electrified  the  people  by  his  eloquence,  the  Pope  himself  addressed 
the  multitude.  As  he  spoke,  the  thirty  thousand  laymen  followed  his  adju- 
rations with  the  shout,  "  Deus  vult !  " — and  "  Deus  vult ! "  became  the  watch- 
word of  the  holy  wars.  Each  bishop  hastened  from  the  Council  to  his  diocese, 
.and  roused  his  flock.  Thus  the  cry  "Deus  vult !  "  spread  from  Clermont,  in 
Auvergne,  to  every  quarter  of  Europe,  and,  seized  with  sudden  frenzy,  all 
other  business  neglected,  men  of  every  nation  and  of  every  class  sewed  red 
crosses  upon  their  shoulders  and  took  arms  to  deliver  Jerusalem.  And  so, 
in  the  years  1096  and  1097,  the  first  Crusade  began. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  give  even  a  meagre  sketch  of  the  incidents  and 
^actors  in  these  wars.  And  general  description  here  is  more  intelligible  and 


488  THE   CKUSADES. 

impressive  than  detail.  To  tell  the  story  in  few  words,  six  millions  of  all 
classes,  first  and  last,  assumed  the  cross  and  vowed  to  go  to  Palestine. 
According  to  contemporary  writers,  six  hundred  thousand  perished  in  the 
first  Crusade,  and  historians  variously  estimate  that  from  two  millions  to 
four  millions  was  the  total  loss  of  life  in  the  long  conflict.  And  even  the 
largest  of  these  numbers  will  not  seem  impossible,  when  we  consider  how  these 
worse  than  useless  hosts  were  composed.  Some  of  the  armies  comprised  the 
very  offscouring  of  Europe  —  very  savages  for  ignorance  and  vice.  The  three 
hundred  thousand  whom  the  more  shrewd  leaders  sent  out  under  Peter  the 
Hermit,  asked,  in  their  simplicity,  if  the  nearest  village  to  their  homes  were 
Jesusalem,  the  end  of  their  wanderings.  The  northern  forests  sent  forth 
hordes  whom  the  Arabian  chroniclers  call  an  iron  race,  of  gigantic  stature, 
who  darted  fire  from  their  eyes  and  spat  blood  upon  the  ground.  Alas,  that 
all  were  not  such  as  the  Arabian  chronicles  described  !  It  was  sacrilege  to 
deter  any  from  so  holy  a  service.  Women  enlisted,  and  from  the  Rhine 
came  a  troop  of  Amazons  under  "  the  golden-footed  dame."  A  regiment  of 
boys,  armed  with  cross-bows,  made  show  of  fight  at  Antioch.  There  was  a 
Crusade  of  the  Children,  and  thousands  of  weaklings  who  should  have  been 
in  mothers'  arms,  after  crossing  the  Alps  in  the  depths  of  winter,  were  either 
shipwrecked  in  the  Mediterranean  or  captured  and  sold  for  slaves.  Thus 
the  armies  were  a  heterogeneous  conglomeration  of  all  races,  languages, 
sexes  and  ages,  without  unity  of  plan  or  discipline  or  generalship.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  they  whitened  every  road  to  Palestine  with  their  skeletons,  and 
drenched  the  Holy  Land  with  their  blood. 

Yet  there  were  great  leaders  —  men  valiant  themselves,  and  able  so  to  mar- 
shal their  few  brave  and  disciplined  followers,  as  to  rout  and  overthrow 
twenty  times  their  number  of  Paynim  foes.  The  magnanimous  Godfrey  ;  the 
impetuous  Robert,  son  of  William  the  Conqueror  ;  the  cool  and  ambitious 
Bohemond  ;  Tancred,  the  hero  of  Tasso's  epic  ;  the  lion-hearted  Richard  of 
England,  whose  restless  spirit  of  adventure  Scott  has  so  well  described  in 
Ivauhoe  ;  Saint  Louis,  the  best  of  all  the  kings  of  France  ;  and  Frederick 
Barbarossa,  the  earliest  and  noblest  model  of  chivalry,  as  he  is  the  greatest 
of  the  crusaders  —  all  these  were  mighty  captains  during  the  two  centuries. 
Godfrey  captured  Jerusalem  and  built  up  a  frost-work  kingdom.  Frederick 
II,  the  grandson  of  Frederick  Barbarossa,  excommunicated  though  he  AMIS, 
put  the  same  crown  upon  his  head  in  the  next  century.  Baldwin  seated 
himself  upon  the  throne  of  the  old  capital  of  Constantine.  A  few  got  glory, 
but  the  best  of  them  won  only  disease  and  death. 

And  yet  these  expeditions  did  not  die  out  upon  experience  of  the  first  dis- 
asters. From  the  same  defeats  seemed  to  rise  the  same  enthusiasm.  Gen- 
eration after  generation  took  the  sword  to  perish  in  the  same  way.  The 
eight  Crusades  were  only  more  marked  instances  of  what  occurred  every  year 
of  the  two  crusading  centuries.  Every  summer  saw  its  armed  bands  set  out 
for  Palestine, —  priests  and  people  blessing  them  as  they  departed  from  their 
homes,  and  accompanying  them  a  little  distance  on  their  way.  The  great 
Crusades  were  but  exaggerations  of  these  annual  expeditions,  occasioned  by 
some  great  calamity  at  home  which  demanded  penance,  or  some  great  reverse 
abroad  which  necessitated  reinforcements.  And  so  the  West  Avas  kept  in 
continual  commotion,  from  the  first  Crusade,  when,  in  the  words  of  the 


THE    CRUSADES.  480 

eastern  princess,  all  Europe  seemed  loosed  from  its  foundations  and  hurled 
upon  Asia,  to  the  last  Crusade,  when  the  good  King  Louis  —  Louis  IX,  of 
France  — after  wearing  the  red-cross  for  twenty  years,  died  of  the  pestilence 
in  Africa.  Yet  long  before  these  two  centuries,  with  their  migration  of  nations, 
had  expired,  the  Christians  were  driven  from  every  Syrian  stronghold,  the 
two  kingdoms  they  had  founded  were  annihilated,  and  the  Turks  held  again 
in  peace  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  And  thus  the  only  enterprise  in 
which  all  the  western  states  engaged  with  equal  ardor  —  an  enterprise  which 
was  certainly  the  heroic  event  of  modern  Europe,  uniting  its  various  peoples 
into  one,  as  did  the  siege  of  Troy  the  Greeks — an  enterprise,  too,  in  which 
Europe  was  first  known  as  Europe,  and  in  which  European  states  first 
appeared  as  single  states  in  history  —  this  enterprise,  in  its  immediate  aim 
and  conduct,  must  certainly  be  regarded  as  the  most  signal  monument  of 
human  folly  that  has  appeared  in  any  age  of  human  history.  With  Voltaire, 
we  may  call  it  a  joint  product  of  barbarism^Jgnorance  ancj[  ^ftp^t^gjgni.  With 
Milinan,  we  may  describe  it  as  the  most  wonderful  phrensy  that  ever  pos- 
sessed mankind. 

But  it  does  not  become  us  to  rest  content  with  an  estimate  like  this.  Such 
an  estimate  regards  the  vast  movement  only  in  its  superficial  aspects.  Con- 
sidered in  the  higher  light  of  a  necessary  result  and  outlet  of  imprisoned 
forces,  which  were  then  exercised  and  improved  for  worthier  tasks  than  the 
building  up  of  Syrian  kingdoms  or  the  recovery  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre, 
the  Crusades  are  instinct  with  new  principles  and  pregnant  with  consequences 
the  most  beneficent  and  sublime.  Let  us  carefully  distinguish  between  the 
causes  of  these  wars,  and  their  mere  occasions  or  concomitants.  It  is  very 
plain  that  the  preaching  of  Peter  the  Hermit  was  in  no  proper  sense  the 
cause  of  the  Crusades.  The  real  cause  was  that  hidden  train  that  had  been 
silently  laid  in  the  mind  of  Europe,  and  whose  very  existence  was  unknown 
until  Peter's  words  put  to  it  the  torch.  The  kings  of  Europe  were  not  the 
cause  of  the  Crusades.  They  took  no  share  in  the  first  Crusade.  They  fol- 
lowed the  great  popular  impulse,  only  when  they  found  it  irresistible.  The 
leaders  of  the  hosts  were  not  the  cause  of  the  Crusades.  They  did  not  at 
first  originate  them,  nor  could  they  stop  the  movement  when  it  had  once 
begun, —  for  it  had  a  deeper  root  than  the  wish  to  gain  the  kingdoms  for 
Christians  leaders,  or  to  gratify  the  fantastic  and  adventurous  whims  of 
princes.  It  was  like  the  rising  of  an  ocean-flood,  spontaneous,  overwhelm- 
ing, either  bearing  all  obstacles  upon  its  bosom  or  drowning  them  forever. 
From  the  beginning  to  the  end  the  Crusades  were  essentially  popular  in 
their  character ;  and  they  demonstrate,  if  demonstration  were  needed,  that 
the  millions  are  moved,  not  by  climate,  not  by  government,  not  by  individ- 
ual leaders,  not  by  material  interests,  but  primarily  by  ideas,  and  that,  for 
an  idea,  a  whole  nation  or  a  whole  hemisphere  may  live  and  die.  There  was 
as  idea  that  possessed  the  mind  of  Europe,  and  that  explains  the  Crusades. 
Can  history,  or  the  philosophy  of  history,  compel  this  subtle  but  mighty 
spirit  to  take  form  before  us  and  announce  its  name  ? 

Guizot  has  reduced  the  various  influences  which  determined  the  Crusades 
to  two  great  classes,  the  social  and  the  moral.  He  claims  that  the  social 
cause  was  the  old  barbarian  taste  for  roving  and  for  war,  which,  although 
confined  for  three  centuries  since  the  Empire  of  Charlemagne,  had  never 


490  THE   CRUSADES. 

been  extinguished.  When  the  Empire  which  Charlemagne  had  founded  was 
-divided  and  scattered,  in  the  hands  of  his  successors,  all  the  old  restlessness 
revived.  The  barbaric  spirit  awoke  from  its  lethargy.  There  came  again  a 
ohaos  of  confusion  and  isolation.  The  military  ambition,  the  haughty  inde- 
pendence, the  uncurbed  license,  the  private  wars  of  the  barons,  began  anew. 
The  open  country  was  the  scene  of  disorder  and  outrage.  The  only  pursuits 
of  the  noble  of  that  day  were  war  and  rapine.  He  was  the  same  old  pagan 
under  a  Christian  guise.  Sprinkling  him  with  a  holy  broom  had  not  altered 
his  nature.  When  he  was  asked  to  fight  in  a  foreign  land  for  the  tomb  of 
Christ,  the  call  appealed  alike  to  his  instinct  of  wandering  and  his  instinct 
of  battle.  The  sacrifices  which  his  fathers  had  offered  to  Thor  or  to  Woden 
seemed  to  him  most  proper  to  lay  upon  God's  altar.  The  slaughter  of  the 
enemies  of  the  faith  in  the  distant  East  became  the  natural  object  of  his 
religious  zeal. 

Let  us  remember,  also,  that  the  individualism  of  mediaeval  society  was 
-almost  perfect.  The  feudal  system  fostered  it.  And  feudalism  was  the  union 
of  the  old  Roman  grants  of  land  upon  condition  of  military  service,  with  the 
Teutonic  fealty  of  the  individual  warrior  to  the  leader  whose  fortunes  he 
followed.  But  as  yet  the  personal  and  Teutonic  element  was  in  the  ascend- 
ant. There  were  a  host  of  petty  chiefs,  each  with  his  body  of  armed  retainers, 
his  castle  and  the  huts  of  his  vassals  around  it.  The  servant  imitated  the 
master.  Only  by  valor  could  he  rise.  And  war  was  needed,  as  the  oppor- 
tunity for  valor.  In  war  man  was  opposed  to  man,  strength  to  strength. 
Gunpowder  had  not  yet  rendered  personal  prowess  and  might  of  arm  of 
inferior  account.  Courage  met  its  reward ;  the  squire  might  win  knight- 
hood of  his  master,  and  the  knight  might  win  an  eastern  principality. 

For  such  habits  of  life,  and  for  such  warlike  passions,  what  a  field  was 
opened  on  the  plains  of  Asia !  What  California  was  to  the  broken-down 
merchant  of  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  what  Dante's  terrestrial  paradise  at 
the  antipodes  of  Jerusalem  was  to  Christopher  Columbus  on  his  two  last 
voyages  westward,  that  Jerusalem  itself  was  to  the  Crusader  —  a  city  where 
fallen  fortunes  might  be  raised  again,  or  where  ambition  might  carve  its  way 
to  fabulous  wealth  and  power.  The  knight  need  cramp  his  energies  no 
longer  in  petty  castle-warfare.  His  sphere  of  action  widened  boundlessly 
before  him.  Golden  sceptres  glittered  in  the  distance.  Diamonds  and  pal- 
aces, the  spoils  of  Turkish  Emirs,  Grecian  wines  and  women,  tempted  his 
curiosity  and  roused  his  imagination.  Many  a  mind  had  visions  by  night 
and  day  of  palaces  of  cedar,  paved  with  jasper  and  lined  with  gold.  Every 
class  of  society  felt  the  charm.  The  monk  might  escape  the  discipline  of 
the  convent,  and  as  a  member  of  the  Church  militant  yield  himself  again  to 
the  pleasures  of  the  world.  The  oppressed  serf  or  citizen  might  gain  free- 
dom from  the  tyrannical  restrictions  of  his  lord.  To  join  a  Crusade,  the 
vassal  might  alienate  his  land  without  consent  of  his  superior,  and  enjoy  all 
the  privileges  of  the  ecclesiastic.  The  debtor  might  escape  from  his  cred- 
itors, the  outlaw  brave  the  law,  yet  be  free  from  punishment,  not  only  for 
all  past,  but  for  all  future  transgressions.  Guy  of  Lusignan  fled  from  France 
a  murderer,  and  was  raised  to  the  throne  of  Jerusalem. 

Yet  it  is  evident  that  all  these  social  influences  were  only  of  secondary 
account.  They  acted  with  energy  only  after  the  spread  of  some  common 


THE    CRUSADES.  491 

idea,  which  could  unite  them  with  itself  and  take  a  coloring  from  them.  Such 
narrow  and  selfish  interests  alone  could  never  have  roused  or  united  Europe. 
The  love  of  war  and  the  barbaric  desire  of  roving  cannot  be  said  to  have 
inspired  all  the  European  classes.  This  cause  was  most  potent  among  the 
feudal  nobility.  Over  vast  multitudes  it  had  but  little  influence.  The  serfs, 
the  artisans,  monks,  citizens,  women  and  youth,  in  fact,  all  the  more  timid 
and  peaceful  classes,  were  impelled  by  a  far  different  desire,  were  animated 
by  a  feeling  which  passed  the  bounds  of  ordinary  selfishness,  and  proceeded 
from  deeper  springs  than  the  love  of  war  and  the  curiosity  of  the  traveler. 
A  mere  glance  at  the  composition  of  the  hosts  that  perished  on  every  Hun- 
garian road  and  on  every  Turkish  plain  puts  this  beyond  all  doubt.  We 
are  driven  to  the  conclusion  that,  underlying  all  private  interests  and  all 
social  influences,  there  was  a  moral  or  religions  cause,  and  it  is  only  when 
we  recognize  this,  that  we  caa  account  for  the  marvelous  facts  of  the  history. 

This  cause  was  not  by  any  means  the  papal  influence.  This  is  evident 
from  the  fact  already  alluded  to,  that  even  Gregory  the  Great,  a  pope  of 
vastly  more  ability  than  Urban,  was  utterly  unable  to  rouse  the  European 
princes,  the  very  class  over  whom  the  social  inducements  had  greatest 
power,  although  he  summoned  them  to  arms  at  the  very  crisis  of  danger, 
upon  the  first  onset  of  the  Turks  and  amid  the  first  alarm  of  Europe.  And 
now  for  forty  years  the  Turks  had  held  secure  possession  of  Jerusalem, 
•and  every  year  their  treatment  of  Christian  pilgrims  grew  less  severe.  There 
was  but  a  single  circumstance  that  seemed  to  promise  greater  success  to 
Urban  than  to  Hildebrand,  and  that  was  a  division  of  the  Mohammedan 
j  x  t\ver  between  the  Sultan  of  Bagdad  and  the  Sultan  of  Asia  Minor.  And  yet, 
in  this  time  of  peace  and  of  immeasurably  slighter  provocation  than  that  of 
twenty  years  before,  the  announcement  of  Peter's  plans,  and  Urban's  sanc- 
tion of  them,  fired  all  Europe.  In  the  last  years  of  the  Crusades,  again, 
when  the  danger  was  greater  than  ever  before,  when  the  Turks  were  most 
united,  powerful  and  threatening,  when  every  Christian  had  been  driven 
from  Syria,  when  means  of  transport  and  the  art  of  war  were  far  better  known 
than  in  the  earlier  Crusades,  all  the  authority  of  the  Popes,  aided  by  royal 
influence,  could  not  raise  even  the  shadow  of  an  army  against  an  enemy  now 
almost  at  their  doors.  These  facts  are  explicable  only  upon  the  admission 
that  the  people,  and  not  the  popes,  were  the  real  movers  in  the  Crusades. 

Guizot  has  stated  the  moral  cause  to  be  the  impulse  of  religious  feeling 
ami  belief,  and  he  calls  the  Crusades  the  crisis  of  the  conflict  which  had  been 
raging  for  four  hundred  years  between  two  hostile  religions.  And  Stanley, 
in  his  History  of  the  Eastern  Church,  tells  us  that  the  Crusades  owed  their 
origin  entirely  to  the  conflict  with  Islam.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  these 
utterances  are  true,  but  they  are  capable  of  leaving  a  radically  false  impres- 
sion. They  leave  the  impression  that  these  wars  were  essentially  offensive, 
and  prompted  by  hatred  of  false  religion.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  any 
long  or  extensive  war  has  been  carried  on  by  a  people  solely  from  such 
motives.  The  individual  soldier,  and  the  army  in  mass,  risk  life  from  posi- 
tive, not  from  negative  motives  ;  not  simply  to  wreak  vengeance,  but  to  gain 
advantage  ;  not  simply  to  destroy,  but  to  win.  Hatred  of  the  Turk  was  but 
the  negative  and  subordinate  side,  a  necessary  incident  in  the  accomplish- 
ment of  a  positive  aim.  That  the  Crusades  cannot  be  explained  as  a  merely 


492  THE   CKUSADES. 

natural  crisis  of  long  cherished  religious  hostility,  which  had  been  growing 
in  the  mind  of  Europe  for  centuries,  seems  clear  from  the  fact  that  the 
causes  for  this  hostility  were  not  nearly  so  great  at  this  time,  as  they  had 
been  thirty  or  forty  years  before.  Just  forty  years  before  Peter's  preaching 
—  about  1064,  as  Findlay  tells  us — a  pilgrimage  was  undertaken  by  certain 
German  bishops  with  a  retinue  of  seven  thousand  persons,  and  three  fourths 
of  this  number  perished  from  suffering  and  the  sword.  Christianity  had 
overcome  Mohammedanism  in  Europe  four  centuries  before.  Then,  in 
reality,  the  question  of  precedence  had  been  decided  between  the  two  rival 
religions ;  and  it  seems  incredible  that,  after  four  centuries  of  peace,  the 
hostility  that  remained  should  have  ripened  naturally,  under  no  peculiarly 
favoring  circumstances,  into  an  intensity  of  hatred  so  universal  and  so  stu- 
pendous in  its  results. 

No,  it  was  a  new  feeling,  a  hitherto  unthought  of  impulse,  which  absorbed 
this  hostility  into  itself  and  used  it  for  its  purpose.  The  struggle  which 
followed  was  a  religious  struggle,  not  simply  in  the  sense  of  war  to  the  death 
against  falsehood,  but  in  the  sense  of  war  to  the  death  for  what  was  con- 
ceived to  be  positive  truth.  We  assert  that  a  universal  awakening  of  religious 
feeling,  and  of  religious  feeling  that  had  in  it  an  element  of  truth,  was  the 
moving  cause  of  the  Crusades,  and  that  a  great  part  of  this  feeling  was 
earnest  and  genuine.  We  cannot  define  this  universal  sentiment  in  any 
terms  which  would  imply  that  it  was  predominantly  sensual  or  selfish.  We 
cannot  attribute  the  sudden  rising  of  Europe  to  the  special  indulgences 
which  were  now  for  the  first  time  granted.  These  had  their  influence,  but 
when  we  search  for  the  main  cause  of  these  wars,  we  may  almost  disregard 
them.  There  were  two  classes  of  Crusaders  —  those  who  went  from  utterly 
selfish  motives,  and  those  who  were  animated  by  a  purer  spirit.  There  were 
those  of  the  first  class  —  "moderate  sinners,"  as  Gibbon  calls  them,  who  had 
already  incurred  a  debt  of  three  hundred  years  of  penance  —  a  debt  which, 
under  ordinary  circumstances,  neither  their  lives  nor  their  fortunes  could 
pay.  These  were  under  absolute  subjection  to  the  priests,  and  the  remission 
of  all  past  penance  and  indulgence  for  all  future  sin  were  surely  worth  a 
journey  to  Palestine.  "God,"  says  the  Abbot  Guibert,  "invented  the 
Crusades,  as  a  new  way  for  the  laity  to  atone  for  their  sins  and  to  merit 
salvation." 

But,  after  all,  the  majority  of  Crusaders  were  possessed  by  a  higher  impulse 
than  this.  The  "  Deus  vult !  "  which  followed  the  speech  of  Urban,  had  in  it 
a  real  significance.  It  was  an  imaginative  and  curious  age.  God  was  believed 
to  interfere  in  the  affairs  of  men.  Political  affairs  were  governed,  not  so 
much  by  considerations  of  state-craft,  as  by  theological  considerations. 
Anxieties  about  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe  would  have  been  an  anach- 
ronism. And  the  great  idea  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  the  idea  of  the  external 
unity  and  supreme  authority  of  the  Church.  The  traditions  of  the  Roman 
Empire  had  descended  to  Hildebrand  and  to  Innocent  III,  as  well  as  to 
Henry  IV  and  to  Frederick  II,  and  of  these  the  Church  and  not  the 
State  was  at  this  time  the  world-conquering  and  world-ruling  power.  It 
was  an  idea  which  could  take  possession  of  prince  and  people  alike.  National 
animosities  and  royal  jealousies  yielded  to  its  influence.  A  kingdom  of 
Christ  on  earth,  before  which  serf  and  emperor  alike  should  bow,  and  under 


THE   CRUSADES.  493 

whose  shadow  the  nations  should  rest  secure  —  this  was  the  dream  of  the  time. 
And  this  kingdom  was  to  be  a  literal  and  visible  kingdom  of  Christ  himself. 
Far  and  wide  over  Europe  was  spread  the  idea  that  the  thousand  years  of 
prophecy  were  nearly  accomplished,  and  that  the  great  dragon  was  to  be 
loosed.  Christ  was  to  judge  the  earth  in  Palestine,  and  all  true  followers 
should  meet  him  there.  Charters  granted  at  that  period  begin  with  the 
words:  "  Appropinquante  mundi  termino."  Many  were  the  saints  who, 
before  the  Crusades  broke  out,  had  abandoned  all  and  fled  to  Palestine. 
What  extravagance  could  be  deemed  impossible  when  the  general  rising 
once  began  !  The  great  design  of  delivering  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  already 
all-important  in  the  mind  of  Christendom,  gained  at  once  a  novel  and  sur- 
prising power.  The  whole  system  of  sensuous  worship  culminated  in  the 
worship  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  and  to  meet  Christ  in  the  Holy  City,  after 
having  delivered  his  tomb  from  the  sacrilege  of  infidel  possession,  was  the 
highest  ambition  of  millions. 

Thus  a  general  belief  in  an  express  and  direct  command  of  God,  an 
unhesitating  conviction  of  the  sole  right  of  the  Church  to  world-wide  sway, 
a,nd  an  identification  of  that  sway  with  the  possession  of  Christ's  tomb  in 
Palestine,  were  the  sources  of  a  religious  enthusiasm,  such  as  the  world  has 
never  seen  before  or  since.  All  other  causes  were  as  nothing  compared  with 
this  generous  and  uucalculating  zeal  for  the  outward  dominion  of  Christ  and 
his  Church.  No  one  can  see  the  hosts  of  Crusaders  led  on  by  ignorant 
monks,  or  by  men  taken  from  the  rabble,  through  German  forests  and 
Byzantian  plains,  falling  by  hundreds  at  every  step,  yet  pressing  on  through 
famine  and  pestilence  and  death,  refusing  to  halt  after  their  toils  in  the  soft 
Phrygian  vales,  refusing  to  assist  their  leaders  in  any  scheme  of  conquest 
but  the  conquest  of  Jerusalem,  yet  half  a  million  of  them  perishing  before 
they  got  to  Antioch, —  no  one,  I  say,  can  look  upon  this  spectacle  and  not 
believe  that  there  was  one  feeling  that  united  them,  and  that  this  feeling 
was  a  deep  though  misplaced  religious  ardor.  These  most  disastrous  yet 
most  unselfish  of  wars,  as  Lecky  calls  them,  were  due  to  an  intense  religious 
enthusiasm  —  an  enthusiasm  which  for  two  hundred  years  rose  again  and 
again,  fresh  and  ardent,  from  utter  and  hopeless  defeat.  How  great  the 
problem  is,  may  be  judged  from  the  following  significant  words  of  Michaud, 
the  modern  historian  of  the  Crusades.  "  No  power  on  earth,"  he  says, 
"could  have  been  able  to  produce  such  a  revolution.  It  belongs  only  to 
Him  whose  will  marshals  and  disperses  tempests,  to  throw  all  at  once  into 
human  hearts  that  enthusiasm  which  silenced  all  other  passions,  and  drew 
on  the  multitude  as  by  an  invisible  power. "  What  Michaud  would  seem  to 
relegate  to  the  category  of  miracle,  we  prefer  to  call  Providence  and  the 
working  of  second  causes,  and  our  final  word  of  explanation  is  this  :  The 
Crusades  were  the  climax  of  a  vast  popular  movement  towards  the  sensuous 
and  external  in  Christianity  ;  a  movement  which  the  Popes  guided,  but  did 
not  originate  ;  a  movement  which  had  power,  because  whole  ages  thought  it 
to  be  in  the  interests  of  Christ ;  a  movement  which,  in  its  utter  defeat,  gave 
useful  demonstration  to  all  after  ages  that  Christ's  words  were  true  :  "  My 
kingdom  is  not  of  this  world." 

^""In  passing  to  consider  the  effects  of  the  Crusades,  we  shall  find  it  needful 
to  distinguish  between  the  immediate  and  the  more  remote.     Of  the  former, 


494  THE   CURSADES. 

I  have  spoken  of  but  one  —  the  short-lived  conquests  in  the  East.  They  were- 
short-lived  for  many  reasons.  The  Turks  had  learned  much  of  the  art  of  war 
from  their  Christian  invaders,  and  were  increasingly  prepared  to  repel  attack. 
Let  us  add  to  this  the  diminished  interest  of  the  West  in  the  Crusades  them- 
selves. Without  proper  reinforcements,  the  Pranks  wasted  away,  till  the 
whole  army^of  the  King  of  Jerusalem  consisted  of  less  than  six  thousand 
men,  and  of  this  number,  according  to  William  of  Tyre,  less  than  a  thou- 
sand were  mounted  knights.  Luxury  and  an  enervating  climate,  together 
with  habits  of  unbridled  license,  enfeebled  the  Latins.  To  their  weakness 
the  Turks  at  last  opposed  the  solid  union  of  all  the  Mohammedan  principali- 
ties under  a  single  cHief.  The  hearts  of  the  Crusaders  sank  within  them. 
In  the  first  Crusade,  the  patron  saints  of  each  nation  were  seen  in  the  van 
of  battle,  as  the  Greeks  at  Marathon  sawT  Theseus  with  his  mighty  brazen 
club  leading  on  the  charge.  But  these  wonders  grew  less  frequent,  and  as 
imagination  gave  place  to  reason,  the  Latins  shed  no  tears  on  resigning  the 
keys  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  again  into  the  hands  of  the  infidels. 

Another  immediate  effect  of  the  Crusades  was  the  outlet  which  it  afforded 
to  the  lawless  passions  and  unoccupied  strength  of  feudalism.  We  are  told 
by  Gibbon,  that  the  waste  of  life  and  treasure  was  an  uncompensated  loss  to 
the  world.  It  remains  for  Gibbon,  if  he  would  maintain  his  thesis,  to  show, 
what  is  contrary  to  all  the  evidence,  namely,  that  feudalism  was  not  verging 
upon  a  state  of  utter  anarchy,  in  which  the  overboiling  spirit  that  showed 
itself  in  desolation  and  outrage  all  over  Europe,  would  without  a  seasonable 
outlet  have  blown  to  pieces  the  whole  fabric  of  society.  The  lives  lost  in 
the.  East  would  almost  beyond  a  doubt  have  otherwise  been  lost  in  intestine 
strife  at  home.  We  regard  the  Crusades  therefore  as  a  politic  diversion  to 
Asia  of  the  tide  of  war,  which  else  would  have  deluged  the  frontiers  of  the 
European  kingdoms,  and  prevented  the  quiet  growth  of  those  institutions 
of  modern  times  which  were  then  in  embryo.  Or,  to  return  to  the  former 
figure,  we  see  in  the  Crusades  from  the  eleventh  to  the  thirteenth  centuries 
the  very  safety-valve  of  European  civilization. 

Yet  another  great  and  immediate  effect  was  the  strengthening  of  the  bar- 
rier against  the  Turks  —  a  horde  of  barbarians  far  more  rude  and  predatory 
than  the  original  followers  of  the  Prophet.  It  is  indeed  so  certain  that,  but 
for  the  Crusades,  the  states  of  Europe  would  have  fallen  one  by  one  into 
the  hands  of  the  advancing  enemy,  that  Michaud  has  said  that  ' '  this  is  the 
first  and  greatest  of  all  the  benefits  they  have  conferred  upon  humanity." 
Constantinople,  the  bulwark  of  the  West,  was  on  the  point  of  falling.  The 
Crusades  saved  the  life  of  that  capital  for  yet  four  hundred  years.  Within 
those  four  hundred  years,  Europe  became  civilized,  and  her  arts  and  sciences 
came  to  be  her  sure  and  .eternal  defense  against  the  infidels.  The  Crusades 
constructed  a  barrier  against  the  Turks, —  but  the  greatest  barrier  was,  as 
Freeman  has  pointed  out,  not  a  barrier  of  arms,  but  a  moral  barrier.  The 
principle  was  once,  and  once  for  all,  established,  that  all  Christian  powers 
were  natural  allies  against  Mohammedan  powers.  In  short,  Europe  appears 
as  Europe,  first  in  the  Crusades. 

If  we  turn  from  the  immediate  results  to  those  which  are  more  remote,  we 
find  much  greater  difficulty  in  tracing,  and  as  a  natural  result,  much  greater 
diversity  of  opinion  with  regard  to  them  among  historians.  It  is,  indeed,. 


THE   CRUSADES.  495 

not  yet  a  century,  since  the  opinion  of  Hume  and  Gibbon  seemed  to  be  that 
the  holy  wars  were  simply  a  monument  of  human  folly,  without  any  rational 
and  sufficient  end.  Of  course,  we  can  believe  this  of  no  single  event,  — 
much  less  of  the  great  drama  before  us.  Let  us  first  inquire  what  were  the 
results  to  the  Church.  Michaud  divides  the  period  of  the  Crusades  into  two 
parts,  each  of  a  hundred  years.  In  the  first  of  these,  the  Papal  authority 
increased  until  it  reached  its  final  height.  In  the  second,  it  again  declined, 
until  at  the  end  of  the  two  centuries  it  was  smaller  than  it  had  been  at  the 
beginning.  The  truth  is  that  it  was  not  till  the  second  Crusade  that  the 
Popes  saw  the  power  they  might  exert.  The  spirit  of  the  Crusade  sur- 
prised them,  for  they  did  not  originate  it.  Striving  then  by  all  means  to 
make  themselves  its  masters,  though  they  gained  great  power  at  first,  the 
staff  on  which  they  leaned  soon  broke,  and  they  fell  even  below  their  former 
authority.  Some  of  the  advantages  which  they  gained  were  these.  The 
Crusades  from  first  to  last  were  preached  in  their  name.  By  leading,  they 
secured  general  reverence.  They  became  possessed  of  power,  as  the  pro- 
tectors of  the  families  of  the  absent  crusaders.  They  assumed  to  dispense 
from  all  civil  and  religious  penalties.  They  were  made  arbiters  in  all  dis- 
putes between  rival  princes  and  kings.  They  made  the  Crusades  the  pre- 
text for  usurping  in  all  the  states  of  Europe  the  attributes  of  sovereignty. 
They  levied  armies  and  taxes  for  the  holy  wars.  Their  legates  exercised 
supreme  authority  in  their  name.  By  an  admirable  legal  fiction,  the  legate 
received  by  proxy  the  submission  due  to  the  master,  and  as  if  he  were  the 
Pope  himself,  had  absolute  command  of  the  clergy,  then  the  most  influen- 
tial body  iu  the  state.  Crusading  vows  were  held  in  terror  em  over  even 
princes  and  emperors.  And  when  all  these  prerogatives  were  assumed,  the 
empire  of  the  Popes  had  no  limits,  — the  Bishop  of  Borne  was  the  liege 
lord  of  mankind. 

As  the  rightful  leaders  of  religious  wars,  the  Popes  were  enabled  to  bend 
these  wars  to  their  own  ends.  The  secular  power  became  the  mere  instru- 
ment of  the  pontifical  will.  "Thus,"  says  Hallam,  "was  developed  that 
persecuting  spirit,  which  produced  the  devastation  of  Languedoc,  the  stakes 
and  scaffolds  of  the  Inquisition,  and  which  rooted  deep  in  the  religious 
theory  of  Europe  those  maxims  of  intolerance,  which  it  has  so  slowly  and 
so  imperfectly  renounced."  And  Milman  has  shown  how  Crusades  against 
*the  Turks  were  fitly  accompanied  by  the  slaughter  of  Jews  in  every  city  on 
the  Rhine,  and  how  the  massacre  of  the  Albigenses  in  the  south  of  France, 
the  expeditions  of  Teutonic  knights  against  the  northern  heathen,  the 
expulsion  of  the  Moors  from  Spain,  the  conquest  of  Mexico  by  Cortez, 
and  Philip  the  Second's  exterminating  war  upon  the  Netherlands  —  in 
short,  every  war  against  those  whom  the  Pope  was  pleased  to  call  heretics 
and  infidels  —  came  to  be  dignified  and  hallowed  by  the  sacred  name  of  the 
cross.  Of  all  the  religious  persecutions  conducted  or  sanctioned  by  the 
Roman  See,  the  fruitful  seed  was  planted  when  Urban  made  his  plea  at 
Clermont  eight  hundred  years  ago. 

And  yet  vaulting  ambition  never  more  signally  overleaped  itself,  than  in 
these  mighty  assumptions  of  temporal  power  on  the  part  of  the  Papacy. 
The  hand  that  grasped  began  to  wither,  even  as  it  touched  the  prize.  The 
Popes  gained  no  lasting  influence  in  the  East.  Instead  of  being  reconciled 


496  THE   CRUSADES. 

and  absorbed,  the  Byzantine  empire  was  alienated  forever, —  the  crusading 
armies  were  swarms  of  locusts  that  stripped  the  eastern  provinces  that  they 
visited,  of  every  green  thing.  The  disputes  in  which  the  sovereign  Pontiff 
was  arbiter,  often  embarrassed  him  without  giving  him  real  power.  As 
time  advanced,  his  commands  were  not  seldom  disobeyed,  and,  without  sec- 
ular power  to  enforce  his  decrees  instantly  and  without  appeal,  his  authority 
fell  into  disrepute.  Amid  the  disorders  of  the  eastern  wars,  and  far  from 
all  prospect  of  punishment,  the  Crusaders  learned  an  independence  of 
ecclesiastical,  as  well  as  of  civil,  authority.  Orders  of  armed  monks,  like  the 
Templars  and  the  Hospitalers,  attained  a  dangerous  wealth  and  influence. 
The  armies  blessed  by  the  Popes  were  too  often  diverted  from  their  sacred 
object  to  wars  of  ambition  and  conquest.  The  tenths  for  every  Crusade, 
and  for  every  attempt  at  a  Crusade,  led  to  searching  questions  as  to  their  dis- 
posal. Funds  raised,  but  misappropriated,  furnished  strong  weapons  to 
Luther  even  after  the  lapse  of  three  centuries.  The  personal  motives  with 
which  the  later  Crusades  were  preached  became  too  plain  to  be  mistaken. 
Complaint  began,  and  complaints  against  the  Vicar  of  God,  though  a  nov- 
elty at  first,  grew  at  last  so  deep  and  strong  as  to  endanger  all  that  had  been 
gained  through  centuries  of  usurpation. 

The  Papal  authority  suffered  greatly  from  the  growth  of  temporal  powers 
which  the  Crusades  assisted.  There  had  been  reason  enough  why  the  Church 
should  rule.  There  was  no  other  stable  element  in  society.  It  alone,  of  all 
mediaeval  institutions,  was  stable,  because  it  had  its  root  in  opinions  and 
beliefs.  Without  this  possession  of  great  power  on  the  part  of  the  Church, 
it  is  difficult  to  see  how  Europe  could  have  been  civilized.  But,  as  the 
governments  of  the  several  States  became  efficient,  the  need  of  Church  power 
diminished.  As  we  shall  see,  the  Crusades  did  much  to  bring  about  this 
settlement  of  the  monarchies  of  Europe.  It  was  only  a  natural  consequence 
that,  as  the  great  temporal  powers  became  established  and  consolidated,  the 
Popes  should  lose  their  ascendency  in  European  politics. 

The  idea  has  prevailed  that  the  clergy  amassed  great  wealth  during  the 
Crusades.  This  was  true  during  the  first  Crusade,  for  which  they  were  not 
compelled  to  pay.  Landed  property,  in  which  the  Jew  did  not  deal,  but 
upon  which  ecclesiastical  establishments  lent  money,  fell  to  the  Church  in 
immense  tracts.  But,  in  all  the  subsequent  Crusades,  contributions  were 
levied  upon  ecclesiastics  also.  Churches  sold  their  ornaments  and  sacred 
vases  to  pay  these  taxes,  and  a  competent  authority  has  estimated  that  in 
two  hundred  years  the  clergy  expended  for  the  holy  wars  a  larger  sum  than 
would  have  purchased  all  their  property.  Hence,  their  crusading  zeal 
perceptibly  cooled,  so  that  the  Popes  did  not  dare  intrust  the  preaching  of 
the  later  Crusades  to  the  bishops,  but  committed  it  to  the  Mendicant  Orders, 
who  had  nothing  to  lose  by  it. 

Guizot  mentions  another  effect  upon  the  Church,  which  must  be  taken 
with  a  grain  of  allowance.  Laymen,  he  urges,  had  hitherto  had  no  direct 
communication  with  the  centre  of  the  Church.  Now  they  passed  through 
Home.  They  saw  the  Papacy  and  its  abuses,  without  ecclesiastical  spectacles. 
Church  and  people  were  brought  nearer  to  each  other,  and  the  latter  acquired 
new  boldness.  It  was  the  beginning  of  that  inspection  and  inquiry  which 
terminated  in  the  revolt  of  Luther.  But  let  us  not  attribute  to  the  mediaeval 


THE   CRUSADES.  497 

traveler  a  spirit  too  far  in  advance  of  his  time.  There  were  other  influences 
at  Rome,  which  might  have  served  to  repress  his  skepticism.  Whatever  of 
art  the  West  possessed  was  there.  Passing  through  the  Eternal  City,  may 
we  not  fairly  represent  him  as  dazzled  with  the  splendors  of  the  pontifical 
throne,  and  as  departing  with  no  greater  diminution  of  his  reverence  than 
happens  to  a  modern  Catholic  in  his  visit  to  the  seat  of  St.  Peter  ? 

And  yet,  there  was  such  a  thing  as  corruption  of  the  clergy,  and  a  large 
part  of  the  subsequent  infamy  of  Popes  and  priesthood  must  be  traced  back 
to  its  beginning  in  these  wars, —  and  here  was  the  secret  of  the  downfall  of 
Papal  i  x  >  wer.  What  the  Hohenstaufen  could  not  accomplish  by  any  outward 
force,  that  internal  rottenness  did  accomplish,  namely,  the  collapse  of  the 
lofty  structure  of  pontifical  supremacy  over  the  princes  and  kings  of  the 
earth.  Such  corruption  was  inseparable  from  the  life  of  armies, —  and  of 
those  armies  the  clergy  constituted  a  part.  Prelates  arrayed  themselves  in 
cuirass  and  helmet ;  country  priests  led  on  their  flocks  to  battle.  The 
Crusades  were  one  long  school  of  licentiousness  and  ferocity.  Morality  was 
outraged  by  the  excesses  of  ecclesiastics  in  the  holy  wars.  Meddling  in 
what  were  soon  perceived  to  be  mere  human  strifes,  and  carried  axvay  by 
every  passion  that  degraded  ordinary  humanity,  the  ministers  of  the  Church, 
and  the  Church  itself,  lost  immeasurably  more  than  they  gained.  If  I  am 
pointed  to  the  great  works  of  the  scholastic  theology  which  from  this  epoch 
began  to  proceed  from  the  monasteries,  I  call  them  signs,  not  of  advancing 
power  in  the  Church,  but  rather  of  the  new  intellectual  spirit  which  followed 
the  Crusades,  and  which  the  Church  could  not  resist.  During  these  two 
hundred  years,  the  doctrines  and  opinions  of  the  Church  suffered  no  material 
change.  Dogmatic  theology,  like  pure  literature,  seldom  flourishes  in  times 
so  averse  to  silent  and  steady  thought ;  and,  therefore,  we  are  warranted  in 
asserting  without  reserve  that,  before  the  two  crusading  centuries  were  over, 
the  acme  of  the  power  of  Ecclesiastical  Rome  had  passed,  and  the  Papacy 
had  entered  upon  that  slow  decline  which  has  proceeded  intermittently,  but 
surely,  from  that  time  until  the  present  day. 

We  have  considered  the  influence  of  these  great  wars  upon  the  Church, — 
let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  their  effects  upon  the  State.  The  cardinal  point 
on  which  mediaeval  history  turns  is  nothing  else  than  the  struggle  of 
theocracy  against  feudal  monarchy, —  so  says  a  great  philosopher  of  history, 
and  truly,  German  and  metaphysician  though  he  be.  And  what  the  Crusades 
did  for  feudalism,  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  foremost  benefits  which 
they  have  conferred  upon  mankind.  They  were  the  first  great  event  of  the 
period  from  the  twelfth  to  the  sixteenth  century,-  in  which  the  isolated 
elements  of  European  society  came  for  the  first  time  together,  and  began 
those  experiments  which  ended  in  the  establishment  of  European  as  well 
as  national  unity.  It  is  only  since  the  thirteenth  century  that  we  can  call 
France  a  nation,  or  really  speak  of  monarchy  and  nobility,  of  government 
and  people.  From  isolation  and  antagonism,  these  elements  united  with 
each  other,  and  formed  what  was  before  unknown  —  the  compacted  State. 

This  is  plain,  when  we  compare  the  age  which  preceded  with  the  age 

which  followed  the  Crusades.     Charlemagne  had  exhausted  every  power  of 

royalty  in  the  endeavor  to  establish  a  second  Eoman  Empire  ;  but,  after  his 

death,  the  bow  was  again  unstrung,  and  society  fell  into  its  former  isolation. 

32 


498  THE   CRUSADES. 

He  had  waged  war  upon  the  feudal  system,  because  it  destroyed  all  protective- 
power,  all  tutelary  and  national  legislation.  The  monarch,  without  authority, 
could  not  be  the  supporter  of  innocence  or  the  avenger  of  crime.  Sovereignty 
was  exercised  by  every  man  who  had  a  sword,  and  the  feudal  noble  was  little 
inferior,  and  paid  only  nominal  subjection  to  the  King.  Though  this 
individualism  was  a  protection  against  despotism  and  universal  conquest, 
though  it  had  within  it  the  seeds  of  all  after-ideas  of  chivalry  and  freedom, 
it  did  not  give  stability  to  government  or  to  justice.  It  was  necessary  that 
individualism  should  give  place  to  a  concentrated  power,  which  could  punish 
offenders  and  build  up  a  united  state.  From  the  ancient  civilization,  in 
which  the  State  absorbed  the  individual,  society  had  swung  to  the  precisely 
opposite  extreme, —  each  individual  could  say  with  Louis  the  Fourteenth: 
"  I  am  the  State."  What  was  needed,  if  civilization  should  advance  or  even 
be  rescued,  was  a  combination  of  the  two  ideas  —  individual  independence, 
with  its  variety  and  freedom,  but  individual  independence  regulated  and 
harmonized  into  compact  society  by  the  overshadowing  force  of  equal  laws. 

The  first  result  of  the  Crusades  that  tended  in  this  direction  was  the 
absorption  of  small  fiefs  into  the  large.  Many  a  great  baron  who  served  in 
these  wars  died  without  heirs,  and  his  estates  reverted  to  the  crown  ;  many 
a  vassal  who  was  fired  with  crusading  ardor,  yet  could  not  by  feudal  custom 
raise  the  expenses  of  his  expedition  by  extraordinary  taxes,  sold  his  fief  to 
the  Crown,  in  expectation  of  conquering  a  richer  one  in  Palestine.  William 
Ruf  us  bought  his  elder  brother's  dukedom  of  Normandy.  By  the  assemblies, 
which,  though  disused  for  a  hundred  years,  were  now  called  to  consult  with 
the  King,  the  Crown  was  aided  in  recovering  the  lost  legislative  power. 
The  great  vassals  of  France,  besides,  scarcely  acknowledged  a  King  of  France 
until  they  beheld  these  Kings  of  France  gathering  glory  and  dominion  in 
the  holy  wars.  Thus,  in  France,  was  seen  an  aggrandizement  of  royalty, 
both  in  territory  and  influence,  which  was  necessary  to  the  future  civilization 
of  Europe, —  and  this  aggrandizement  was  at  the  expense  of  a  turbulent  and 
powerful  feudal  nobility. 

France  undoubtedly  furnishes  the  best  illustration  of  the  influence  of  the 
Crusades  on  feudalism.  At  the  beginning  of  these  wars,  we  see  monarchy 
weaker  in  France  than  in  any  other  European  nation.  At  their  close 
monarchy  in  France  is  stronger  than  in  any  other.  Through  the  influences 
we  have  mentioned,  there  have  come  at  last  to  be,  in  place  of  a  variety  of 
ruling  classes  —  clergy,  kings,  nobles,  citizens,  husbandmen  and  serfs  —  only 
two,  namely,  government  and  people.  Thus  was  brought  about  a  localiza- 
tion of  society  and  a  union  of  its  separate  elements  into  the  unity  of  the 
State,  without  which  there  could  be  no  general  administration  of  justice,  no 
end  of  private  war,  no  broad  and  wise  legislation. 

And  yet,  beyond  the  mere  organization  of  elements  hitherto  scattered  and 
inharmonious,  something  must  be  attributed  to  the  new  spirit  of  gentleness 
and  conciliation  which  made  this  organization  possible.  No  account  of  the 
settling  of  modern  society  can  be  complete  which  omits  all  mention  of  the 
influence  of  chivalry.  The  loyalty,  liberality  and  courtesy  of  knighthood 
was  to  a  large  extent  the  fruit  of  the  Crusades.  It  was  something  for  a 
baron  of  the  eleventh  or  twelfth  century  to  take  upon  him  even  the  sem- 
blance of  a  religious  vow.  It  was  more,  when  the  youth  became  a  knight- 


THE   CRUSADES.  499 

through  a  prolonged  novitiate  in  which  his  qualities  of  loyalty  and  bravery 
were  equally  tested,  and  his  final  enterprises  received  the  sanction  and  bless- 
ing of  the  church.  Service  of  the  church  in  a  war  against  infidels  was  not 
the  highest  conceivable  service,  but  it  was  far  higher  than  the  brutal  license 
and  unprovoked  marauding  to  which  the  Crusader  had  given  himself  at 
home.  And  men  are  civilized  by  frequent  meeting  with  each  other.  Isola- 
tion would  have  left  the  French  noble  the  same  old  barbarian.  Company 
with  brave  men  gave  him  the  first  start  toward  chivalry.  Wonderful  con- 
trasts there  doubtless  are,  in  those  old  chronicles.  Godfrey  could  burn  Jews 
alive,  but  he  would  not  be  called  King,  in  the  city  where  Christ  had  worn  a 
crown  of  thorns.  The  crusading  army  could  slaughter  seventy  thousand  Sar- 
acens without  mercy,  but  they  could  close  the  day  of  carnage  by  falling  on 
their  knees  with  one  accord,  and  bursting  into  tears  as  they  thought  upon 
the  sufferings  of  their  Redeemer.  But  on  the  whole  they  came  back  better 
than  they  went,  and  with  them  they  brought  into  the  life  and  intercourse 
of  Europe  the  first  beginnings  of  that  spirit  tender  and  true,  pitiful  and 
brave  —  the  spirit  of  generosity  and  aspiration  and  loyalty  and  honor  — 
which  still  in  the  modern  gentleman  preserves  whatever  of  worth  there  was 
in  chivalry. 

Not  simply  the  castles  of  the  barons,  however,  but  the  towns  and  cities  of 
Europe,  felt  the  influence  of  the  Crusades.  The  Mediterranean  capitals, 
enriched  by  the  transport  and  trade  of  the  Crusaders,  were  enabled  to  assert 
their  liberty  or  to  buy  it  of  their  Suzerain.  Alexander  III  struck  an  alli- 
ance with  the  whole  group  of  Lombard  towns ;  and,  in  order  to  construct  a 
bulwark  against  Germany,  he  gave  them  freedom  and  constituted  himself 
as  their  defender.  The  Italian  cities  became  little  republics,  able  to  wage 
wars  of  offense  through  their  hired  troops,  and  to  maintain  their  independ- 
ence against  all  invaders.  The  seaports  had  their  fleets  and  conducted  their 
naval  expeditions  against  the  Saracens,  or  against  enemies  nearer  home. 
Venice  could  lose  thirteen  thousand  sailors  in  one  defeat,  yet  easily  recover 
from  the  blow.  And,  with  Venice,  Genoa,  Pisa,  Florence,  all  rose  to  mag- 
nificence, and  shed  abroad  the  influence  of  a  free  and  enterprising  spirit. 
Now  were  erected  the  Campaniles  of  Florence,  Venice  and  Bologna,  which, 
like  the  Belfries  of  Ghent  and  Bruges  in  the  Netherlands,  were  none  of  them 
erected  for  purely  sacred  purposes,  but  as  the  means  of  summoning  together 
inhabitants  of  town  and  surrounding  country  alike,  in  any  sudden  emer- 
gency in  which  free  citizens  might  be  called  upon  to  act.  So  strong  and 
widespread  was  this  tendency  to  municipal  freedom,  that  before  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  last  Crusade,  all  the  considerable  cities  of  Italy  had  purchased 
or  extorted  large  immunities  from  the  Emperors  and  the  Popes.  From 
Italy  the  freedom  of  corporate  towns  spread  to  France  and  Germany,  and 
a  great  body  of  the  people  in  those  lands  became  released  from  feudal  ser- 
vitude. These  communities  did  much  to  introduce  regular  government, 
police,  arts,  and  the  spirit  of  liberty,  among  the  mass  of  the  people.  And 
thus,  to  the  political  unity,  which  was  one  result  of  the  Crusades,  was  added 
another,  no  less  important,  namely,  the  liberty  of  the  individual  citizen. 

But  one  other  result  of  the  Crusades  remains  to  be  noticed  —  a  result 
which,  though  the  most  difficult  to  be  fully  understood,  was  perhaps  the 
greatest  of  their  benefits,  for  it  may  be  said  to  underlie  all  the  others  —  I 


500  THE   CRUSADES. 

mean  the  impulse  which  the  Crusades  gave  to  the  human  intellect.  We 
need  only  to  compare  the  condition  of  Europe  at  the  beginning  of  these 
wars  —  sunk  in  ignorance  and  barbarism  —  with  the  bright  promise  of  all 
things  at  their  conclusion,  to  realize  that  a  great  change  had  been  already 
wrought.  Travel  showed  to  the  Franks  a  new  and  unimagined  world. 
Constantinople  was  the  greatest  and  most  beautiful  city  in  Europe.  The 
barbarian  had  never  wasted  it.  Though  freedom  and  virtue  had  departed, 
the  ancient  elegance  of  arts  and  manners  remained.  The  Eastern  Court  was 
one  of  oriental  magnificence.  Even  the  Mohammedans  had  still  the  remnants 
of  a  high  civilization.  While  the  Arabian  and  the  Greek  writers  always 
speak  of  the  Franks  as  barbarians,  William  of  Tyre  never  loses  an  opportu- 
nity to  extol  the  virtues  of  Saladin,  and  the  beauty  of  Constantinople. 
Western  Europe  caught  an  inspiration  from  the  sight,  and  from  this  time 
advanced  in  refinement  of  manners  and  of  arts.  Manufactures  were  carried 
west.  New  inventions  were  imported  into  Europe.  Navigation  and  dis- 
covery entered  upon  a  new  career  of  progress.  The  world  began  to  travel. 
Marco  Polo  roved  over  Asia ;  a  Franciscan  of  Naples  became  Archbishop 
of  Pekin  ;  and  Sir  John  Mandeville,  the  poet  and  physician,  traversed  the 
jungles  of  Hindustan  and  the  streets  of  Foutchou.  Much  need  was  there 
of  travel, — for  two  hundred  authors  writing  on  Egypt  make  no  mention  of 
the  Pyramids,  and  James  of  Vitry  gravely  talks  about  the  Phoenix  and  the 
Amazons  of  the  East. 

In  the  chronicles  of  St.  Denis,  Anno  Domini  1257,  we  read  :  "  William,  a 
physician,  brought  some  Greek  books  from  Constantinople. "  It  was  the  first 
gleam  of  new  light  for  the  West.  Then  came  the  revival  of  literature  and 
art.  Poetry  was  written  once  more,  and  the  foundations  of  modern  litera- 
ture were  laid.  The  old  French  didactic  poetry  sprang  into  being.  The 
Troubadours  sang  through  the  south  of  France,  and  the  Minnesingers  an- 
swered them  from  Germany.  The  mighty  mediaeval  architecture,  full  of  a 
religious  spirit  from  the  age  before,  rose  to  the  admiration  of  all  after  time. 
In  Paris,  and  Oxford,  and  Bologna,  ten  thousand  students  were  opening 
every  day  unthought-of  mines  of  classic  beauty,  and  were  digging  with  all 
reverence  into  the  treasures  of  the  Roman  law.  From  roots  that  lay  deep 
hidden  in  the  black  soil  of  desolation  and  disaster,  was  growing  up  a  fail- 
new  civilization. 


XLVIII. 

DANTE  AND  THE  DIVINE  COMEDY.* 


Once  upon  a  time,  as  the  story-books  would  say,  or,  to  speak  more  his- 
torically and  exactly,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  eighteen  hundred  and  eighty- 
six,  and  in  the  month  of  August,  a  little  company  of  fairly  intelligent  people 
determined  to  put  their  vacation  to  use.  The  scene  and  the  surroundings 
were  propitious.  We  were  upon  the  banks  of  Canandaigua  Lake,  the  love- 
liest of  those  parallel  sheets  of  water  which  so  diversify  the  landscape  of 
central  and  western  New  York.  From  the  veranda,  where  we  assembled 
after  breakfast,  Bear  Hill  loomed  up  across  the  lake,  like  Vesuvius  over  the 
Bay  of  Naples.  The  quiet  summer  mornings,  the  shade  of  the  great  elms, 
and  the  deep  blue  sky,  invited  us  to  something  more  serious  than  vers  de 
societi.  Some  one  spoke  of  the  Divine  Comedy,  and  wondered  if  anybody 
had  ever  read  it  through.  It  was  a  revelation,  a  challenge,  and  an  admoni- 
tion. Most  of  us  had  read  the  Inferno,  but  had  been  so  ill-pleased  with 
Dante's  Hell,  that  we  had  never  cared  to  try  his  Purgatory,  or  even  his 
Paradise.  But  a  new  resolve  was  taken.  We  would  begin,  and  finish.  Forth- 
with were  produced  the  translations  of  Carey,  Wright,  and  Longfellow.  Two 
of  us  knew  something  of  Italian,  and  had  with  us  the  original  poem.  We 
brought  to  our  help  the  English  version  of  Dr.  Carlyle  and  Mr.  Butler,  with 
the  Italian  original  on  the  same  page.  Best  of  all,  we  read  by  way  of  intro- 
duction and  of  comment  "The  Shadow  of  Dante,"  by  Maria  Francesca 
Rossetti,  from  which  I  take  much  of  value  in  the  composition  of  this  Essay. 
An  hour  and  a  half  each  morning  for  four  weeks  sufficed  to  accomplish  our 
task.  Indeed  it  was  no  task  ;  the  pauses  for  discussion  were  numberless  ; 
its  beauty  grew  upon  us  ;  when  we  finally  closed  our  books  the  four  weeks 
seemed  four  days,  for  the  love  we  bore  to  the  poet  and  the  poem.  I  have 
since  read  the  essays  of  James  Russell  Lowell  and  of  Dean  Church  —  the 
former  very  learned  and  thoughtful,  though  conceived  from  a  literary  point 
of  view ;  the  latter  strong  and  eloquent,  the  work  of  a  moralist  and  a 
preacher.  I  undertake  now  to  give  the  condensed  result  in  my  own  mind 
of  this  bit  of  summer  study, —  not,  however,  without  the  expectation  and 
•ickuowledgnient  that  pieces  of  others'  learning  will  here  and  there  shine 
through  my  writing,  as  through  a  palimpsest.  I  have  let  my  reader  into  the 
secret  of  its  origin,  if  by  any  means  I  may  tempt  him  to  go  and  do  likewise. 

Dante  Alighieri  was  born  in  Florence,  in  the  year  1265, —  so  that  my  story 
takes  us  back  more  than  six  hundred  years.  The  middle  ages  were  coming 
to  their  end.  The  Crusades  had  wakened  Europe  from  her  sleep  of  cen- 
turies ;  the  classic  literature  had  begun  to  attract  its  devotees  ;  the  free  cities 


*A  Lecture  delivered  at  Vassar  College,  February  21  and  22, 1888,  and  printed  in  the 
Chicago  Standard,  December,  1MJ7. 

501 


502  DANTE   AND   THE   DIVINE   COMEDY. 

had  established  themselves  ;  there  was  everywhere  the  stir  of  new  political 
and  religious  life.  But  it  was  a  time  of  strife.  The  Guelphs,  the  party  of 
the  Popes,  and  the  Ghibellines,  the  party  of  the  Emperors,  were  hotly  con- 
testing every  point  of  vantage  in  city  and  country ;  although  in  Italy  the 
Ghibelliues  were  strong  in  the  provincial  districts,  while  the  Guelphs  were 
strong  in  the  towns.  To  the  Guelph  party  Dante's  family  belonged.  He 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  of  noble  birth,  for  he  afterwards  held  office, — 
and  the  constitution  of  Florence  at  the  time  forbade  this  to  nobles.  But  he 
does  appear  to  have  been  born  to  wealth  ;  he  certainly  possessed  the  means 
of  the  highest  education  the  age  could  give  ;  he  was  ever  in  the  front  rank 
of  his  contemporaries,  both  in  society  and  in  politics.  Of  his  youth  we  have 
handed  down  to  us  but  a  single  incident, — fortunately,  that  was  the  most 
important  incident  of  his  life.  It  was  his  meeting  with  Beatrice. 

At  the  age  of  nine  years  he  first  saw  the  lady  of  his  dreams.  It  was  at  a 
festival  at  the  house  of  her  father,  Folco  Portinari.  She  was  but  a  liltle 
damsel,  no  older  than  himself,  but  she  was  habited  in  crimson,  and  the  sight 
of  her  was  the  awakening  of  his  spirit.  The  next  meeting  of  which  we  have 
record  was  nine  years  after,  and  that  seems  to  have  been  a  casual  encounter 
on  the  street,  leaving  only  a  glance  and  a  gentle  word  to  be  remembered. 
We  do  not  know  that  Dante  ever  sought  Beatrice  in  marriage  ;  she  was  a 
star  apart,  to  be  looked  at  from  afar  ;  she  married  another,  and  she  died  at 
twenty-four ;  she  probably  never  knew  of  the  influence  she  exerted ;  and 
yet,  from  the  day  of  that  festival  at  her  father's  house,  she  was  the  ruler  of 
Dante's  soul.  Sense  did  not  mingle  with  his  passion.  Beatrice  became  to 
him  the  symbol  of  all  spiritual  beauty.  When  he  reaches  Paradise,  he  is 
lifted  from  each  lower  sphere  of  heaven  to  the  next  higher  simply  by  gazing 
into  the  transparent  depths  of  Beatrice's  eyes.  "  The  thoughts  of  youth  are 
long,  long  thoughts, "  and  the  resolves  then  formed  prove  often  the  strongest 
resolves  of  a  life-time.  So  the  loves  of  youth  may  be  long,  long  loves.  A 
true  affection  never  dies,  and  the  Psalmist  never  spoke  more  truly,  than  when 
he  said  :  "Your  heart  shall  live  forever."  That  meeting  at  the  festival  was 
not  the  first  time,  nor  the  last  time,  that  the  sight  of  a  little  damsel  in  pink 
or  blue  has  turned  the  head  of  some  great  man,  and  so  has  changed  the  face 
of  the  world. 

I  wish  we  could  say  that  Dante  was  absolutely  faithful  to  the  memory  of 
Beatrice.  But  history,  and  his  own  acknowledgments,  are  too  much  for  us. 
There  was  a  little  time  when,  possibly  to  distract  his  mind  after  her  death, 
he  plunged  into  a  skeptical  philosophy  and  yielded  to  the  attractions  of 
sense.  A  rival,  whom  he  calls  the  adversary  of  reason,  and  whom  he  pic- 
tures as  a  woman  at  a  window,  temporarily  absorbed  his  thoughts.  But  the 
spell  could  not  last.  Let  us  adapt  and  use  the  lines  of  Tennyson  : 

"  Faith  in  womankind 

Beat  with  his  blood,  and  trust  in  all  things  high 
Came  easy  to  him ;  and,  though  he  tripped  and  fell, 
He  could  not  blind  his  soul  with  clay." 

How  noble  a  lesson  there  is  in  the  fact  that  the  breaking  of  the  evil  spell  is 
coincident  with  a  second  vision  of  Beatrice  !  As  there  rises  before  his  imagi- 
nation the  fair  form  of  his  lost  love,  still  habited  in  crimson  as  he  had  seen 
her  so  long  before,  yet  now  invested  with  a  purity  and  glory  that  belonged  to 


DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY.  503 

heaven' rather  than  to  earth,  the  chains  of  sense  and  of  unbelief  seem  to  fall 
away  from  Dante's  soul.  The  new  life  begins,  of  which  the  Vita  Nuova  is 
the  history.  Beatrice,  who  has  rescued  him,  becomes  to  him  God's  angel 
and  minister,  the  perfect  combination  of  nature  and  grace,  the  symbol  and 
embodiment  of  that  heavenly  wisdom  which  alone  can  free  man  from  the 
anguish  of  doubt  and  the  degradation  of  sin.  Henceforth  he  identifies  her 
with  Aivine  philosophy,  and  in  token  of  his  renewed  and  perpetual  allegiance 
to  his  first-beloved  he  writes  these  words  :  "There  appeared  to  me  a  mar- 
velous vision,  wherein  I  saw  things  which  made  me  resolve  to  say  no  more 
of  this  blessed  one  until  I  could  more  worthily  treat  of  her.  And  to  come 
to  this  I  study  as  much  as  I  can,  as  she  knows  in  truth.  So  that  if  it  be  the 
pleasure  of  Him  by  whom  all  things  live  that  my  life  shall  last  somewhat 
longer,  I  hope  to  say  of  her  that  which  has  never  yet  been  said  of  any  woman. 
And  may  it  then  please  Him  who  is  the  Lord  of  loving-kindness  that  my 
soul  may  go  to  behold  the  glory  of  its  lady,  that  is,  that  blessed  Beatrice 
who  gloriously  gazes  upon  the  face  of  Him  who  is  blessed  forever  ! " 

And  so  the  Divine  Comedy  is  Beatrice's  monument.  It  was  the  labor  of 
a  life-time.  It  was  prepared  for  by  profound  and  extensive  studies.  What 
is  true  of  every  great  poet  was  especially  true  of  Dante  —  he  was  master  of 
ttll  the  learning  of  his  time.  It  was  easier  then  than  now,  to  compass  all 
human  knowledge.  Thomas  Aquinas  had  written,  and  from  his  immense 
timnma  the  poet  had  learned  theology.  Aristotle  furnished  him  with  his 
philosophy.  Homer  and  Virgil  were  his  masters  in  poetry.  He  was  deeply 
read  in  history,  both  sacred  and  profane.  Whatever  of  physical  science  had 
then  been  discovered,  whatever  of  medicine  or  of  law  was  taught  in  the 
schools,  all  the  culture  that  music,  painting,  architecture  and  sculpture  could 
give  —  sill  these  were  Dante's  possession.  But  more  than  this,  he  was  a  man 
among  men,  a  citizen,  a  diplomatist,  a  statesman.  Grave  yet  eloquent,  com- 
posed yi  't  capable  of  heroic  decisions,  an  ardent  lover  of  his  country  and  a 
si  »ldier  in  her  defense,  he  had  that  large  knowledge  of  affairs  and  that  experi- 
ence of  human  nature  which  fitted  him  to  speak  to  the  very  heart  of  his 
generation,  and  indeed  to  the  human  heart  in  all  ages  and  everywhere.  He 
had  moreover  the  sublime  self-confidence  of  genius.  He  entered  unabashed 
into  the  company  of  the  greatest  poets,  as  he  met  them  in  the  world  of  spirits  ; 
and,  even  in  Florence,  when  it  was  proposed  to  send  him  on  an  embassy  to 
Rome,  he  replied  :  " If  I  go,  who  remains?  and  if  I  remain,  who  goes  ?  " 

But  neither  study  nor  political  life  alone  would  have  qualified  him  to  write 
his  great  poem.  It  needed  the  heavy  blows  of  exile,  poverty  and  suffering, 
to  forge  the  argument  of  the  Divine  Comedy.  In  the  year  1300,  Dante  was 
elected  one  of  the  chief -magistrates  of  Florence  ;  and,  perceiving  that  his 
native  city  could  have  no  peace  unless  the  leaders  of  its  factions  were  ban- 
ished, he  used  his  two  months  of  brief  authority  to  send  these  leaders,  beyond 
the  borders  of  the  state.  It  was  a  patriotic  and  unselfish  act ;  for  among 
them,  and  in  either  party,  were  certain  of  his  personal  friends.  It  was 
abstract  justice,  without  regard  to  consequences  ;  and  when  the  tide  turned 
and  his  enemies  returned  to  power,  they  gave  him  the  same  measure  which 
he  had  meted  out  to  them.  In  1302  a  heavy  fine  was  imposed  upon  him, 
and  when  he  refused  to  pay,,  his  entire  estate  was  confiscated,  and  it  was 
decreed  that,  if  he  should  be  found  again  in  Florence,  he  should  be  burned 


504  DANTE   AND   THE   DIVINE   COMEDY. 

alive.  Henceforth  Dante  became  a  wanderer  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 
In  1310  he  appears  to  have  gone  to  Paris, — perhaps  to  Oxford.  After  his 
return  he  was  offered  amnesty,  upon  condition  of  paying  fine  and  acknowl- 
edging criminality.  But  he  scorned  to  enter  Florence  except  with  honor. 
"  The  means  of  life  will  not  fail  me,"  he  said.  "  In  any  case  I  shall  be  able 
to  gaze  upon  the  sun  and  stars,  and  to  meditate  upon  the  sweetest  truths  of 
philosophy." 

Let  us  enter  in  imagination  into  the  fortunes  of  this  son  of  Florence,  her 
truest  patriot  and  her  greatest  man,  cast  out  by  an  unloving  mother,  though 
every  stone  of  her  streets  and  every  foot  of  her  soil  were  sacred  to  him  as 
they  could  be  to  no  other.  He  became  a  Ghibelline,  in  hope  that  the  Empe- 
ror's coming  would  restore  just  authority  and  would  right  the  wrong.  Poor, 
and  exposed  to  all  "the  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  fortune,"  he  wan- 
dered from  one  petty  Ghibelline  court  to  another,  illustrating  all  too  well  the 
words  of  his  own  prophecy  : 

"  Thou  shalt  have  proof  how  savoreth  of  salt 
The  bread  of  others,  and  how  hard  a  road 
The  going-  down  and  up  another's  stairs." 

The  lines  of  sweetness  in  his  youthful  portrait  hardened  and  deepened  into 
the  sad,  stern  countenance  of  his  later  years.  The  very  dignity  of  his 
nature,  that  forbade  outward  complaint,  threw  him  inward  upon  himself. 

"  Seldom  he  smiled,  and  smiled  in  such  a  sort 
As  if  to  scorn  his  nature  that  could  be  moved 
To  smile  at  anything." 

Yet  morose  and  despairing  he  never  did  become.  As  the  outward  darkness 
of  his  lot  deepened  about  him,  a  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land  "  so 
much  the  more  shone  inward."  As  he  walked  up  and  down  in  Northern 
Italy,  leaving  traditions  of  his  sojournings  connected  with  many  a  ruined 
castle  and  mountain-torrent,  there  were  opening  before  his  vision  great 
truths  with  regard  to  God  and  his  judgments  ;  he  was  gathering  vast  knowl- 
edge of  nature  and  of  the  human  heart ;  aye,  he  was  mapping  out  heaven, 
earth  and  hell,  for  the  generations  to  come.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  he 
regarded  himself  as  a  sort  of  prophet.  From  the  heavenly  spheres  he  looked 
down  upon  this  earth  of  trial  and  sifting,  and  saw  the  meaning  of  it : 

"  The  threshing-floor  that  maketh  us  so  proud, 
To  me,  revolving  with  the  eternal  Twins, 
Was  all  apparent  made,  from  hill  to  harbor." 

And  so,  revolving  the  Divine  Comedy  and  bringing  it  into  form,  he  passed 
nineteen  years  of  sorrowful  exile,  until  at  last,  far  from  home,  at  Kavenna, 
in  the  year  1321,  and  at  the  age  of  fifty-seven,  Dante  Alighieri  died. 

Before  speaking  of  the  great  poem  in  detail,  it  will  be  desirable  to  say 
something  about  the  end  which  Dante  had  in  view,  and  the  means  which  he 
uses  to  attain  it.  The  first  of  its  hundred  cantos  is  a  sort  of  Introduction 
to  ther  whole,  and  we  may  well  avail  ourselves  of  the  hints  it  gives  us.  Its 

first  line, 

"  In  midway  of  the  journey  of  this  life," 

has  doubtless  a  personal  reference  to  the  history  of  the  writer,  and  fixes  the 
date  when  its  composition  began  at  1300,  when  Dante  had  just  reached  the 
age  of  thirty-five,  having  passed  halfway  through  the  three-score  years  and 


DANTE   AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY.  505- 

ten  allotted  to  man.  On  the  first  day  of  that  new  year  and  that  new  cen- 
tury, he  describes  himself  as  wandering,  half  asleep,  from  the  right  path, 
and  becoming  entangled  in  the  mazes  of  a  dark  wood.  Before  him  rises  a 
hill,  to  which  he  makes  his  way  and  up  which  he  essays  to  climb,  until  he 
finds  himself  withstood  and  repelled  in  succession  by  three  wild  beasts,  a 
swift  leopard,  a  raging  lion  and  a  greedy  wolf.  These  well-nigh  drive  him 
back  upon  the  sunless  plain,  when  suddenly  he  becomes  aware  that  he  is  not 
alone.  A  gracious  and  majestic  figure  approaches,  and  offers  succor  and 

conduct : 

"  Follow  thou  me,  and  I  will  be  thy  guide 
And  bring  thee  hence  by  an  eternal  place, 
Where  thou  shalt  hearken  the  despairing  shrieks, 
Shalt  see  the  ancient  spirits  dolorous 
That  each  one  outcries  for  the  second  death. 
And  thou  shalt  then  see  those  who  are  content 
Within  the  fire,  because  they  hope  to  come, 
When  that  it  be,  unto  the  blessed  race. 
To  whom  thereafter,  if  thou  wouldst  ascend, 
A  soul  there'll  be  more  worthy  this  than  I : 
Thee  will  I  leave  with  her,  when  I  depart ; 
Seeing  that  Emperor  who  above  there  rules, 
Because  I  was  rebellious  to  his  law, 
Wills  to  his  City  no  access  by  m«-. 
In  every  part  he  sways,  and  there  he  reigns ; 
There  is  his  City  and  the  exalted  seat,— 
Oh,  happy  he  whom  thither  he  elects ! " 

It  is  Virgil  who  thus  offers  himself  as  Dante's  conductor  through  Hell  and 
Purgatory  ;  it  is  Beatrice  who  has  sent  him  for  Dante's  deliverance,  and 
who  is  to  be  his  guide  through  Paradise  after  Virgil  has  led  him  through  the 
two  lower  provinces  of  God's  empire. 

Many  have  been  the  interpretations  put  upon  the  great  poem.  Th,e  true 
interpretation  is  that  which  finds  in  it  a  combination  of  meanings.  Dante 
himself  has  told  us  that  there  are  four  separate  senses  which  he  intends  his 
story  to  convey.  There  is  the  literal,  the  allegorical,  the  moral,  and  the 
anagogical.  In  Psalm  114  :  1,  we  have  the  words,  "When  Israel  went  out 
of  Egypt. "  This,  says  the  poet,  may  be  taken  literally,  of  the  actual  deliv- 
erance of  God's  ancient  people  ;  or  allegorically,  of  the  redemption  of  the 
world  through  Christ ;  or  morally,  of  the  rescue  of  the  sinner  from  the  bond- 
age of  his  sin  ;  or  anagogically,  of  the  passage  of  both  soul  and  body  from 
the  lower  life  of  earth  to  the  higher  life  of  heaven.  So,  from  Scripture,  Dante 
illustrates  the  method  of  his  poem.  We  have  his  own  warrant  for  beginning 
with  the  literal  meaning,  and  for  then  siiperadding  the  spiritual.  Nothing 
can  be  more  plain  than  the  personal  element  that  runs  through  the  poem  — 
Dante's  own  life  and  spiritual  struggles  furnish  the  basis  for  all  the  rest. 
We  cannot  be  far  wrong  in  maintaining  that  the  beginning  of  the  poem 
describes  Dante's  own  entanglement  in  the  thickets  of  sense  and  unbelief  ; 
his  early  efforts  to  make  his  way  up  the  mount  of  knowledge  and  virtue  by 
strength  of  his  own  ;  the  demonstration  of  his  inability  to  cope  with  the  lust 
of  the  flesh,  the  lust  of  the  eyes,  and  the  pride  of  life  —  the  three  adversaries 
which  like  wild  beasts  would  drag  him  down  ;  the  offer  and  the  acceptance 
of  superior  aid,  in  order  that  he  may  know  the  truth  and  the  truth  may  make 
him  free  ;  and  then  his  gradual  growth  in  knowledge  and  holiness,  as  one 
after  another  the  sins  and  infirmities  of  the  soul  are  revealed  and  are  put 


506  DANTE   AND   THE   DIVINE   COMEDY. 

beneath  his  feet,  until  at  last  he  rises  to  communion  with  God  and  to  the 
society  of  the  holy.  In  other  words,  and  yet  more  briefly,  the  Divine  Com- 
edy is  an  autobiographical  Pilgrim's  Progress,  written  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  Roman  Church. 

But  this  is  only  the  beginning.  Around  and  upon  this  core  and  founda- 
tion, is  built  up  a  wondrous  symbolic  structure,  in  which  Dante  has  sought 
to  express  his  ideas  of  God's  relations  to  humanity.  It  has  been  well  said 
that  the  ancient  epic  never  rose  above  the  individual.  "Arms  and  the  man 
I  sing,"  said  Virgil.  Dante  sings,  not  of  himself,  nor  of  any  particular  man 
-alone,  but  of  man  in  the  largest  sense, — "his  subject  is  man  —  as  by  merit  or 
demerit,  through  freedom  of  the  will,  he  renders  himself  liable  to  the  reward 
or  punishment  of  justice."  Man,  in  this  large  sense,  has  two  sides  to  his 
nature  —  an  earthly  and  a  heavenly,  a  temporal  and  a  spiritual.  In  each  of 
these  relations  he  needs  authority.  God  has  therefore  provided  upon  earth 
two  rulers,  the  Pope  to  be  his  vicegerent  in  spiritual,  the  Emperor  to  be  his 
vicegerent  in  temporal,  things  ;  the  former  like  the  sun  giving  forth  the  light 
of  God's  truth  directly,  the  latter  like  the  moon  reflecting  that  of  the  former  ; 
each  has  its  sphere  ;  and  each,  being  directly  responsible  to  God,  is  in  a  cer- 
tain sense  independent  of  the  other.  There  is,  therefore,  a  political  sense  in 
which  the  Divine  Comedy  must  be  taken  ;  and  the  constant  interweaving  of 
political  incident  and  philosophy,  which  has  struck  so  many  as  beside  the 
purpose  of  the  poem,  is  only  a  sign  of  its  larger  completeness  and  unity. 

Miss  Rossetti  has  beautifully  traced  the  working  of  this  idea  into  the 
introduction  of  the  poem.  The  darksome  wood  is  the  distracted  and  hope- 
less political  condition  of  Italy.  The  hill  of  virtue  and  reason,  that  rose  before 
the  mind  of  Dante  was  the  scheme  of  a  stable  and  righteous  commonwealth. 
But  there  was  no  material  to  build  a  city.  The  Guelph  powers  beset  him. 
Factious  Florence,  proud  France,  avaricious  Eome,  are  respectively  the  leo- 
pard, the  lion,  and  the  wolf,  that  set  themselves  against  all  order  and  all 
progress.  Dante  sinks  back  almost  into  despair  of  his  country,  when  Virgil, 
the  symbol  of  science  and  philosophy,  appears  for  his  deliverance,  and  brings 
him  to  a  right  understanding  of  the  divine  will,  so  far  as  the  light  of  nature 
can  go  ;  and,  when  that  has  done  its  utmost,  divine  grace,  in  the  person  of 
Beatrice,  discovers  to  him  the  very  consummation  of  God's  plans  for  the 
temporal  good  of  humanity.  —  What3ver  we  may  think  of  the  details  of  this 
interpretation,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  Dante's  soul  there  had  dawned 
the  idea  of  a  free  State,  as  well  as  that  of  a  free  Church.  He  was  immeas- 
urably grieved  and  angered  at  the  insane  jealousies  and  enmities  that  tore 
his  country  in  pieces.  His  prose  essay,  De  Monarchia,  shows  that  his 
advocacy  of  Ghibelline  doctrine,  in  the  latter  half  of  his  life,  was  based  upon 
the  conviction  that  only  the  supremacy  of  the  Emperor  could  deliver  Italy 
from  the  wiles  of  the  Papacy,  and  give  her  a  strong  and  solid  government. 

Italian  unity,  and  the  independence  of  church  and  state,  both  found  their 
first  great  advocate  in  Dante, —  or  rather,  shall  we  say,  first  found  germinal 
expression  in  his  writings.  No  stronger  bond  than  love  for  Dante  has  for 
centuries,  in  spite  of  all  her  political  divisions,  preserved  a  moral  unity  in 
Italy.  And  now  at  length  even  Dante's  dream  of  political  unity  has  worked 
its  own  realization.  The  pen  has  proved  mightier  than  the  sword,  because  it 
has  led  men  to  wield  the  sword,  in  securing  and  defending  the  unity  of  Italy. 


DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY.  507 

So  far,  as  to  the  temporal  or  political  aim  of  Dante's  poem  —  the  settle- 
ment of  the  time  principles  upon  which  civil  society  should  be  built.  This, 
however,  is  not  its  chief  aim.  The  spiritual  side  of  man  is  more  important 
than  this.  The  poet  would  set  forth  the  nature  of  man  as  a  subject  of  God, 
free  to  obey  or  to  disobey,  and  bound  to  answer  to  his  own  conscience  and  to 
Him  who  made  him.  And  here  we  must  remember  that,  with  all  Dante's 
reverence  for  God's  spiritual  vicegerent  upon  earth,  he  never  fails  to  distin- 
guish between  the  office  and  him  who  held  it — between  the  Papacy  and  the 
individual  Popes.  He  held  loyally  to  Roman  Catholic  doctrine  —  indeed, 
there  was  none  other  in  his  day  to  hold  to  —  but  held  to  it  in  no  slavish  way. 
He  abhorred  the  temporal  power  of  the  Papacy ;  he  regarded  it  as  usurpa- 
tion of  the  prerogatives  of  the  State,  treachery  to  the  spiritual  calling  of  the 
Vicar  of  God,  and  cause  of  all  the  divisions  and  miseries  of  Italy.  He  has 
denounced  the  pride  and  venality  of  many  a  Pope,  and  he  has  put  some  of 
them,  heels  upward,  in  hell.  We  cannot  think  him  lacking  in  courage,  when 
we  hear  him  calling  the  rulers  of  the  church  "Antichrist :  " 

"  Your  avarice  o'erwhelms  the  world  in  woe. 

To  you  St.  .John  referred,  O  shepherds  vile ! 
When  She,  who  sits  on  many  waters,  had 

Been  seen  with  kings  her  person  to  defile ; 
(The  same,  who  with  seven  heads  arose  on  earth, 

And  bore  ten  horns,  to  prove  that  power  was  her's, 
Long  as  her  husband  had  delight  in  worth ). 

Your  gods  ye  make  of  silver  and  of  gold ; 
And  wherein  differ  from  idolaters, 

Save  that  their  yod  is  one,  yours  manifold? 
Ah  <  onstantiiie:  what  evils  caused  to  flow. 

Not  thy  conversion,  but  those  fair  domains 
Thou  on  the  first  rich  Father  didst  bestow !  " 

In  Dante's  expositions  of  Scripture  he  has  given  us  independent  judgments  ; 
widely  read  as  he  was  in  sacred  and  patristic  learning,  we  find  him  ever 
applying  the  Bible  to  matters  of  common  life  ;  as  we  unconsciously  get  some- 
thing of  our  theology  from  Milton,  many  an  educated  Italian  only  quotes 
Dante  when  he  thinks  he  is  quoting  the  Bible.  The  whole  range  and  com- 
pass of  man's  spiritual  being  is  the  subject  of  Dante's  treatment.  He  intended 
in  'thing  less  than  to  set  forth  the  whole  process  and  philosophy  of  man's  fall 
and  man's  restoration.  Not  simply  the  outward  means  for  the  cure  of  souls, 
but  the  great  array  of  spiritual  agencies  that  work  for  the  punishment  of  the 
lost  and  the  recovery  of  the  penitent,  constitute  the  subject  of  his  story. 
Let  us  put  ourselves  again,  then,  with  the  poet,  in  the  dreary  wood.  The 
poet  is  only  the  image  of  humanity,  straying  away  from  God  and  miserably 
perishing  in  its  sin.  There  is  left  only  the  voice  of  conscience  to  urge  it  up 
the  steep  hill-side  of  knowledge  and  virtue,  and  this  upward  impulse  is  more 
than  counteracted  by  the  arts  and  devices  of  the  great  adversary.  Human- 
ity needs  all  the  help  that  can  come  from  both  earth  and  heaven.  God  sends 
human  teachers,  and  these  show  men  the  nature  and  the  consequences  of 
their  sins  and  the  means  of  purification  from  them.  Virgil  is  the  represen- 
tative of  the  highest  earthly  wisdom.  He  can  lead  us  to  a  terrestial  paradise  ; 
but,  if  we  would  pass  beyond,  we  must  have  a  higher  guide.  Beatrice  is 
divine  science,  the  teaching  of  the  Spirit,  God's  highest  gift  to  men.  He 
who  yields  to  the  lower  teaching  shall  have  the  higher.  Dante's  taking  Vir- 


508  DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY. 

gil  for  his  guide  is  the  symbol  of  the  whole  race  of  man  putting  itself  under 
God's  elementary  tuition,  that  it  may  learn  the  truth  that  will  deliver  it  from 
hell  and  lift  it  to  heaven. 

So  the  poem  which  has  autobiography  for  its  centre,  embraces  not  only 
the  doctrine  of  the  State,  but  widens  out  until  it  takes  in  universal  humanity 
and  the  true  relations  of  that  humanity  to  God.  The  Divine  Comedy  is  an 
attempt  to  put  all  theology  and  all  philosophy  into  poetical  form,  that  man 
may  have  before  his  eyes  an  interpretation  of  the  universe  of  things,  a  con- 
crete representation  of  eternal  truth,  a  justification  of  the  ways  of  God  to 
men.  It  is  the  loftiest  conception  ever  framed  by  any  earthly  poet,  and  the 
execution  is  worthy  of  the  theme.  The  Divine  Comedy  was  the  first  Chris- 
tian poem  ;  it  seems  to  us  also  to  be  the  greatest. 

So  much  for  Dante's  aim ;  let  us  consider  now  the  means  he  used  to 
attain  it, — I  mean  his  scheme  of  the  universe,  and  the  external  vehicle  by 
which  he  communicated  his  thought ;  or,  first,  his  cosmology,  and  secondly, 
his  verse.  We  must  remember  that  Dante  lived  before  Kepler  ;  his  system 
was  not  the  Copernican,  but  the  Ptolemaic.  To  understand  his  poem  with- 
out knowing  this,  is  as  impossible  as  it  would  be  for  a  school-boy  to  learn 
geography  without  a  map.  Ptolemy  did  not  hold  to  a  flat,  but  to  a  spher- 
ical earth ;  yet  he  did  hold  that  the  earth  was  the  centre  of  all,  and  that 
sun,  moon  and  stars  all  revolved  around  it.  There  were  two  hemispheres  — 
an  eastern  hemisphere  of  land,  and  a  western  hemisphere  of  water.  In  the 
centre  of  the  hemisphere  of  land  is  the  city  of  Jerusalem,  directly  over  the 
hollow  pit  of  Hell ;  in  the  centre  of  the  hemisphere  of  water  is  the  island- 
mount  of  Purgatory,  up  whose  steep  sides  all  penitents  must  climb  to 
heaven.  Neither  Hell  nor  Purgatory  were  created  where  they  now  are  ; 
their  present  existence  and  location  are  results  of  Satan's  fall.  When  the 
rebel  angel  was  cast  out  from  heaven,  his  immense  mass  and  weight  crushed 
through  earth's  surface  to  the  very  centre  of  the  planet ;  gravity  prevented 
him  from  going  further,  and  held  him  there  fast  bound.  The  very  substance 
of  the  globe  fled  from  him  in  horror,  as  he  came  hurtling  down,  and  with 
these  results  :  first,  the  great  pit  of  hell  was  excavated,  at  the  bottom  of 
which  Satan  lies  ;  secondly,  the  waters  of  the  eastern  hemisphere  were  trans- 
ferred to  the  western,  so  that  the  eastern  hemisphere  is  now  laid  bare  ; 
thirdly,  the  portion  of  earth's  substance  displaced  to  form  Hell,  since  it 
must  go  somewhere,  was  thrust  up  under  the  ancient  Eden,  and  so  the  ter- 
restrial Paradise  was  made  the  summit  of  the  purgatorial  mountain  in  the 
midst  of  the  waste  of  western  waters.  Ulysses  is  the  only  mortal  who  has 
seen  that  mount,  and  there  it  was  that  he  met  his  fate.  Tennyson's  poem 
"Ulysses"  is  only  a  reminiscence  of  Dante.  The  mount  of  Purgatory  is 
therefore  "  exactly  at  the  antipodes  of  Jerusalem,  and  its  bulk  is  precisely 
equal  and  opposite  to  the  cavity  of  Hell." 

Hell  and  Purgatory  belong  to  this  planet.  Earth  alone  is  the  abode  of 
sin,  and  the  place  of  penance.  But  as  we  leave  earth  and  go  upward  we  find 
nine  several  heavens,  one  above  the  other,  each  a  hollow  revolving  sphere, 
enclosing  and  enclosed.  These  are  at  once  solid  and  transparent ;  in  them 
the  planets  are  fixed,  to  give  light  by  day  and  night.  First  comes  the  heaven 
of  the  moon  ;  beyond  this  the  heaven  of  Mercury ;  then  the  heaven  of 
Venus ;  fourthly,  the  heaven  of  the  Sun,  which  Dante,  after  the  fashion  of 


DANTE   AND   THE    DIVINE   COMEDY.  509 

his  time,  regarded  as  a  planet  revolving  round  the  earth  ;  fifthly,  the  heaven 
•of  Mars  ;  sixthly,  the  heaven  of  Jupiter  ;  seventhly,  the  heaven  of  Saturn  ; 
eightly,  the  heaven  of  the  Fixed  Stars ;  ninthly,  the  starless,  crystalline 
heaven  or  Primum  Mobile,  which  moves  most  rapidly  of  all,  and  by  so 
moving  communicates  movement  to  all  the  rest.  Beyond  all  these  nine 
heavens  is  a  tenth,  the  motionless  Empyrean  of  God  aud  his  saints.  There 
the  elect  spirits  of  all  time,  arranged  in  ranks  like  the  rising  seats  of  an 
amphitheatre,  surround  a  lake  of  light  formed  by  the  reflection  of  the 
divine  glory  from  the  convex  upper  surface  of  the  Primum  Mobile.  It  is 
the  Rose  of  the  Blessed,  whose  petals  expanding  on  every  side  are  made  up 
of  countless  intelligences,  all  bright  with  the  purity  and  the  love  of  the 
highest  heaven. 

Such  is  Dante's  scheme  of  the  universe.  Let  us  ask  now  about  his  verse. 
He  called  his  work  "The  Comedy;"  the  title  "Divine"  was  given  to  it 
by  admirers  belonging  to  the  next  generation.  He  tells  us  that  the 
designation  "  Comedy  "  was  given  to  it  because,  though  beginning  in  gloom 
and  sorrow,  it  has  a  happy  ending ;  it  takes  the  reader  through  Hell  aud 
Purgatory,  but  it  brings  him  to  Paradise.  The  average  reader,  we  fear, 
does  not  give  to  Dante's  work  the  benefit  of  the  poet's  own  explanation.  He 
reads  only  the  "Inferno,"  and  insists  on  judging  the  whole  by  this  single 
part.  Here  the  grotesque  and  the  revolting  so  fasten  his  attention  that  he 
declines  to  proceed  further.  He  does  not  penetrate  to  the  deep  philosophy 
of  Dante's  treatment ;  does  not  see  that  Dante's  aim  is  to  portray  the  folly 
and  the  monstrosity  of  sin  ;  does  not  appreciate  the  poet's  aim  of  making 
all  this  a  contrast  and  a  foil  to  the  sweetness  of  penitence  and  the  joy  of  the 
redeemed.  But  he  who  has  the  grace  and  the  patience  to  read  the 
Purgatory,  and  the  Paradise  as  well,  will  find  that  Dante  was  right  in  not 
calling  his  poem  "The  Divine  Tragedy."  Dante  is  no  pessimist.  To  his 
mind  "all  things  work  together  for  good  ;"  and  so  his  poem,  which  was 
meant  to  be  an  interpretation  of  the  universe  and  a  philosophy  of  history, 
rightly  calls  itself  a  "Comedy,"  for  it  describes  the  uplifting  of  humanity 
from  sin  to  holiness,  and  from  eternal  sorrow  to  eternal  joy. 

But  there  was  still  another  reason  for  the  cheerful  title.  The  work  is 
written,  not  in  the  stately  aud  sonorous  Latin  with  its  classic  elegance  and 
coldness,  but  in  the  humble  Italian  of  common  speech,  the  newly  emerging 
product  of  a  new  civilization,  the  language  of  the  shop  and  of  the  home, 
rather  than  the  language  of  the  schools.  And  yet  it  is  too  much  to  say  that 
this  language  existed  before  Dante  wrote.  Dante  was  rather  its  creator  ; 
for  the  Italian  language,  with  all  its  sweetness  and  purity  and  beauty,  the 
language  of  love,  of  poetry,  of  philosophy,  sprang  complete  from  Dante's 
brain.  There  is  something  almost  awe-inspiring  in  the  sudden  appearance 
of  such  a  work  as  his,  as  new  in  its  literary  vehicle  as  it  was  in  conception 
and  in  theme.  It  did  more  to  fix  the  language  of  Italy  than  the  French 
Academy  ever  did  to  fix  the  French,  or  the  English  Bible  to  fix  the  English, 
tongue.  Six  hundred  years  ago  a  language  was  spoken  in  France  which  no 
common  Frenchman  can  understand  to-day  ;  six  hundred  years  ago  a 
language  was  spoken  in  England  which  no  common  Englishman  can  under- 
stand to-day.  But  Dante's  Italian  is  the  Italian  of  modern  speech.  It  is 
well  worth  while  to  learn  a  little  Italian,  for  even  a  little  will  enable  one  to 


510  DANTE   AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY. 

appreciate  to  some  degree  the  sweet  severity  of  Dante's  verse  ;  the  marvel- 
ous compression  which  never  wastes  a  word ;  the  fascination  of  the  terza 
rima,  or  triple  rhyme,  whose  endless  reiterations  seem  like  the  recurrent 
melody,  at  one  time  of  funeral,  and  at  another  time  of  marriage,  bells. 

There  is  scarcely  a  more  striking  example  of  this  fitness  of  phrase  than 
in  the  solemn  music  which  records  the  inscription  over  the  gate  of  Hell  : 

"  Per  me  si  va  nella  citta  dolente ; 

Per  me  si  va  nell'  eterno  dolore : 
Per  me  si  va  tra  la  perduta  gente. 

Giustizia  mosse  il  mio  alto  Fattore : 
Fecemi  la  divina  Potentate, 

La  somma  Sapienza  e  il  primo  Amore. 
1  )i 1 1:1 1 i/.i  a  me  non  fur  cose  create, 

Si  non  eterne,  ed  eterno  duro ; 
Lasciate  ogni  speranza,  voi  ch'  entrate." 

Let  us  now  compare  the  Italian  with  the  English,  and  mark  how  the  liquid 
and  intense  quality  of  the  original  well-nigh  disappears  in  the  translation  : 

"  Through  me  ye  enter  the  abode  of  woe : 

Through  me  to  endless  sorrow  are  ye  brought : 
Through  me  amid  the  souls  accurst  ye  go. 
Justice  did  first  my  lofty  Maker  move ; 
By  Power  almighty  was  my  fabric  wrought, 
By  highest  Wisdom  and  by  primal  Love. 
Ere  I  was  formed,  no  things  created  were, 
Save  those  eternal—  I  eternal  last : 
All  hope  abandon  — ye  who  enter  here  !" 

The  gate  is  "closed  to  none,  being  reft  of  all  its  fastenings  since  the  day 
when  the  Conqueror  of  Death,  fresh  from  the  cross,  forced  through  it  his 
resistless  passage. "  So  Dante,  following  Virgil  as  his  guide,  pursues  the- 
deep  and  savage  pathway  and  enters  the  Inferno.  Let  us  enter  with  him. 
Hell,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  pit  within  the  earth,  a  hollow,  inverted  cone, 
growing  narrower  as  it  descends ;  in  which,  as  space  contracts,  torment  is 
intensified.  The  outermost  borders  of  the  pit  constitute  an  Ante-Hell, 
rather  than  hell  itself.  It  is  the  abode  of  the  Neutrals,  those  who  are  not 
good  enough  for  Heaven,  and  who  have  not  character  enough  for  Hell. 
Here  are  confined  the  angels  who  at  the  first  great  rebellion  in  the  spirit- 
world  stood  neither  for  God  nor  for  his  enemies,  but  only  for  themselves, 
Here  are  confined  a  large  part  of  the  human  race,  even  as  the  circuit  of  this 
uppermost  region  of  the  Inferno  is  the  widest.  These  feeble  and  cowardly 
souls,  stung  by  flies  and  wasps,  the  image  of  a  reproving  conscience,  chase 
a  hurrying  standard,  while  worms  in  the  dust  beneath  their  feet  absorb  their 
blood  and  tears.  So  Dante  punishes  those  who  only  ignored  God,  but  did 
not  have  force  enough  to  rebel  against  him.  He  crosses  the  River  Acheron, 
the  joyless  river,  with  Charon  for  his  ferryman,  who  grimly  drives  the 
reluctant  souls  out  of  his  boat  with  the  blows  of  his  oar.  So  they  reach 
Hell  proper,  a  pit  of  nine  circles,  each  furnishing  a  landing-place,  on  one 
side  of  which  is  the  wall  of  solid  earth,  on  the  other  the  abyss. 

The  first  circle  of  the  Inferno  proper  is  called  Limbo  —  the  home  of 
infants  who  died  unbaptized,  and  of  non-believers  who  had  no  knowledge 
of  a  Saviour.  Here  once  dwelt  the  saints  of  Old  Testament  times  ;  but 
when  Christ  descended  into  the  underworld  after  his  resurrection,  he  rescued 


DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY.  511 

them  and  led  them  forth  in  triumph.  Here  still,  and  forever,  dwell  the- 
heathen  sages  whose  ignorance  was  invincible.  There  is  no  outward 
infliction.  Their  pain  is  the  pain  of  loss,  of  unsatisfied  yearning.  Within 
a  castle  of  seven-fold  walls  and  gates  they  lead  their  shadowy  life,  neither 
sad  nor  glad,  grave  and  subdued  in  aspect,  conversing  still  with  regard  to 
the  problems  of  existence,  knowing  nothing  of  the  present,  but  only  of  the 
past  and  future.  It  is  the  highest  point  of  attainment  for  unbelievers. 
Here  Virgil  points  out  "the  luminous  habitation  of  the  poets."  Homer 
and  Horace  receive  Dante  into  their  company,  and  show  him  Socrates, 
Plato,  and  other  master-spirits  of  antiquity.  When  they  leave  him,  he 
re-enters  the  domain  of  darkness  ;  passes  before  Minos,  the  infernal  Judge  ; 
and  now  at  length  descends  into  the  Hell  of  positive  sin  and  of  real  punish- 
ment. 

It  will  be  worth  our  while  here  to  pause  a  moment,  and  consider  the  three 
great  divisions  under  which  Dante  classifies  the  sins  punished  in  the  eight 
circles  which  we  have  still  to  visit.  There  are,  to  his  mind,  three  great 
types  and  gradations  of  sin.  They  are  Incontinence,  Bestiality,  and  Malice. 
But  neither  incontinence  nor  bestiality  are  precisely  what  these  words 
would  seem  to  indicate.  Incontinence  includes  all  sin  of  mere  emotion  and 
desire,  of  affection  and  feeling.  Lasciviousness,  gluttony,  avarice  and  anger 
all  belong  to  this  category.  They  are  sins  of  impulsive  passion,  exaggera- 
tions of  principles  of  our  nature  which  are  themselves  innocent,  but  which 
are  indulged  in  manner  or  measure  opposed  to  the  will  of  God.  It  is 
significant  that  all  these  sins  are  punished  in  darkness,  as  befits  the  nature 
of  them,  committed  as  they  have  been  with  mind  beclouded  by  passipn. 
And  the  respective  punishments  are  punishments  in  kind.  Carnal  sinners 
are  swept  along  by  a  violent  hurricane,  as  if  to  intimate  that  they  who  have 
sown  the  wind  must  reap  the  whirlwind.  Gluttons  lie  prostrate  on  the 
ground,  beneath  a  pelting  storm  of  rain,  snow  and  hail ;  while  Cerberus,  a 
sort  of  personified  belly,  devours  them.  The  avaricious  and  the  prodigal 
crawl  in  two  bands  in  opposite  directions,  pushing  before  them  great 
weights,  which  clash  together  as  they  meet,  the  one  band  howling  to  the 
other  :  "  Why  did  ye  keep  ?"  and  the  other  howling  in  return  :  "  Why  did 
ye  give  away  ?"  The  wrathful  and  gloomy  are  immersed  naked  in  a  lake  of 
mud,  and  in  this  lake  they  strike  and  tear  each  other.  There  is  an 
impressive  lesson  here, — anger  and  melancholy  are  punished  together.  Too 
much  indignation  and  too  little  indignation  are  equally  sins.  The  wrathful 
and  the  wrathless  both  transgress  God's  law.  "  Be  ye  angry,  and  sin  not," 
says  the  Scripture.  "Ye  that  love  the  Lord,  hate  evil."  Not  to  be  angry 
at  unrighteousness,  smoothly  and  indolently  to  condone  wrong-doing,  this 
to  Dante  is  sin  against  God,  and  they  who  commit  it  are  imbedded  in  the- 
dregs  of  the  Stygian  pool. 

We  have  been  dealing  with  sins  of  feeling.  How  solemn  a  truth  does 
the  poet  teach  us  when  he  makes  sins  of  the  thoughts  to  follow  these  !  For 
this  is  what  he  means  by  Bestiality,  the  next  great  class  of  transgressions. 
The  bestial  man  is  the  man  who  is  besotted  in  mind,  and  who  gives  himself 
over  to  infidelity  or  to  heresy ;  who  either  says  with  the  fool  :  "  There  is 
no  God,"  or  says  with  the  errorist :  "God  is  different  from  what  he  has 
revealed  himself  to  be. "  Here,  in  the  flaming  city  of  Dis,  where  the  walla 


512  DANTE   AND   THE   DIVINE   COMEDY. 

are  of  iron  and  the  darkness  is  mingled  with  fire,  the  arch-heretics  are 
confined  in  red-hot  tombs  ;  as  if  to  show  the  living  death  of  the  soul  that 
cuts  itself  loose  from  faith  in  God  and  his  revelation.  Notice  that  this  sin 
of  bestialism  or  unbelief  follows,  and  grows  out  of,  the  sin  of  wrong  desire. 
The  heart  first  departs  from  God,  and  then  the  intellect  follows  in  its  train. 
It  is  only  an  anticipation  of  Goethe's  dictum :  "As  are  the  inclinations,  so 
are  the  opinions."  When  man  gives  loose  rein  to  evil  affections,  the  eyes 
of  his  understanding  are  darkened.  But  there  is  something  worse  even 
than  sin  of  the  feelings  and  of  the  intellect  :  it  is  sin  of  consciously  evil 
will;  and  so  the  third  great  class  of  iniquities  in  Dante's  hell  is  that  of 
Malice,  in  its  ever-deepening  forms,  now  of  Violence,  then  of  Fraud,  and 
finally  of  Treachery.  The  sin  of  unbelief  cannot  maintain  itself  against 
the  accusations  of  conscience  except  by  becoming  the  sin  of  positive  hatred 
and  opposition  to  God.  First  the  heart,  then  the  intellect,  and  lastly  the 
will,  sets  itself  against  Him  who  made  it. 

Malice  is  punished  after  its  kind  also.  The  Violent,  such  as  tyrants, 
murderers  and  marauders,  are  sunk  in  a  boiling  river  of  blood,  and  as  often 
as  they  emerge  are  shot  at  by  the  Centaurs.  Such  the  fate  of  those  who 
commit  violence  against  others, —  they  have  their  fill  of  blood.  Suicides, 
or  those  who  are  guilty  of  violence  against  themselves,  are  turned  into  trees, 
whose  living  branches  are  plucked  away  by  harpies,  only  to  grow  again. 
Blasphemers,  or  those  who  have  done  violence  to  God,  are  exposed  to  a  slow 
shower  of  fire,  upon  a  plain  of  burning  sand.  Below  the  circle  where 
Violence  is  punished,  at  a  vast  depth  indeed  beneath,  Fraud  in  its  ten 
subdivisions  has  its  place  of  doom.  Here  are  seducers  and  flatterers,  the 
first  scourged  by  demons,  the  second  immersed  in  filth.  Simoniacs,  who 
have  purchased  high  places  in  the  church  with  money,  are  fixed  in  circular 
holes,  like  purses,  with  their  heads  down,  their  legs  only  appearing,  and 
the  soles  of  their  feet  burnt  with  flames.  Sorcerers  or  diviners,  as  they 
endeavored  to  pry  into  the  future,  have  their  heads  twisted  round  so  that 
they  have  to  walk  backward  now.  Barterers  and  peculators  are  plunged 
into  a  lake  of  boiling  pitch.  Hypocrites  wear  cloaks  and  hoods  which  are 
gilt  outside,  but  are  lined  within  with  lead,  whose  heavy  weight  they  try 
with  groans  to  carry.  Thieves  are  persecuted  with  a  swarm  of  serpents.  Evil 
counsellors  are  tormented  in  wrappings  of  flame  that  fit  them  as  a  garment. 
Slanderers  and  schismatics  have  their  limbs  miserably  mangled.  Alchemists 
and  forgers  are  visited  with  an  itching  leprosy. 

Last  of  all  comes  the  well  of  the  primeval  giants,  the  mythical  demigods 
who  rose  against  Jove  in  arms.  They  are  representatives  of  the  last  and 
deepest  intensity  of  sin,  the  Malice  that  becomes  Ingratitude,  and  that 
betrays  kindred  and  friends,  king  and  country,  and  finally  its  very  God  and 
Saviour.  Treachery  is  in  Dante's  scheme  the  utmost  malignity  of  sin,  its 
most  complete  and  dreadful  expression.  The  lowest  pit  is  called  the 
Judecca,  because  it  holds  Judas,  who  betrayed  his  Lord.  And  here  Judas 
is  tormented  by  Satan,  to  whom  for  thirty  pieces  of  silver  he  sold  himself. 
We  have  reached  Hell's  lowest  point.  Let  us  gaze  at  Satan  there.  He  is  a 
creature  of  monstrous  size, —  Dante  gives  us  the  means  of  estimating  very 
accurately  his  dimensions.  The  primeval  giants  are  each  seventy  feet  tall ; 
Satan  is  twelve  times  as  great  —  eight  hundred  and  forty  feet  therefore  in 


DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY.  513 

height.  At  the  very  centre  of  the  earth  he  sits,  forever  flapping  his  vast  and 
bat-like  wings  in  effort  to  escape,  while  these  very  movements  chill  the  air 
and  turn  everything  about  him  to  frost  and  ice.  He  tries  to  escape,  but 
every  effort  only  freezes  him  more  solidly  into  his  place  of  imprisonment. 
He  has  three  heads  and  three  faces  —  red,  white  and  black  —  to  correspond 
with  the  three  divisions  of  the  human  race  which  he  has  succeeded  in 
leading  to  perdition  ;  in  each  one  of  his  three  mouths  he  is  craunching  and 
devouring  a  traitor,  and  of  the  three  traitors  Judas  is  chief.  The  centre 
of  Hell  is  not  fire  but  ice  —  fit  type  of  the  hardness  and  the  coldness  of  the 
heart  that  is  "  past  feeling."  The  sin  of  sense  has  become  the  sin  of  malice, 
and  malice  has  deepened  into  treachery  and  positive  hatred  to  God.  Feeling 
led  the  way  into  transgression,  but  the  intellect  followed,  and  then  the  will 
gave  in  its  conscious  adhesion  to  wrong,  until  there  came  the  spurning  of 
the  very  mercy  that  would  save,  and  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost  that 
hath  never  forgiveness,  either  in  this  world  or  in  that  which  is  to  come. 

Before  we  leave  the  Inferno,  it  is  important  to  note  three  things.  The 
first  is,  that  the  grotesqueness  and  monstrosity  of  Dante's  punishments  are 
intended  to  teach  a  moral  lesson  —  this  namely,  that  sin  is  something 
;  itially  vile  and  contemptible.  The  ' '  Divine  Comedy  "  gives  a  very  differ- 
ent picture  of  Satan,  for  example,  from  that  with  which  we  have  become 
familiar  in  the  ' '  Paradise  Lost. "  Milton's  Satan  is  *  *  the  archangel  ruined, " 
but  the  emphasis  seems  often  to  lie  upon  the  "  archangel "  rather  than  upon 
the  "  ruin  "  ;  Satan  has  been  called,  indeed,  "  the  hero  of  the  Paradise  Lost." 
But  Dante  is  resolved  that  no  illusive  glamour  shall  surround  the  giv:it 
enemy.  He  will  picture  him  in  all  his  native  cruelty  and  hatred  and 
malignity,  a  creature  loathsome  and  loathed.  Milton,  it  is  true,  has  passn^i  s 
in  which  the  adversary  confesses  to  an  inward  torment.  Those  three  words  : 
"  Myself  am  hell,"  contain  the  very  essence  of  the  doctrine  of  future 
punishment.  But  as  we  see  Satan  striding  over  the  burning  marl,  asserting 
himself  in  rebellious  pride,  daring  the  Almighty  to  crush  him  with  his 
thunderbolts,  we  are  forced  to  admire  the  unconquerable  will  that  had 
rather  rule  in  hell  than  serve  in  heaven.  And  in  all  this,  Milton  is  false  to 
Scripture.  Though  Dante  goes  beyond  the  Bible  in  his  grotesque  physical 
images,  he  expresses  more  of  the  spirit  of  the  Bible  than  does  Milton.  Sin 
and  sinners,  he  holds  in  derision.  Even  in  the  story  of  Francesca  da 
Kimini  we  do  not  lose  sight  of  the  serpent  that  lies  beneath  the  flowers ; 
guilty  love  has  in  it  moral  corruption  and  eternal  despair.  All  Dante's 
demons  are  hateful ;  no  man  through  him  shall  be  seduced  into  calling 
darkness  light,  or  evil  good.  He  declares  that,  just  as  surely  as  the  righteous 
shall  rise  to  everlasting  life,  the  wicked  shall  rise  to  shame  and  everlasting 
contempt. 

A  second  lesson  which  Dante  teaches  us  is,  that  sin  is  the  self -perversion 
of  the  will.  If  there  is"  any  thought  fundamental  to  his  system  it  is  the 
thought  of  freedom.  Man  is  not  a  waif  swept  irresistibly  downward  on  the 
current ;  he  is  a  being  endowed  with  power  to  resist,  and  therefore  guilty 
if  he  yields.  Sin  is  not  misfortune,  or  disease,  or  natural  necessity ;  it  is 
wilf ulness,  and  crime,  and  self-destruction.  The  "Divine  Comedy"  is, 
beyond  all  other  poems,  the  poem  of  Conscience  ;  and  this  it  could  not  be, 
if  it  did  not  recognize  man  as  a  free  agent,  the  responsible  cause  of  his 
33 


514  DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE   COMEDY. 

own  evil  acts  and  his  own  evil  state.  And  Dante  is  a  lover  of  God  and  of 
holiness.  He  puts  himself  on  God's  side,  in  the  great  moral  controversy 
of  the  ages.  He  explains  suffering  by  guilt ;  he  sees  the  whole  race  under 
the  load  of  just  penalty  ;  hell  is  to  him  only  the  sign  of  God's  estimate  of 
sin.  Is  there  anything  that  our  age  needs  more  than  this  strengthening  of 
conscience,  this  assertion  of  the  claims  of  righteousness,  this  declaration 
that  "the  soul  that  siuneth,  it  shall  die?"  Would  that  our  soft  and 
easy-going  time,  soothed  almost  to  sleep  as  it  is  by  the  tempter's  voice, 
"Thou  shalt  not  surely  die,"  and  inclined  to  compound  with  almighty 
Justice  for  indulgence  in  all  sorts  of  pleasurable  wickedness, — would  that 
our  age  might  listen  to  the  awful  voices  of  self -accusation  and  despair  that 
sound  out  from  Dante's  Hell  to  proclaim  the  voluntariness  and  the  damnable- 
ness  of  sin  ! 

Still  another  lesson  from  the  Inferno  is,  that  penalty  is  not  in  its  essence 
external  to  the  sinner.  Here  I  know  I  shall  contradict  the  impressions  of 
many  of  my  readers.  "  Dant3  not  a  believer  in  material  and  physical 
punishment  ?"  Ah,  I  did  not  say  that.  I  said  that  to  Dante  the  material 
and  the  physical  were  not  the  essence  of  punishment.  I  most  earnestly 
believe  that,  with  all  the  material  imagery  of  Dante's  Hell,  he  never  meant 
us  to  take  one  of  thesa  physical  punishments  merely  in  its  literal  sense. 
He  believed  indeed  in  a  body,  and  believed  that  God  would  destroy  both 
soul  and  body  in  hell ;  doubtless  he  expected  that  sins  of  the  flesh  would 
be  punished  in  the  flesh.  But  his  view  of  sin  as  having  its  source  and 
centre  in  the  soul  forbade  him  to  put  upon  the  mere  body  the  main  stress 
of  penalty.  People  have  made  the  same  mistake  about  Jonathan  Edwards. 
Because  he  speaks  of  the  sinner  as  shriveling  like  a  worm  in  the  fire  of 
God's  judgments,  some  have  supposed  that  he  regarded  hell  as  consisting 
mainly  of  such  physical  torments.  But  this  is  a  misinterpretation  of 
Edwards.  As  he  did  not  fancy  heaven  to  consist  in  streets  of  gold  or 
pearly  gates,  but  rather  in  the  holiness  and  communion  with  Christ  of 
which  these  are  symbols,  so  he  did  not  regard  hell  as  consisting  in  fire  and 
brimstone,  but  rather  in  the  unholiness  and  separation  from  God  of  which 
fire  and  brimstone  were  symbols.  He  used  the  material  imagery,  because 
he  thought  that  this  best  answered  to  the  methods  of  Scripture.  He 
probably  went  beyond  the  simplicity  of  the  Scripture  statements,  and  did 
not  sufficiently  explain  the  spiritual  meaning  of  the  symbols  he  used ;  but 
I  am  persuaded  that  he  neither  understood  them  literally  himself,  nor 
meant  them  to  be  so  understood  by  others.  What  is  true  of  Edwards  is 
true  of  Dante.  In  how  many  ways  does  he  show  that  sin  is  essentially  a 
condition  of  soul,  an  alienation  of  the  heart  from  God,  an  inner  conflict  and 
agony  !  It  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  living  men  are  represented  as  already 
in  hell ;  as  eternal  life  is  already  present  in  the  souls  of  the  good,  so  eternal 
death  is  already  in  the  souls  of  the  evil.  It  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the 
sinner  is  made  to  punish  himself ;  the  wicked  is  holden  in  the  cords  of  his 
own  sins  ;  sin  is  its  own  detecter  and  judge  and  tormentor.  Dante's  doctrine 
is  ever  this  :  ' '  The  responsible  agent,  man,  does  to  himself  whatever  he 
does,  and  his  deeds  return  to  the  doer."  The  material  symbols  are  nothing 
more  than  symbols  —  symbols  of  the  corruption  and  death  which  is  involved 
in  sin  itself  —  symbols  of  the  fact  that  sin  tends  to  permanence  ;  that  sin 


DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE   COMEDY.  515 

at  last  is  stamped  upon  the  soul  as  its  eternal  form ;  that  the  free  will 
becomes  at  last  enslaved  to  evil ;  that  the  sinner,  apart  from  divine  grace, 
tends  ever  downward  in  an  ever-increasing  intensity  of  selfish  will  and  an 
ever-increasing  intensity  of  punishment. 

It  is  pleasant  to  emerge  from  the  Inferno,  even  though  we  have  learned 
from  it  so  many  lessons.  Dante  emerges  under  guidance  of  Virgil.  Having 
passed  the  centre  of  the  earth  in  his  descent,  he  takes  his  upward  way  to  the 
opposite  side  of  the  globe  from  that  at  which  he  entered.  But  the  force  of 
gravity  is  against  him  now.  Facilis  descensus  Averno  ;  and  we  may  add  : 
Dijficilis  ascensus  coelo.  By  what  road  does  he  ascend  ?  Ah,  there  is  a 
channel  worn  through  the  solid  earth  by  the  stream  that  flows  downward 
from  the  mount  of  Purgatory.  That  stream  is  made  up  of  the  tears  of  the 
penitents  who  make  reparation  on  the  mount,  and  whose  guilt  and  depravity, 
as  fast  as  it  is  purged  away,  flows  downward  to  Satan  from  whom  it  came, 
and  with  whom  it  now  abides  forever.  As  our  toil-worn  pilgrim  emerges 
from  the  bowels  of  the  earth  and  plants  his  feet  upon  the  mount  of  purifi- 
cation, the  day  begins  to  break,  and  the  sorrow  of  his  soul  gives  place  to 
joy.  He  sees  an  angel-piloted  bark  approaching  the  island-mount,  a  bark 
which  brings  to  Purgatory,  from  the  banks  of  the  Tiber,  all  souls  which 
have  died  at  peace  with  the  Church,  and  who  only  need  to  be  freed  from  the 
remains  of  sin  to  be  fitted  for  heaven.  Here  we  need  to  remember  that  in 
Boman  Catholic  doctrine,  Purgatory  is  only  a  temporary  abiding-place. 
Purgation  may  last  for  hundreds  of  years,  but  it  cannot  last  forever.  All 
who  enter  Hell  go  there  to  stay.  None  ever  stay  in  Purgatory.  And  yet 
none  wish  to  depart, — they  desire  only  to  be  cleansed.  They  bear  willingly, 
yes,  even  gladly,  the  chastisements  of  God,  which  are  meant  for  their  cor- 
rection in  righteousness.  The  reeds  with  which  the  shores  of  that  island 
are  fringed,  yielding  ever  as  they  do  to  the  swaying  of  the  waves,  are  the 
symbol  of  the  will  of  the  mountain's  habitants,  bending  ever  to  the  slightest 
movement  of  the  will  of  God.  On  this  mount  they  bemoan  their  sins.  It 
is  a  sweet  and  holy  dwelling-place,  irradiated  by  the  Southern  Cross,  a  con- 
stellation unseen  in  our  cold  northern  climes ;  the  grassy  slopes  are  kept 
green  by  the  tears  of  the  penitents ;  angels  visit  the  mount  to  encourage 
them,  admonish  them,  guide  them  upward,  in  their  toilsome  striving  ;  hymns 
and  prayers  to  God  are  continually  ascending  from  its  terraces,  as  from  altar- 
stairs  ;  its  summit  is  the  Terrestrial  Paradise,  from  which  by  a  short  step 
the  soul,  with  the  temporary  shade-body  which  it  wears  till  the  resurrection, 
can  rise  from  earth  to  heaven. 

There  is  an  Ante-Purgatory,  just  as  there  was  an  Ante-Hell.  This  Ante- 
Purgatory  is  under  the  wardenship  of  Cato  of  Utica,  that  model  of  ancient 
self-control.  Here  at  the  base  of  the  mountain  are  detained  those  who 
deferred  repentance  during  their  former  life ;  they  are  compelled  to  wait, 
outside  of  St.  Peter's  gate,  a  hundred  years  for  every  year  of  that  former 
delay, — that  is,  are  compelled  to  wait  unless  their  stay  is  shortened  by  the 
pious  prayers  of  friends  whom  they  have  left  behind,  one  moment  of  whose 
intense  intercessions  has  power  to  deliver  from  years  of  purgatorial  sorrow. 
Voltaire  said  rightly  that  in  Purgatory  the  church  had  found  what  Archi- 
medes vainly  longed  for,  a  TTOV  arti  upon  which  he  might  plant  his  lever 
to  move  the  world.  The  souls  in  the  place  of  preliminary  trial  chant  the 


51(5  DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY. 

Miserere  and  the  Compline  Hymn,  and  so  get  help  against  the  adversary. 
At  St.  Peter's  gate,  Purgatory  proper  first  begins.  They  approach  it  by  a 
threefold  stair,  symbolic  of  the  confession,  contrition  and  satisfaction  which 
the  church  requires.  An  angel  with  flaming  sword  keeps  the  door,  charged 
to  err  by  admitting,  rather  than  to  err  by  excluding,  those  who  seek  admis- 
sion there  ;  and  yet  there  is  a  safeguard  —  he  who  after  entering  should  look 
back,  would  again  find  himself  without.  Upon  the  brow  of  each  one  so 
admitted  the  angel  with  his  sword  of  flame  marks  seven  times  the  letter  P, — 
which  means  Peccatum,  Peccavi,  and  indicates  that  there  are  seven  capital 
sins  which  must  be  successively  purged  away.  There  are  seven  terraces, 
each  devoted  to  the  purgation  of  one  of  these  sins  of  Pride,  Envy,  Anger, 
Sloth,  Avarice,  Gluttony,  Lasciviousness ;  and  when  the  purgation  of  any 
one  of  these  is  complete,  the  corresponding  mark  of  shame  vanishes  from 
the  brow.  So  the  process  goes  on  until  the  forehead  is  pure,  as  at  man's  first 
creation  ;  and,  as  the  soul  leaps  up  in  freedom  and  regains  once  more  its 
lost  estate  of  innocency,  the  whole  mount  of  Purgatory  shakes  for  joy. 

In  the  Inferno,  sin  grows  in  intensity  as  the  circles  narrow  and  we  go 
downward.  In  Purgatory  the  rule  is  just  the  opposite  ;  the  greatest  sins  are 
first  purged  away,  and  the  mountain  narrows  as  we  ascend.  Progress  upward 
is  at  the  first  slow  and  difficult,  and  the  heights  are  great.  Biit  each  sin 
removed  gives  new  freedom  ;  the  distances  grow  smaller  and  the  ascent  more 
rapid;  for  "to  him  that  hath  shall  be  given,"  and  when  the  sins  that  so 
easily  beset  are  all  laid  aside,  tha  soul  "  mounts  up  with  wings  as  eagles  ;  " 
nothing  now  is  left  to  separate  between  it  and  God.  There  is  another  rela- 
tion between  the  structure  of  the  Purgatory  and  that  of  the  Hell, — sins  in 
both  are  classified  under  three  general  divisions.  In  the  Purgatory,  however, 
the  classification  is  that  of  the  mediaeval  theologians,  into  Love  Distorted, 
Love  Defective  and  Love  Excessive.  Under  love  distorted,  pride,  envy  and 
anger  are  ranged  —  each  being  regarded  as  loving  evil  to  one's  neighbor. 
Love  defective  is  represented  only  by  sloth  —  this  loves  too  little  the  highest 
good.  Love  excessive  has  three  divisions  :  avarice,  or  the  excessive  love  of 
money  ;  gluttony,  or  the  excessive  love  of  food ;  lasciviousness,  or  the  exces- 
sive love  of  sensual  pleasure.  The  seven  terraces  around  the  mountain  are 
but  eighteen  feet  in  width,  for  "narrow  is  the  way  that  leads  to  life."  On 
the  one  side  of  each  is  the  precipice  ;  on  the  other  is  the  rocky  wall,  up  which 
there  is  but  one  long  and  steep  ascent,  by  stairs,  to  the  terrace  next  above. 

Let  us  delay  for  one  moment  to  glance  at  the  chastisements  of  the  Mount 
of  Penitence.  In  the  first  circle  Pride,  the  primal  sin,  and  root  of  all  other 
sins,  is  made  to  suffer.  The  proud  are  bowed  to  the  earth  by  heavy  weights 
of  stone  placed  upon  their  backs ;  and,  as  they  move  onward  in  long  pro- 
cession, their  eyes  lifted  up  no  longer,  they  look  sideways  at  wonderfully 
sculptured  representations  of  humility  upon  the  rocky  wall,  or  downwards 
at  wonderfully  sculptured  representations  of  pride  upon  the  pavement 
beneath  their  feet ;  while  spirit- voices  chant  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  "  Blessed 
are  the  poor  in  spirit."  In  the  second  terrace  the  Envious  are  punished,  by 
having  the  eyes  that  looked  askance  on  others  sewed  up  with  iron  thread, 
while  mantled  in  prickly  hair-cloth  they  are  compelled  to  sit  shoulder  to 
shoulder,  leaning  upon  one  another  and  recognizing  their  mutual  obligation 
and  dependence.  The  eyes  that  have  transgressed  are  not  permitted  now  to 


DANTE   AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY.  517 

see,  and  so  instruction  is  communicated  to  them  by  spirit-voices  that  record 
the  various  historical  instances  of  love  or  of  envy.  "Blessed  are  the  mer- 
ciful," and  "Rejoice,  O  victor ! "  are  the  salutations  that  signalize  release. 
The  third  circle  is  devoted  to  the  chastisement  of  Anger.  This,  too,  is  pun- 
ished, in  kind,  by  a  dense  fog  —  symbolic  of  the  passion  which  blinds  the 
eyes  of  the  wrathful.  The  fog  is  bitter  as  smoke  and  black  as  night,  and  it 
is  only  in  ecstatic  vision  that  the  angry  souls  are  reminded  of  noble  examples 
of  forbearance,  and  of  the  murderous  fruits  of  the  opposite  vice.  The  souls 
here  suffering  pray  to  the  Lamb  of  God  for  mercy,  and  the  beatitude  that 
celebrates  the  completion  of  their  purging  is,  "  Blessed  are  the  peacemakers. " 

But  we  must  hasten  up  the  Mount.  The  Slothful  are  punished  in  the 
fourth  terrace  by  being  forced  against  their  nature  to  run  races  with  each 
other  ;  while  they  exercise  the  virtue  opposite  to  their  own  failing  by  shout- 
ing out  to  each  other  shameful  illustrations  of  luke-warmuess  and  inspiring 
instances  of  diligence.  Avarice,  in  the  circle  next  above,  is  bound  hand  and 
foot ;  and,  as  it  has  refused  to  look  upward  to  higher  good,  so  it  is  now  made 
to  grovel  on  the  earth.  "  My  soul  cleaveth  unto  the  dust,"  is  the  cry  of  the 
penitent ;  and  "  Blessed  are  they  that  do  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteous- 
ness" is  the  sign  of  their  victory  over  this  their  besetting  sin.  Then  comes 
the  circle  of  the  Gluttonous,  tormented  by  the  tree  of  Tantalus,  a  tree  that 
entices  by  its  wealth  of  fragrant  fniits,  but  that  widens  upward  instead  of 
downward,  and  evermore  withholds  the  means  of  gratification  from  the  fam- 
ished soul.  Haggard  and  emaciated,  the  gluttonous  crowd  about  it,  casting 
eager  eyes  upon  its  precious  burden,  but  only  to  elicit  from  its  branches 
urgent  admonitions  to  temperance.  In  the  seventh  and  last  circle  Lasciv- 
iousness  is  expiated  by  long  lines  of  penitents  who  pass  through  a  fierce 
ilaine  proceeding  from  the  rocky  wall  beside  them.  Dante  and  Virgil  both 
enter  into  this  flame.  Only  here,  and  in  the  third  terrace  where  anger  is 
punished,  does  Dante  himself  suffer  with  the  penitents.  Of  two  sins  only, 
he  seems  to  himself  to  need  purging.  And  the  penal  fire  does  its  work.  His 
soul  is  purified  from  its  last  remaining  sin.  He  is  now  master  of  himself, 
and,  as  a  crowned  and  mitred  sovereign,  with  the  lost  image  of  God  restored, 
he  enters  the  Terrestrial  Paradise,  the  Eden  from  which  man  was  expelled 
for  his  sin.  Virgil  now  can  no  longer  be  his  guide,  and  Beatrice  comes  to 
take  Virgil's  place,  after  Dante  had  drunk  of  the  waters  of  Lethe,  which 
extinguish  the  memory  of  the  past,  and  of  the  waters  of  Eunoe,  which  bring 
back  the  memory  of  the  good. 

Amid  the  living  verdure  and  the  fragrant  flowers,  the  pleasant  zephyrs 
and  the  singing  birds,  we  would  gladly  linger.  There  are  two  remarks, 
however,  which  I  must  make  with  regard  to  Dante's  Purgatory,  before  I 
leave  it.  And  the  first  is  that,  like  the  Hell,  Dante  does  not  regard  it  as  a 
place,  so  much  as  it  is  a  process.  Doubtless  he  believed  in  the  place,  and 
sought  to  give  an  imaginative  picture  of  it.  But  much  more  he  believed  in 
the  thing  —  the  necessity  of  purification.  "Without  holiness  no  man  can 
see  the  Lord  ; "  "put to  death  the  deeds  of  the  flesh  ;  "  "cleanse yourselves, 
therefore,  from  all  filthiness  of  the  flesh  and  of  the  spirit," — these  are  the 
essential  truths  which  were  in  Dante's  mind.  The  Christian  doctrine  of 
sauctification  is  put  into  verse  in  Dante's  poem,  and  so  far,  both  Protestant 
and  Romanist  may  find  in  it  a  source  of  great  religious  incitement  and  profit. 


518  DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY. 

Indeed,  the  Purgatory  comes  nearer  to  our  common  life  than  either  the  Hell 
or  the  Paradise.  The  former  is  too  far  beneath  us,  and  the  latter  is  too  far 
above.  But  every  man  can  recognize  resemblance  to  himself  in  the  peni- 
tents of  Purgatory, —  that  is,  if  he  have  even  a  spark  of  the  hatred  of  sin 
and  longing  for  holiness  which  God's  regenerating  Spirit  has  inspired.  The 
tender  and  humble  confessions  of  the  sufferers,  their  submission  to  the 
divine  chastisements,  their  eager  appropriation  of  all  helps  to  their  restora- 
tion which  are  bestowed  by  the  word  or  the  Spirit  of  God,  are  full  of  sub- 
duing beauty.  Nowhere  in  literature,  outside  of  the  Bible,  have  we  so  nobly 
portrayed  "the  blessedness  of  him  whose  transgression  is  forgiven,  and  whose 
sin  is  covered." 

This  first  remark  about  Purgatory  has  had  to  do  with  that  which  Roman 
Catholicism  and  Protestantism  have  in  common.  My  second  remark  has  to 
do  with  the  differences  between  them.  There  are  two  respects  in  which 
Protestants  must  regard  Dante's  representations  as  painfully  erroneous.  On 
the  one  hand  he  errs,  as  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  erred,  in  extend- 
ing the  period  of  purification  beyond  the  confines  of  death.  The  literal 
interpretation  is  better.  Purgatory  is  only  on  this  earth,  and  in  this  life. 
*  *  After  death, "  there  is,  not  purification,  but ' '  judgment. "  For  multitudes, 
the  Romanist  doctrine  is  a  doctrine  of  second  i^robation.  Men  are  content 
here  with  being  at  peace  with  the  Church,  while  they  are  not  yet  at  peace 
with  God.  The  real  controversy  between  themselves  and  their  Judge  is 
adjourned  to  the  future  world.  Purgatory,  with  all  its  sufferings,  becomes 
the  basis  of  false  hopes ;  distant  suffering  is  chosen  rather  than  immediate 
renunciation  of  sin  ;  a  fatal  trust  is  put,  in  what  the  sinner  can  do  by  way  of 
reparation,  rather  than  in  what  Christ  has  done  by  way  of  atonement.  And 
this  leads  me  to  notice  another  error  intimately  connected  with  that  which  I 
have  just  mentioned,  and  which  Protestants  must  ever  most  strenuously 
oppose.  I  refer  now  to  Dante's  error  in  making  the  process  of  purification 
a  penal  one.  If  there  be  any  truth  of  Scripture  more  vital  and  precious  than 
another  it  is  that  of  the  completeness  of  Christ's  sacrifice.  Our  sins,  and  all 
of  them,  were  "laid  on  him  ;  "  he  "  has  redeemed  us  from  the  curse  of  the 
law,  being  made  a  curse  for  us  ; "  "there  is  therefore  now  no  condemnation 
to  them  who  are  in  Jesus  Christ."  God  chastises  his  children  ;  but  it  is  in 
love,  and  it  is  for  their  good.  There  is  no  anger  and  there  is  no  penalty, 
since  "Jesus  paid  it  all,  all  the  debt  we  owe,  and  nothing  either  great  or 
small  remains  for  us  to  do."  The  notion  that  the  sufferings  and  calamities 
of  the  present  life  are  of  the  nature  of  punishment,  is  contrary  to  the  whole 
doctrine  of  the  New  Testament,  and  constitutes  "a  bridge  to  the  Roman 
Catholic  doctrine  of  purgatorial  fires."  Neither  in  this  world,  nor  in  the 
world  to  come,  can  any  mortal  add,  by  penance  of  his  own,  to  the  efficacy  of 
that  sacrifice  of  Christ  which  was  offered  once  for  all.  Dante  was  not  in 
advance  of  his  age,  nor  was  he  yet  possessed  of  the  spirit  of  the  Lutheran 
Reformation.  Justification  by  faith  alone  had  not  yet  dawned  upon  him  as 
God's  only  way  of  salvation.  The  "mass"  to  him  was  still  a  repetition  of 
Christ's  death,  and  the  pains  of  Purgatory,  voluntarily  endured  by  the  peni- 
tent, were  still  needed  to  supplement  what  Christ  had  done  upon  the  cross. 

So  at  last  we  come  to  Dante's  Paradise,  a  creation  in  some  respects  loftier 
and  more  wonderful  than  either  the  Hell  or  the  Purgatory,  yet,  for  the  very 


DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE   COMEDY.  519 

reason  that  it  is  so  lofty  and  wonderful,  less  attractive  than  either  of  these  to 
the  ordinary  mind.  Still,  as  we  read  the  poet's  sublime  meditations  upon  the 
greatest  truths  of  religion  and  philosophy,  we  are  impressed  with  the  self- 
sufficiency  of  his  genius.  Never,  even  in  its  highest  soaring,  does  the  wing 
of  his  imagination  seem  to  flag.  Or,  if  ever  earthly  pictures  seem  to  fail 
and  earthly  words  are  incapable  of  expressing  the  "exceeding  and  eternal 
weight  of  glory,"  piety  and  worship  furnish  what  art  cannot  supply,  and 
the  glowing  heart  of  the  poet  shows  itself  most  manifestly  lost  in  adoration 
and  in  joy.  Heaven,  we  must  remember,  is  to  Dante's  mind  the  state  of 
the  perfected  will ;  or,  rather,  the  statB  of  the  will  that  has  been  freed  at 
length  from  earthly  and  sensual  desires.  But  while  perfection  in  the  sense 
of  sinlessness  belongs  to  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  blessed  realm,  perfection 
in  the  sense  of  capacity  is  ever  enlarging.  All  are  as  full  as  they  can  hold 
of  the  love  and  purity  of  God,  yet  one  can  hold  more  than  another.  To 
list-  the  mediaeval  illustration  :  "  A  king  may  clothe  all  his  children  equally 
with  cloth  of  gold,  yet  the  amount  of  the  cloth  apportioned  to  each  may 
vary  according  to  their  size."  In  heaven,  too,  as  well  as  in  the  lower 
realms,  each  soul  goes  to  his  own  place. 

Outward  surroundings  are  simply  the  fit  accompaniments  and  evidences 
of  character.  As  the  soul  laden  with  sin  experiences  a  downward,  so  the 
soul  possessed  of  purity  experiences  an  upward,  gravitation  ;  and  each  one 
can  say  with  King  Richard  iu  Shakespeare's  play  :  "Mount,  mount,  my  soul, 
—  thy  seat  is  up  on  high  !  "  As  we  press  upward  then  from  one  heavenly 
sphere  to  another,  we  are  to  remember  that  we  are  not  among  the  race  of 
sinners  any  longer, —  we  are  rather  among  those  whose  varying  native  gifts, 
mid  whose  varying  degrees  of  faithfulness  in  the  exercise  of  these  gifts,  consti- 
tut  >  an  ever-varying  receptivity  for  the  life  and  love  of  God. 

Beatrice,  the  symbol  of  heavenly  wisdom,  is  now  Dante's  guide.  As  he 
gazes  upon  her  face,  the  light  of  the  terrestial  paradise  is  lost  in  another 
light.  "  Suddenly  day  seemed  added  unto  day,  as  if  Omnipotence  had  lit 
up  the  sky  with  another  sun."  The  poet  is  lifted  up  from  earth  to  heaven. 
And  yet  it  is  the  lowest  heaven  which  h'rst  he  visits  —  the  heaven  of  the 
moon,  with  its  waxing  and  waning,  the  proper  home  of  those  whose  wills 
on  earth  were  imperfect  through  instability.  Here  are  nuns,  who,  being 
constrained  to  marry,  did  not  return  to  their  vows  when  they  had  oppor- 
tunity. This  sphere  is  revolved  by  the  Angels.  The  next  sphere  is  that  of 
Mercury,  and  Archangels  have  it  in  charge,  turning  it  in  due  order  around 
the  earth  and  the  sphere  of  the  moon  which  it  encloses.  In  this  sphere 
of  Mercury  abide  those  whose  wills  were  on  earth  imperfect  through  love  of 
fame  —  men  of  great  activity  and  eloquence,  who  lived  on  the  whole  for 
God,  yet  at  the  same  time  had  some  regard  to  the  praise  of  men.  Then 
comes  the  sphere  of  Venus,  revolved  by  the  Principalities,  and  fitly  made 
the  home  of  those  whose  wills  on  earth  were  imperfect  through  excess  of 
human  love,  even  though  that  love  was  in  itself  lawful.  Here  Dante  is  led  to 

"admire  the  Art  that  turns  to  good 
Such  passion,  and  the  Wisdom  manifold 
Whence  earthly  love  by  heavenly  is  subdued." 

Thence  he  is  lifted  to  the  Sun,  the  fourth  heaven,  revolved  by  the  Powers. 
Here  in  this  chi^f  light  of  the  material  universe,  I  am  happy  to  observe 


520  DANTE   AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY. 

that  he  places  the  abode  of  doctors  of  divinity  and  philosophy,  probably 
because  they  have  themselves  been  sources  of  light  to  the  Church.  The 
sphere  of  Mars,  to  which  the  poet  next  ascends,  is  revolved  by  the 
Virtues.  Here  he  sees  the  forms  of  distinguished  warriors,  confessors,  and 
martyrs  for  the  faith,  not  drawn  up  in  the  order  of  an  earthly  army  but 
ranged  together  in  the  shape  of  a  cross.  Then  comes  the  sphere  of  Jupiter, 
of  which  the  Dominations  have  control.  Here  rulers  eminent  for  justice 
are  disposed  in  the  shape  of  an  eagle ;  and  wonderful  to  tell,  the  Eagle, 
collective  representation  of  earth's  noblest  kings  and  potentates,  itself  finds 
a  voice,  and  speaks  to  Dante  of  the  greater  things  of  the  divine  kingdom. 
In  the  planet  Saturn,  or  seventh  heaven,  revolved  by  the  Thrones,  are 
found  contemplative  spirits,  or  those  who  have  furnished  the  most  illustrious 
examples  of  the  monastic  life.  The  cold  sphere  of  Saturn  is  peculiarly 
adapted  to  the  monks  and  hermits  who  have  resigned  the  warmth  of  the 
fireside  and  the  fervors  of  civic  life,  in  order  to  give  themselves  to  prayer 
and  to  the  study  of  heavenly  truth.  The  heaven  of  the  fixed  stars  comes 
next,  for  Dante  knew  of  no  planet  beyond  Saturn.  Here  the  Cherubim 
move  the  sphere,  and  the  apostles  and  saints  of  the  Old  and  of  the  New 
Testaments  have  their  dwelling.  And  here,  before  he  is  permitted  to  ascend 
higher,  Dante  passes  an  examination  on  the  subject  of  Faith,  Hope  and  Love, 
—  St.  Peter,  St.  James  and  St.  John  successively  conducting  it.  When  he 
has  shown  himself  expert  in  these  prerequisites  to  heavenly  bliss,  the  poet 
is  carried  up  to  the  ninth,  or  highest  heaven,  revolved  by  the  Seraphim. 
This  sphere  is  called  the  Primum  Mobile,  because  its  motion  is  most  rapid, 
and  is  the  cause  of  motion  to  all  the  spheres  which  it  encloses.  This  highest 
heaven  is  starless  and  crystalline  ;  and  here  "the  nine  orders  of  the  celestial 
hierarchy  circle  in  fiery  rings  around  the  Light  which  no  man  can  approach 
unto,  manifested  as  an  Atomic  Point. " 

Dante  has  reached  the  summit  of  being,  and  is  permitted  to  gaze  upon 
its  uncreated  Source.  A  stream  of  light  proceeds  from  God  himself.  In 
that  light  the  multitude  of  saints  and  angels  find  their  blessedness. 

"  And  as  a  cliff  looks  down  upon  the  bed 

Of  some  clear  stream,  to  see  how  richly  crowned 

With  flowers  and  foliage  is  its  lofty  head, 
So  all  from  earth  who  hither  e'er  returned, 

Seated  on  more  than  thousand  thrones  around, 
Within  the  Eternal  Light  themselves  discerned." 

It  is  the  "Rose  of  the  Blessed"  —  the  great  company  of  the  redeemed, 
circling,  like  the  petals  of  a  rose,  rank  beyond  rank,  around  the  mystical 
lake  of  light  which  reflects  that  "Light  which  no  man  hath  seen  or  can 
see."  The  saints  of  all  ages  are  here,  from  Adam  to  St.  Paul,  and  from  the 
Virgin  Mary  to  Beatrice.  All  the  praises  which  Dante  has  hitherto  lavished 
upon  the  lady  of  his  love  fail  now,  he  says,  to  give  any  adequate  conception 
of  her  loveliness,  as  with  him  she  ascends  to  the  highest  heaven.  But  his 
love  is  now  no  merely  earthly  love, —  he  has  learned  the  lesson  that  "  our 
loves  in  higher  love  endure. "  Love  for  God  draws  him  nearer  to  Beatrice, 
and  conversely,  love  for  Beatrice  draws  him  nearer  to  God.  His  eyes,  and 
all  eyes,  are  supremely  set  on  the  Highest  of  all  —  the  triune  God, —  into 
partnership  with  whom  our  humanity  has  been  taken,  in  the  person  of  the 
Son,  and  whose  Trinity  in  Unity  is  now  unfolded  to  the  adoring  contempla- 


DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY.  521 

tion  of  bis  creatures.  At  the  intercession  of  St.  Bernard,  Dante  is  enabled 
with  purified  sight  to  gaze  directly  upon  the  Supreme  Jehovah,  and  is  moved 
to  pray  that  grace  may  be  given  him  so  to  utter  what  he  sees,  that  genera- 
tions to  come  may  catch  some  glimpse  of  the  sublime  vision  : 

"  O  Sovereign  Light !  who  dost  exalt  thee  high 

Above  all  thoughts  that  mortal  may  conceive, 
Recall  thy  semblance  to  my  mental  eye, 
And  let  my  tongue  record  the  wondrous  story, 

That  I  to  nations  yet  unborn  may  leave 
One  spark  at  least  of  thy  surpassing  glory  I" 

But  the  light  transcends  all  powers  of  description.  Only  one  thing  is  made 
plain  —  and  that  the  greatest  thing  of  all  —  in  God,  Light  and  Love  are  one  : 

"  The  glorious  vision  here  my  powers  o'ercame  ;— 

But  now  my  will  and  wish  were  swayed  by  Love— 
(As  turns  a  wheel  on  every  side  the  same) 
Love  —  at  whose  word  the  sun  and  planets  move." 

So  ends  the  Divine  Comedy.  The  translation  of  Wright,  which  I  have 
generally  used  because  it  best  represents  the  rhythm  and  rhyme  of  the 
original,  is  in  these  last  lines  in  one  respect  defective, —  it  does  not  put  at 
the  end  the  word  with  which  Dante  meant  his  poem  to  close.  That  word 
is  the  "stars."  With  this  word  he  ends  the  Inferno  : 

"  Emerging,  we  once  more  beheld  the  stars." 
With  this  word  he  ends  the  Purgatorio  : 

"  And  with  a  will  endued  to  mount  the  stars." 
With  this  word  he  ends  also  the  Paradiso  : 

"  The  Love  that  moves  the  sun  and  the  other  stars." 

We  can  now  see  how  narrow  and  unintelligent  that  criticism  is  which 
represents  Dante's  poetry  as  savage  and  grotesque,  and  regards  the  poet  as 
capable  only  of  rough  effects.  The  truth  is  that  Dante  is  of  all  poets  the 
most  sensitive  to  the  changeful  aspects  of  nature  ;  every  hour  of  the  day  or 
the  night  has  to  him  its  peculiar  beauty  ;  no  poet  ever  read  in  the  book  of 
nature  more  spiritual  lessons  ;  no  poet  ever  expressed  those  lessons  in  more 
varied  and  melodious  phrase.  When  the  boys  of  the  street  saw  him  go  by, 
they  said  :  "There  goes  the  man  that  was  in  Hell !"— and  there  was  in  his 
countenance  a  solemn  gravity  which  gave  verisimilitude  to  the  popular 
report.  But  Dante  did  not  revel  in  horrors,  as  some  imagine.  It  was  his 
instinct  of  righteousness,  and  not  a  morbid  disposition  to  gloat  over  suffer- 
ing, that  furnished  the  animus  of  his  dark  descriptions  of  the  torments  of  the 
lost.  He  had  an  enthusiasm  for  justice, —  but  then  he  had  also  a  soul  trem- 
ulously sensitive  to  the  least  of  earth's  sorrows,  and  to  all  those  benignant 
agencies  by  which  God  would  remedy  them.  Dante  was  thorough-going. 
He  saw  the  depth  of  man's  need  ;  he  saw  the  grandeur  of  the  heavenly  disci- 
pline. He  did  not  waste  his  fervors  on  sin  or  sinners  ;  he  reserved  those  for 
struggling  purity,  and  for  God's  plan  of  rescue  and  restoration.  Dante  is 
the  most  ethical  of  poets, — he  measures  all  things  by  the  standard  of  the 
Sanctuary.  But  all  beauty  that  is  real  or  lasting  —  all  moral  beauty,  in  short 
—  wakes  in  Dante's  soul  responsive  emotions,  and  finds  a  calm  and  sweet 
expression  in  his  verse. 

Take  for  example  the  poet's  ruling  conception  of  heaven.     It  is  that  of 


DANTE    AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY. 

light — light  qualified  by  love.  No  language  upon  earth  has  such  a  marvel- 
ous wealth  of  terms  expressive  of  the  varying  shades  and  aspects  of  light 
as  has  the  Italian.  And  the  most  of  these  it  owes  to  Dante.  He  not  only 
pressed  into  service  every  word  his  native  Italian  furnished,  but  he  revived 
scores  of  words  which  slept  in  the  Latin  classics ;  and,  when  these  would 
not  suffice,  he  coined  yet  others  from  the  mint  of  his  own  brain.  This 
was  no  fanaticism  of  sensuous  delight ;  it  was  the  struggle  of  a  great  nature 
to  express  moral  truth  through  the  poor  vehicle  of  human  speech.  There 
rang  forever  in  his  ears  that  sounding  and  sublime  sentence  :  "  God  is 
light,  and  in  him  is  no  darkness  at  all."  In  the  Paradise,  when  all  other 
earthly  images  fail  him  to  describe  the  state  of  the  redeemed,  he  represents 
their  blessedness  under  the  figure  of  ever-new  intensities  and  splendors  of 
the  light.  The  saints  are  "light  in  the  Lord"  ;  they  have  "awaked,  and 
risen  from  the  dead,  and  Christ  has  given  them  light."  So  the  "light"  is 
the  light  of  truth,  of  purity,  of  holiness  —  the  opposite  to  that  "darkness," 
which  is  error  and  impurity  and  sin.  As  God  himself  is  light,  and  dwells 
in  the  light  which  is  unapproachable,  so  each  successive  rise  in  the  scale  of 
being  is  a  rise  from  one  degree  of  light  to  another, — not  a  merely  physical 
and  passive  elevation  either,  since  it  is  the  mind  and  heart  and  will  into 
which  and  through  which  "  the  true  light  now  shineth."  No  Mohammedan 
Paradise  is  here,  but  only  the  Paradise  which  consists  in  holiness  and  in 
likeness  to  God.  The  poet  who  could  thus  resist  the  sensuous  and  exter- 
nalizing influences  of  the  Church  of  his  day  must  not  only  have  drunk  deep 
of  a  nobler  than  Pierian  spring  —  even  the  well  of  Holy  Scripture  —  but 
must  have  been  specially  guided  and  enlightened  by  the  Holy  Spirit  of  God. 
In  another  respect  Dante's  Paradise  is  worthy  of  the  highest  praise.  It 
represents  nearness  to  God  and  service  to  God's  creatures  as  contempo- 
raneous. Rank  in  God's  creation  is  determined  by  the  clearness  of  the  soul's 
vision  of  God  —  here  the  mystical  and  contemplative  element  in  religion 
has  its  rights  accorded  to  it.  But  the  ascetic  exaggerations  of  this  truth, 
which  had  so  infected  the  life  of  the  church,  Dante  is  almost  wholly  a 
stranger  to.  He  writes  from  the  point  of  view,  not  of  the  monk,  but  of  the 
common  Christian.  Exceedingly  few  of  the  so-called  saints  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  calendar  does  he  deign  to  notice ;  the  more  healthful  Scriptural 
examples  of  chastity  and  faith  and  endurance  are  strewn  thickly  over  his 
pages.  And  then,  most  remarkable  of  all,  he  has  made  the  nine  heavens, 
with  all  their  higher  and  lower  spheres,  only  the  working-places  of  the 
redeemed  ;  while  their  working-places  are  below,  their  dwelling-places  are 
on  high,  in  the  mystical  White  Rose  which  is  above  all  time  and  space, 
around  the  mystical  lake  of  light,  where  there  is  no  need  of  sun  or  moon, 
because  God  and  the  Lamb  are  the  light  of  it.  All  the  saints  dwell  in  the 
light  of  God's  immediate  presence,  and  according  to  their  capacity  are  made 
to  reflect  that  light.  But  just  in  proportion  to  the  light  which  they  are  able 
to  receive,  just  in  proportion  to  their  nearness  to  God  and  the  clearness  of 
their  vision  of  him,  is  the  service  they  are  permitted  to  render  others.  At 
the  same  time  that  they  worship  above,  they  have  an  existence  and  perform 
A  service  in  the  universe  of  time  and  space.  The  highest  of  them  can  help 
God's  creatures  in  the  heaven  of  the  fixed  stars  ;  the  lowest  of  them  can 
help  those  who  are  just  beginning  their  course  in  the  heaven  of  the  moon. 


DXNTE    AND   THE    DIVINE    COMEDY.  523 

It  is  not  worth  our  while  to  stop  here  and  smile  at  Dante,  until  we  ponder 
those  words  of  our  Lord  from  which  the  poet,  it  may  be,  derived  the 
suggestion  of  his  thought:  "See  that  ye  despise  not  one  of  these  little 
ones,  for  in  heaven  their  angels  do  alway  behold  the  face  of  my  Father 
which  is  in  heaven. "  What  is  this  but  to  say  :  Heaven  and  earth  are  not 
mutually  exclusive.  Angels  —  and  if  angels,  why  not  redeemed  men  ?  —  by 
so  much  as  they  are  near  to  God,  by  so  much  do  they  busy  themselves  in 
service  to  God's  creatures.  Heaven  is  no  refuge  of  idleness ;  no  hands 
hang  down,  and  no  lips  are  dumb.  "His  servants  shall  serve  him." 
Knowledge  of  God  and  service  to  men  are  contemporaneous  and  interde- 
pendent. The  nearer  we  get  to  God,  the  larger  shall  be  our  sphere  of 
loving  activity ;  the  more  shall  we  resemble  him,  who,  though  he  was  the 
very  son  of  God  and  in  the  very  bosom  of  the  Father,  yet  was  among  us 
"as  one  that  serveth." 

So  holiness  is  joined  to  love,  and  holiness  and  love  together  constitute 
Dante's  heaven.  It  is  beautiful  to  see  how,  in  the  Paradise,  all  heaven 
rejoices  over  the  new  joy  of  each  victorious  and  ascending  spirit,  and  how 
increasing  nearness  to  God  brings  its  inhabitants  ever  nearer  to  each  other. 
Even  the  ministrants  in  the  upper  temple  get  new  understanding  of  the 
wonders  of  God's  grace,  and  take  on  a  new  brightness  of  holy  love,  as  they 
see  Dante  enter  heaven.  It  was  with  such  thoughts  as  these  that  the  exile 
soothed  the  long  years  of  his  poverty  and  disappointment.  Who  can 
wonder  that  to  him  the  spiritual  world  became  at  last  more  real  than  the 
material  world  that  was  open  to  his  senses  !  It  is  sometimes  made  matter 
of  complaint  against  him  that  his  representations  were  so  matter  of  fact ; 
that  his  journey  through  Hell,  Purgatory  and  Heaven  was  so  real  a  journey  ; 
that  its  incidents  were  so  like  the  incidents  of  actual  experience.  Ah,  this 
is  the  wonder  and  the  poetry  of  it !  Imagination  and  piety  created  a  new 
world.  Just  so  did  John  Bunyan,  in  Bedford  jail,  turn  from  the  earthly 
to  the  heavenly,  from  the  seen  to  the  unseen,  from  the  temporal  to  the 
•eternal.  He  not  only  saw  Christian  making  his  way  from  the  City  of  De- 
struction to  the  Heavenly  City,  but  he  ivas  Christian.  So  Dante's  vividness 
of  description  is  not  mere  literary  art ;  it  is  a  deeper  process  than  that, —  it 
is  a  living  through  the  things  which  he  described,  so  that  he  could  say  : 
(Jinn-urn  magnaque  pars  fid. 

It  is  this  intense  realism  which  gives  the  Divine  Comedy  its  chief  power. 
It  is  the  utterance  of  the  greatest  man  of  his  time,  and  one  of  the  greatest 
men  of  all  times.  It  is  his  conscientious  and  God-fearing  attempt  to  express 
the  truth  of  God  as  his  generation  apprehended  it,  and  so  to  express  it  that 
it  might  influence  all  after  ages  to  turn  from  error  and  iniquity  to  truth  and 
righteousness.  Thomas  Carlyle  has  called  Dante  "the  mouth-piece  of  the 
middle  ages. "  The  German  Tieck  declares  that  in  him  ' '  ten  silent  centuries 
found  a  voice."  This  seems  high  praise,  but  Dante  deserves  higher  praise 
than  this.  He  is  the  mouth-piece,  not  only  of  the  middle  ages,  but  of  all 
ages.  Not  twelve  centuries,  but  all  the  centuries,  find  a  voice  in  him.  He 
illustrates  truths  that  are  true,  not  only  then,  but  now  and  always  —  truths 
of  sin  and  purgation  and  recovery  to  righteousness,  truths  for  the  expression 
of  which  God  spread  the  floor  of  the  universe  with  its  mosaic  of  constella- 
tions, and  caused  the  curtain  of  night  and  chaos  to  rise  at  the  creation. 


524  DANTE   AND   THE   DIVINE   COMEDY. 

"The  corruption  of  the  will,  the  purification  of  the  will,  the  perfection  of 
the  will " —  these  are  Dante's  themes  ;  and,  as  they  are  the  greatest  themes 
of  all,  so  they  are  themes  the  most  deeply  affecting  and  the  most 
permanently  inspiring.  Like  Mary's  breaking  of  the  alabaster  box,  this 
offering  of  Dante  to  Beatrice,  wherever  the  gospel  goes,  will  be  spoken  of 
for  a  memorial  of  her.  But  it  will  be  a  memorial  of  something  higher 
still,  even  of  that  higher  love  which  spoke  through  the  love  of  Beatrice, 
the  love  of  the  Triune  God  to  a  humanity  that  was  sunk  and  lost  in  its  sin. 
For  this  reason  the  poem  of  Dante  will  never  die.  Dante's  universe  has 
changed.  In  the  midst  of  the  Western  hemisphere  modern  discovery  has 
found,  not  the  Mount  of  Purgatory,  but  a  vast  new  continent.  Our  earth 
is  no  longer  the  centre  of  the  solar  system, —  it  is  a  satellite  of  the  sun 
instead.  But  the  great  truths  of  being  —  these  remain  just  what  they 
were  in  Dante's  time  ;  and  the  Divine  Comedy  will  be  immortal,  because  it 
is  the  grandest  utterance  yet  given  by  man  to  these  universal  and  funda- 
mental principles  in  the  nature  of  man  and  the  nature  of  God. 


XLIX. 

POETRY  AND  ROBERT  BROWNING.* 


It  is  a  serious  question  whether  this  article  would  ever  have  been  written, 
if  I  had  not  awhile  ago  seen  Robert  Browning  —  not  in  the  flesh,  but  in  the 
Watts  Collection.  I  do  not  refer  to  the  Collection  of  Isaac  "Watts,  valuable 
as  that  collection  is,  but  to  that  of  George  Frederick  Watts,  who  puts  his 
poetry  upon  canvas  instead  of  coining  it  into  song.  Many  critics  regard  this 
particular  Watts  as  the  best  modern  reviver  of  the  color  and  the  ideality  of 
the  Venetian  masters.  A  considerable  number  of  his  pictures  were  exhibited 
at  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art.  There  was  "Love  and  Death" — a 
rosy  boy,  with  appealing  look,  vainly  striving  to  press  back  from  the  thresh- 
old a  veiled  and  sombre  form  that  trampled  under  his  feet  the  flowers 
falling  from  Love's  fingers.  There  was  "Love  and  Life" — a  noble,  mas- 
culine figure  helping  a  fainting  maiden  along  a  rocky,  precipitous  path,  the 
lesson  being  this,  that  life  cannot  get  on  without  love.  There  was  "  Time, 
Death,  and  Judgment" —  Time,  an  immortal  youth  ;  Death,  a  solemn,  dusky 
shape  ;  both  wading  through  a  deep  stream,  while  Judgment,  with  flaming 
sword,  followed  close  behind. 

These  three  were  all  of  them  great  pictures  —  great  because  they  bodied 
forth  ideal  truth  and  gave  it  power  over  the  heart.  But  the  portraits  of  the 
Collection  were  more  impressive  still.  The  realistic  method  was  never  more 
rigidly  applied.  Each  subject  was  treated  in  its  own  way.  The  artist  had 
seized  the  central  feature  of  each  personality,  and  had  set  it  forth  so  vividly 
and  powerfully  that  the  living  man  stood  revealed  before  you  in  lineaments 
never  to  be  forgotten.  There  was  Lord  Lawrence,  a  swarthy  face  against  a 
lurid  background,  as  if  just  emerging  from  the  smoke  and  flame  and  blood 
of  the  Indian  Mutiny.  There  was  Sir  Frederick  Leighton,  President  of  the 
Royal  Academy,  all  elegance  and  jollity,  as  if  he  cared  not  a  tig  whether  his 
special  school  of  painting  kept  or  not.  There  was  John  Stuart  Mill,  cold 
and  intellectual,  as  if  meditating  whether  in  some  distant  star  like  Sirius 
two  and  two  might  not  possibly  make  five.  There  was  John  Lothrop  Mot- 
ley, the  very  pink  of  a  literary  aristocrat.  There  was  Cardinal  Manning,  all 
scarlet  and  lace,  all  dignity  and  devotion,  but  with  an  ascetic  air  that  seemed 
to  say  he  had  not  had  a  good  meal  of  victuals  since  he  entered  the  Roman 
Church.  There  was  Thomas  Carlyle,  biting  through  his  under-lip  for  very 
groutiness.  There  was  Swinburne,  a  pert  little  counter-jumper,  with  red 
hair  flying  all  abroad,  as  if  he  had  just  received  a  shock  of  electricity.  There 
was  Alfred  Tennyson,  with  melancholy  and  self-consciousness  only  slightly 
relieved  by  the  remembrance  of  his  elevation  to  the  House  of  Lords.  And 


*A  Lecture  delivered  at  Wellesley  College,  May,  1886;  printed  in  the  Examiner, 
December,  1887. 

525 


526  POETRY    AND    ROBERT   BROWNING. 

there,  finally,  was  Robert  Browning,  healthy,  robust,  sagacious,  subtle  • 
seemingly  a  large-minded  cotton-manufacturer  rather  than  a  retail  vender 
of  "Bed-cotton  Night-caps "  ;  with  good  humor,  knowledge  of  affairs,  insight 
into  character,  determination  to  express  what  he  saw  ;  but  as  for  "the  soul 
of  melody,"  "singing  as  the  bird  sings,"  or  anything  sensuous,  sentimental,, 
or  purely  artistic,  why  it  was  simply  not  there.  Philosopher,  critic  of  life, 
man  of  the  world  ?  Yes.  But,  poet  ?  "Well,  if  so,  not  one  of  the  common 
sort.  Not  Tennyson's  "  The  poet  in  a  golden  clime  was  born,"  but  Emer- 
son's "The  free  winds  told  him  what  they  knew,"  is  the  verse  to  describe 
him.  Yet  when  I  saw  the  portrait,  I  felt  that  I  had  new  light  thrown  upon 
all  that  Browning  ever  wrote.  The  man  interpreted  his  work.  I  recog- 
nized a  new  species  of  the  genus  '  poet ' —  one  who  has  made  a  sort  of  poetry 
so  entirely  his  own  that  we  shall  have  to  pull  down  our  barns  and  build 
greater,  or  else  construct  an  Annex  to  our  old  scheme  of  classification,  in 
order  to  make  room  for  him  and  take  him  in. 

That  Eobert  Browning  is  a  great  writer,  the  story  of  his  life  sufficiently 
demonstrates.  Born  in  1812,  he  was  graduated  at  the  London  University 
before  reaching  the  age  of  twenty.  He  then  spent  some  years  south  of  the 
Alps,  rummaging  about  in  the  libraries  of  old  monasteries  and  inspecting 
the  pictures  of  old  cathedrals,  till  Walter  Savage  Landor  could  truly  say  that 
Browning  never  strikes  a  false  note  when  he  treats  of  Italy.  Pauline  was 
his  first  printed  poem ;  Paracelsus,  published  in  1836,  his  first  tragedy. 
His  Strafford  was  represented  upon  the  stage,  and  failed,  though  Macready 
took  the  principal  role,  in  1837.  He  married  Elizabeth  Barrett  in  1846,  and 
Mrs.  Browning  died  in  1861.  During  all  these  and  the  following  years  Mr. 
Browning  has  been  a  prolific  writer.  As  many  as  ten  thick  volumes  attest 
his  industry.  Yet  he  has  never  caught  the  popular  ear,  —  he  has  never  tried 
to  catch  it.  His  productions  have  had  to  make  their  way  against  storms  of 
criticism,  but  they  have  been  read  by  a  continually  increasing  number  of 
thoughtful  people.  Whatever  the  student  of  literature  may  think  of  Brown- 
ing, he  must  take  account  of  the  fact  that  never  before  was  there  a  writer  of 
verse  for  the  study  of  whose  writings  during  his  life-time  clubs  were  formed 
in  every  large  city  of  both  hemispheres  —  the  proceedings  of  some  of  these 
clubs  being  regularly  published,  like  the  transactions  of  learned  societies. 
Here  is  at  least  a  literary  phenomenon.  There  are  two  possible  explanations  : 
Either  Eobert  Browning  is  a  plausible  pretender,  or  he  is  a  great  poet.  Is 
Robert  Browning  a  great  poet?  Well,  "that  depends."  We  must  know 
what  poetry  is,  and  what  Robert  Browning  is.  I  shall  treat  my  reader, 
therefore,  to  a  definition  of  poetry  which,  however  defective  in  other  respects 
it  may  be,  will,  at  least,  have  the  merit  of  being  brand-new.  I  shall  then 
weigh  Robert  Browning  in  these  new  balances,  and  see  whether  he  is  found 
wanting. 

Poetry  is  the  imaginative  reproduction  of  the  universe,  in  its  ideal  relations, 
and  the  expression  of  these  relations  in  rhythmical  literary  form.  The  mean- 
ing of  this  definition  will  more  fully  appear  if  we  say  concretely  that  the  poet 
is,  first,  a  creator ;  secondly,  an  idealizer ;  and,  thirdly,  a  literary  artist. 
Take  the  first  of  these.  There  is  a  creative  element  in  all  true  poetry.  The 
poet  is  etymologically  a  "maker,"  not  in  the  sense  in  which  God  is  the 
Maker  of  all,  but  in  the  secondary  sense,  that  he  shapes  into  new  forms  the 


POETRY   AND    ROBERT   BROWNING.  527 

material  made  ready  to  his  hand.  Browning  has  himself  furnished  us  with 
a  noble  description  of  this  office  of  the  imagination  : 

"  I  find  first 

Writ  down  for  very  A  B  C  of  fact : 
1  In  the  beginning  God  made  heaven  and  earth.' 

Man  —  as  befits  the  made,  the  inferior  thing— 

Repeats  God's  process,  in  man's  due  degree, 
Attaining  man's  proportionate  result; 

Creates  ?  no,  but  resuscitates,  perhaps 

For  such  man's  feat  is,  in  the  due  degree. 
Mimic  creation,  galvanism  for  life — 
But  still  a  glory  portioned  in  the  scale." 

Still  further  on  in  the  same  work  from  which  we  have  quoted  (  The  Ring 
and  the  Book,  1 :  706-741 ),  the  author  compares  this  manipulation  of  fact 
by  the  imagination  to  the  adding  of  alloy  when  the  gold  is  made  into  a  ring. 
We  must  remember,  however,  that  this  creative  function  is  to  be  clearly 
distinguished  from  that  power  of  the  mind  which  merely  recalls  the  past. 
The  reproductive  faculty  is  not  simply  the  representative  faculty.  Imagi- 
nation is  not  memory.  Every  woman  can  write  one  novel ;  she  remembers 
one  story  —  her  own,  and  she  can  tell  that.  But  "  the  vision  and  the  faculty 
divine"  that  can  evolve  a  hundred  stories,  all  true  to  life  and  throbbing  with 
emotion,  how  rare  a  thing  is  this  !  Byron  shows  the  narrowness  of  his  cre- 
ative powers,  when  everywhere,  on  the  Alps  or  on  the  Rhine,  in  Greece,  or 
Spain,  or  Italy,  he  sees  only  himself,  —  Manfred  and  the  Giaour,  Childe  Har- 
old, and  Don  Juan,  are  all  Byron,  under  different  names  and  various  thin 
disguises.  Not  so  with  Shakespeare.  The  greatness  of  the  master  appears 
in  nothing  so  much  as  in  this,  that  in  Shakespeare  you  see  everybody  and 
everything,  but  Shakespeare  himself.  So  Browning  hides  his  own  person- 
ality. Only  twice  that  I  remember,  in  all  his  writings,  does  he  speak  in  his 
own  name  ;  first,  in  that  magnificent  tribute  to  his  living  wife,  One  }\  'ord 
More ;  and,  secondly,  at  the  close  of  his  Introduction  to  The  Ring  and 
the  Book,  in  which  he  almost  apotheosizes  his  wife,  now  dead.  There  is- 
indeed  a  couplet  in  the  opening  lines  of  The  Inn  Album,  which  reads  : 

"  That  bard's  a  Browning !  he  neglects  the  form : 
But  ah,  the  sense,  ye  gods,  the  weighty  sense !  " 

But  even  here  Browning  is  not  speaking  in  the  first  person, —  in  fact,  it  is 
not  Browning  who  is  speaking  at  all,  but  rather  one  of  Browning's  dramatis 
personcB,  though  it  is  of  Browning  that  he  speaks.  It  still  remains  true  that 
Browning  deals  with  the  non-ego,  not  with  the  ego  in  the  sense  of  self. 

I  Lave  called  poetry  the  imaginative  reproduction  of  the  universe.  But  I 
have  not  meant  to  limit  the  word  "universe"  to  its  technical  theological 
meaning.  I  have  meant  it  to  include  all,  even  God  himself.  Only  by  giv- 
ing to  the  term  this  infinite  sweep  of  significance,  do  we  gain  the  proper 
conception  of  the  dignity  of  poetry.  It  is  nothing  less  than  the  reproduc- 
tion to  the  imagination,  of  all  being,  all  beauty,  all  truth — in  short,  of  all 
things  visible  or  invisible.  The  high  praises  of  God  are  its  noblest  province, 
bat  all  the  world  of  finite  things  is  its  province  also.  To  reproduce  all  this 
to  the  imagination  would  require  an  infinite  mind,  and  the  result  would  be 
the  poetry  of  the  ages,  the  poetry  of  eternity.  If  this  be  the  meaning  of  the 


528  POETRY    AND    ROBERT    BROWNING. 

word  "universe,"  then  it  is  certain  that  no  mortal  poet  can  compass  it. 
Hence  the  poet  must  make  his  choice  ;  he  must  divide,  in  order  to  conquer. 
It  is  not  to  his  discredit  that  he  takes  a  limited  field,  provided  within  those 
limits  he  "holds  the  mirror  up  to  nature  "  and  shows  us  the  essential  truth 
of  things.  In  order  to  judge  Browning  justly,  then,  we  must  ask  what  range 
he  has  assigned  himself,  and  whether  within  that  range  he  shows  himself 
possessed  of  a  great  creative  imagination. 

The  most  obvious  thing  to  be  said  about  Browning's  genius  is  that  he  is 
the  poet,  not  of  nature,  but  of  man.  Wordsworth  was  the  poet  of  nature. 
To  him  the  world  was  sacred,  because  symbolic,  and  interfused  with  a  divine 
element.  The  "light  of  setting  suns,"  and  "  the  billows  rolling  evermore  " 
—  these  kindled  his  poetic  imagination. 

"  To  me  the  meanest  flower  that  blows  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears." 

"  The  meadow,  grove,  and  stream, 
The  earth,  and  every  common  sight, 

To  me  did  seem 
Apparelled  in  celestial  light, 
The  glory  and  the  freshness  of  a  dream." 

Now  all  this  affords  the  utmost  contrast  to  Browning's  poetry.  I  doubt 
whether  sentiments  like  these  can  be  found  in  all  the  dozen  solid  volumes 
that  bear  his  name.  Browning  and  Wordsworth  both  deal  with  common 
things ;  but  Wordsworth  treats  of  nature,  Browning  of  life.  The  latter  could 
adopt  Pope's  line,  "The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man."  And  in  the 
introduction  to  Sordello,  where  our  author  has  most  clearly  indicated  the 
direction  of  his  literary  ambition,  he  says  in  plain  prose  :  * '  My  stress  lay  on 
the  incidents  in  the  development  of  a  soul. " 

Again,  Browning  is  the  poet,  not  of  events,  but  of  thoughts.  He  cares, 
not  so  much  for  the  result,  as  for  the  process.  He  describes,  not  so  much 
incidents,  as  people's  impressions  of  them.  Some  might  perhaps  think  that 
in  the  Bringing  of  the  Good  News  from  Ghent  to  Aix,  we  had  at  least 
one  exception  to  this  rule  ;  but  even  here,  the  interest  lies  not  so  much  in 
the  ride  as  in  the  rider  ;  not  so  much  in  the  redoubtable  steed  as  in  the  fiery 
determination  that  spurred  him  on  ;  not  so  much  in  the  deliverance  itself  as 
in  the  thoughts  of  the  deliverer.  Barely,  if  ever,  has  this  writer's  verse  any 
tinge  of  the  objective,  much  less  of  the  epic.  On  the  other  hand,  he  lets  us 
into  the  secrets  of  the  heart.  As  he  sets  before  us  Bishop  Blougram's 
Apology  for  holding  great  ecclesiastical  preferments  while  all  real  faith  in 
the  doctrines  he  was  set  to  defend  has  gone  out  of  him,  we  see  "all  the 
recesses  and  windings  of  an  acute  but  mean  and  peddling  little  soul. "  As 
we  hear  the  duke  calmly  describe  his  villanous  treatment  of  My  Last 
Duchess,  it  is  difficult  to  say  which  we  most  shudder  at,  the  speaker's  icy 
cruelty,  or  his  unconsciousness  of  it.  No  poet  has  more  clearly  taught  that 
"  out  of  the  heart  are  the  issues  of  life,"  and  that  "  as  a  man  thinketh,  so  is 
he."  No  poet  has  more  powerfully  depicted  the  self -perpetuating  sin  of  the 
thoughts,  or  has  given  more  impressive  illustrations  of  the  necessity  of 
"bringing  every  thought  into  captivity,"  if  we  would  make  the  least  pre- 
tense to  virtue. 

Once  more,  Browning's  poetry  is,  not  lyric,  but  dramatic.     He  does  not 


POETRY   AND    ROBERT   BROWNING.  529 

himself  describe  men's  thoughts,  but  he  makes  men  describe  their  own.  In 
one  of  his  poems  he  rebukes  a  brother  poet  for  "  speaking  naked  thoughts, 
instead  of  draping  them  in  sights  and  sounds."  In  the  Spanish  Cloister, 
the  malicious,  cursing  monk  involuntarily  sets  before  us  the  character  and 
life  of  the  gentle  and  kindly  brother  whom  he  hates ;  so  that,  though  the 
latter  never  utters  a  word  for  himself,  the  very  cursing  of  his  enemy  becomes 
his  justification  and  his  monument.  The  little  poem  entitled  Confessions 
contains  a  startling  revelation  of  the  heart.  It  is  the  last  words  of  a  dying 
man.  He  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  clergyman  who  comes  to  give 
him  spiritual  consolation.  He  fastens  his  eyes  on  the  medicine-bottles  upon 
the  table,  and  his  imagination  turns  even  them  into  a  picture  of  a  darling 
sin  of  his  youth,  and  gloats  over  the  remembered  transgression,  even  though 
the  next  moment  is  to  usher  him  into  the  presence  of  God.  All  this  reminds 
me  of  a  historical  incident  related  by  Mrs.  Charles,  in  her  book  entitled 
The  Diary  of  Kitty  Trevylyan.  John  Nelson,  the  Methodist  preacher  of 
England,  was  converted  by  means  of  a  dream.  He  saw  the  great  white 
throne  set,  and  the  myriads  gathered  of  earth  and  heaven.  The  Judge  sat 
silent,  but  before  him  was  an  open  book.  Up  to  that  book  came  one  by  one 
in  long  procession  every  soul  of  all  mankind,  and  as  each  advanced  he  tore 
open  his  breast  as  a  man  would  tear  open  the  bosom  of  his  shirt,  and  then 
compared  his  heart  with  the  commandments  written  in  the  book.  Not  a 
word  was  said,  nor  did  the  Judge  lift  his  finger  ;  but  each  man,  according 
as  his  heart  agreed  or  disagreed  with  that  perfect  standard,  went  with  joy  to 
the  company  of  the  saved,  or  in  despair  to  the  company  of  the  damned.  Sin 
became  its  own  detecter  and  judge  and  tormentor.  So,  as  we  read  Robert 
Browning,  we  become  aware  that  a  process  of  self -revelation  is  going  on. 
We  seem  to  have  naked  souls  before  us.  We  look  into  the  heart  of  man,  and 
into  the  Day  of  Judgment. 

Now,  granting  to  our  author  his  peculiar  and  chosen  department,  namely, 
man;  his  aspect  of  that  segment  of  the  universe,  namely,  thought;  and, 
finally,  his  method  of  treatment,  the  dramatic;  we  ask  once  more,  Is  Brown- 
ing a  great  creative  genius  ?  I  think  no  one  who  has  attentively  and  sym- 
pathetically read  such  poems  as  Karshish,  Andrea  del  Sarto,  The  Flight 
of  the  Duchess,  Dis  Aliter  Visum,  The  Statue  and  the  Bust,  By  the 
Fireside,  Master  Hugues,  Evelyn  Hope,  can  refrain  from  answering  in 
the  affirmative.  But  none  of  these,  after  all,  give  more  than  fragmentary 
evidences  of  his  power.  The  greatest  work  of  Robert  Browning  is  unques- 
tionably The  Ring  and  the  Book.  A  sort  of  personality  invests  this  acknowl- 
edgment of  mine,  and  I  make  it  partly  by  way  of  reparation,  for  fifteen  years 
ago  I  began  to  read  this  production  of  the  poet,  but  allowed  myself  to  be 
daunted  by  the  roughness  and  obscurity  of  its  opening  pages.  I  threw  it 
down,  determined  to  read  no  more.  For  ten  years  I  kept  my  vow.  Begin- 
ning then  with  something  easier,  I  found  to  my  surprise  that  Browning  was 
comprehensible.  A  summer  vacation  devoted  to  The  Ring  and  the  Book 
converted  me  to  a  qualified  admirer  of  the  poet.  Now,  after  further  study 
of  his  writings,  I  regard  this  poem  as  the  greatest  work  of  creative  imagi- 
nation that  has  appeared  since  the  time  of  Shakespeare. 

I  wish  to  justify  this  statement,  which  to  many  will  seem  so  extraordinary. 
I  can  only  do  so  by  briefly  describing  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  It  is 
34 


530  POETRY    AND    ROBERT   BROWNING. 

founded  upon  the  story  of  an  old  Italian  murder.  Count  Guido,  after  hav- 
ing passed  his  youth  in  the  service  of  the  Pope,  and  having  failed  to  secure 
the  advancement  that  he  sought,  determines  in  disgust  to  retire  to  his 
dilapidated  castle  and  his  ancestral  estate.  He  bethinks  him,  however,  that 
an  addition  to  his  meagre  income  will  be  desirable,  and  he  manages,  with 
that  end  in  view,  to  marry  the  reputed  daughter  of  an  aged  and  well-to-do 
couple  of  the  middle  class,  and  to  take  her  with  him.  Her  parents  follow 
her,  and,  being  ill-treated .  by  him,  leave  his  house  in  wrath.  They  then 
make  known  the  fact  that  their  reputed  daughter  is  no  daughter  of  theirs, 
but  the  offspring  of  a  courtesan.  Count  Guido,  in  revenge,  pursues  toward 
his  wife  a  course  of  relentless  cruelty.  He  would  drive  her  from  him,  yet 
in  such  a  way  as  to  throw  the  blame  on  her.  A  young  priest  is  filled  with 
pity  for  this  double  victim  of  avarice  and  malice  —  so  young,  so  pure,  so 
miserable  —  and  he  helps  her  to  escape  and  to  make  her  way  to  her  so-called 
father's  house  in  Borne.  Thither  Count  Guido  pursues  her,  and  on  a. 
certain  Christmas  Eve  bursts  in  with  hired  assassins,  and  fatally  stabs  the 
father,  the  mother,  and  herself.  The  Count  is  apprehended,  tried,  and 
executed. 

It  is  this  story  upon  which  Browning  has  rung  the  changes  in  The  Ring- 
and  the  Book.  First,  we  have  the  bare  facts  narrated  — 1,400  lines. 
Secondly,  we  have  the  story  as  one-half  of  Home  tells  it,  said  one  part  taking 
the  part  of  the  husband — 1,500  lines.  Thirdly,  what  the  other  half  of  Home 
said,  taking  the  side  of  the  wife  — 1,700  lines.  Fourthly,  Tertium  Quid  — 
what  the  few,  the  elite,  the  cultured,  the  Cardinals  said  — 1,600  lines. 
Fifthly,  what  Count  Guido  himself  said  — 2,000  lines.  Sixthly,  what  the 
brave  young  priest  said,  who  fled  with  the  Count's  wife  —  2,100  lines.  Sev- 
enthly, what  the  young  wife  herself  said,  during  the  short  hours  between 
the  attack  and  her  death  — 1,800  lines.  Eighthly,  what  the  counsel  for  the 
defence  said  at  the  trial  — 1,800  lines.  Ninthly,  what  the  counsel  for  the 
prosecution  said  at  that  same  trial  — 1,600  lines.  Tenthly,  what  the  Pope  said, 
to  whom  the  case  was  referred  for  final  decision  —  2,100  lines.  Eleventhly, 
what  Count  Guido  said  in  jjrison  before  he  was  beheaded  —  2,400  lines. 
Twelfthly,  what  the  world  said  when  all  was  over  —  900  lines. 

A  most  audacious  and  weary  specimen  of  literary  trifling,  the  reader  will 
be  apt  to  say.  Not  so.  Each  new  telling  of  the  story  adds  new  incident  and 
sheds  new  light.  The  effect  is  stereoscopic, —  you  see  the  facts  from  ever 
new  points  of  view.  Little  by  little  the  real  truth  is  evolved  from  the  chaos- 
of  testimony  ;  little  by  little  the  real  motives  of  the  actors  become  manifest. 
As  the  process  goes  on  you  catch  yourself  speculating  about  each  of  the 
dramatis  personce,  as  if  he  were  a  character  in  real  life.  The  complexity 
of  human  motive,  the  wonderful  interaction  of  character  and  circumstance,, 
the  vastness  of  the  soul  —  all  these  begin  to  dawn  upon  you.  Men  are  both 
better  and  worse  than  they  know  :  only  God  can  judge  the  heart.  I  know 
of  no  poem  in  all  literature  in  which  the  greatness  of  human  nature  so  looms 
up  before  you,  or  which  so  convinces  you  that  a  whole  heaven  or  a  whole 
hell  may  be  wrapped  up  in  the  compass  of  a  single  soul.  And,  as  for  the 
separate  figures,  I  know  not  where  to  find  characters  more  original  or  more 
distinct,  than  that  of  Guido,  with  a  selfishness  that  makes  sun,  moon,  and 
stars  revolve  about  him,  and  when  foiled,  turns  to  desperate  malignity  ;  or 


POETRY    AND    ROBERT   BROWNING.  531 

Pompilia,  the  white  lily  grown  out  of  the  horse-pond  scum,  unstained  even 
in  the  midst  of  cruelty  and  misery ;  or  Caponsacchi,  the  pleasure-loving  soul, 
turned  to  a  hero  by  one  resolve  of  daring  and  self-sacrifice ;  or  the  grand  old 
Pope,  rounding  out  a  just  life,  and  preparing  to  go  before  God's  judgment- 
bar,  by  doing  one  last  act  of  justice  and  judgment  upon  earth.  There  are 
those  who  think  this  poem  great  only  in  its  length, — and  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  it  gives  the  impression  of  inexhaustible  fertility.  But  such  critics  can 
scarcely  have  read  the  poem  through.  The  learning,  the  thought,  the  gen- 
eral conception  —  these  are  as  remarkable  as  the  length  ;  and  taking  them 
all  together,  I  am  persuaded  that  the  generations  to  come  will  regard  The 
Ring  and  the  Book,  in  the  mere  matter  of  creative  genius,  as  the  greatest 
poetical  work  of  this  generation. 

The  strongest  and  most  nattering  thing  that  can  be  said  about  Robert 
Browning  has  been  said  already.  We  have  found  him  to  possess  in  an 
eminent  degree  the  first  and  most  important  characteristic  of  the  true  poet, 
creative  genius.  But  there  is  a  second  standard  by  which  he  must  be  tried. 
Is  the  idealizing  element  as  highly  developed  in  him  ?  Poetry  is  the  imagi- 
native reproduction,  not  of  the  actual,  but  of  the  ideal  universe.  The  great 
poet,  then,  must  be  able  to  idealize.  His  imagination,  creative  though  it 
may  be,  must  not  find  its  affinities  in  the  bad,  the  morally  indifferent,  or 
the  merely  actual.  It  must  hold  high  converse  with  the  true,  the  beautiful, 
and  the  good.  The  poet  must  be  one  of 

"  The  immortal  few 

Who,  to  the  enraptured  soul  and  ear  and  eye, 
Teach  beauty,  virtue,  truth,  and  love,  and  melody." 

Let  me  make  this  plain  by  a  few  contrasts.  Imagination  is  not  enough 
to  make  a  poet.  I  once  had  a  classmate  who  had  a  vivid  imagination, —  the 
trouble  was  that  his  imagination  all  ran  to  snakes.  Of  words  descriptive  of 
creeping  and  slimy  things  —  centipedes,  scorpions,  and  toads — he  had  a 
rare  supply  ;  and  the  imaginative  power  displayed  in  his  occasional  objurga- 
tions was  something  impressive.  But  I  never  called  him  a  poet.  Somewhat 
similarly,  there  is  an  imagination  that  runs  by  instinct  to  the  morally  bad, 
that  seems  to  love  the  low  and  the  vile  for  its  own  sake  ;  or,  if  not  this,  is 
possessed  with  the  notion  —  a  notion  born  of  a  pantheistic  philosophy  —  that 
everything  that  is  has  a  sort  of  sacredness  and  value,  and  therefore  is  to  be 
faithfully  represented  in  literature.  And  so  we  have  Zola's  studies  of  morbid 
anatomy,  and  his  minute  depicting  of  the  festering  plague-spots  of  humanity. 
Of  a  somewhat  better  sort  are  the  novels  of  Henry  James  —  novels  with  no 
moral  purpose  ;  novels,  in  fact,  that  scout  a  moral  purpose  as  foreign  to  time 
art.  Mr.  James  seems  to  fancy  that  his  business  is  simply  to  set  before  us 
studies  of  actual  society  and  manners, —  he  would  photograph  modern  life. 

I  find  the  same  moral  indifferentism  in  George  Eliot, —  I  can  even  trace 
the  stream  back  to  Goethe.  George  Eliot's  description  of  Dinah,  the 
Methodist  preacher,  would  almost  convince  you  that  the  author  knew  the 
blessedness  of  such  a  Christian  experience  and  was  writing  of  it  out  of  her 
own  heart.  But  soon  she  lapses  from  that  high  strain,  and  a  critical  word 
suggests  to  us  that  all  this  has  been  described  only  as  a  peculiar  side  or 
aspect  of  human  life  ;  her  interest  in  it  is  purely  artistic  and  aesthetic,  not  the 


532  POETRY   AND   EGBERT   BROWNING. 

warmth  of  real  sympathy.  So  too  in  Wilhelm  Meister  —  that  "menagerie 
of  tame  creatures  " —  does  Goethe,  after  taking  his  youthful  charge  through 
the  sensualisms  of  the  green-room  and  the  strolling  theatre,  introduce  him, 
as  a  necessary  part  of  his  education,  to  an  example  of  exalted  piety.  The 
"Confessions  of  a  Beautiful  Soul,"  interjected  into  this  immoral  book,  are 
simply  proof  that  Goethe  had  no  real  belief  in  moral  distinctions,  and 
regarded  evil  as  a  necessary  condition  and  accompaniment  of  the  develop- 
ment of  good. 

Now,  in  contrast  to  all  this  tendency  in  our  modern  literature,  I  stand  for 
the  thesis  that  poetry  is  not  a  mere  representation  of  life.  Pre-Eaphaelite 
studies  of  nature  are  not  worthy  the  name  of  poetry.  Art  is  not  photog- 
raphy, and  photography  is  not  art.  The  ideal  element  must  be  seized 
and  exhibited,  or  we  have  no  poetry.  We  want  to  see  the  good  in  low 
surroundings,  and  we  want  to  see  the  evil,  only  as  a  foil  and  contrast  to  the 
good.  "Poetry,"  as  Ruskin  has  well  said,  "presents  to  us  noble  grounds 
for  the  noble  emotions."  We  seek  in  poetry  for  the  essential  truth  and 
beauty  that  lie  at  the  heart  of  things.  Bluer  skies  than  those  of  Italy, 
brighter  wit  than  that  of  Sydney  Smith,  higher  thought  than  that  of  Plato 
—  these  we  seek  and  expect  in  poetry.  We  look  to  her  to  lift  us  from  the 
dull  realm  of  the  actual  into  the  "great  air "  of  the  ideal. 

Of  Browning  as  an  idealizer,  I  cannot  say  so  much  as  I  said  when  I  spoke 
of  him  as  a  creator.  And  yet  a  striking  feature  of  his  poetry  is  its  recognition 
of  this  higher  element  in  human  life.  To  him  all  men  are  in  a  true  sense 
ideal  beings.  There  is  a  germ  of  greatness  in  every  soul  —  continents  that 
no  Columbus  has  ever  yet  discovered  —  thoughts  and  motives,  feelings 
and  decisions,  that  possess  interest  beyond  that  of  the  whole  material  uni- 
verse. Browning  would  not  have  chosen  for  his  subject  the  soul  of  man, 
if  he  had  not  sympathized  with  the  dictum  of  Sir  William  Hamilton  :  "In 
the  universe  there  is  nothing  great  but  man ;  in  man  there  is  nothing  great 
but  mind." 

Idealization,  however,  to  be  of  any  value,  requires  the  possession  of  right 
standards  of  judgment.  The  poet,  therefore,  must  be  able  to  see  things  in 
large  relations,  discern  the  universal  in  the  particular,  catch  glimpses  of  the 
absolute  truth  and  beauty  in  its  minor  manifestations.  The  greatest  poetry 
is  impossible  except  to  a  great  philosopher.  I  know  what  prejudices  I  am 
encountering  here, —  still  I  believe  that  these  prejudices  originate  in  a 
mistaken  and  narrow  view  of  what  poetry  is.  If  poetry  is  the  imaginative 
reproduction  of  the  universe  in  its  ideal  relations,  then  nothing  human, 
nothing  divine,  can  be  foreign  to  the  poet.  He  must  know  psychology, 
and  ethics,  and  politics,  and  law ;  he  must  know  the  physical  sciences,  and 
he  must  be  a  theologian  as  well.  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  that  he  must  be 
a  master  in  details  ;  but  this  is  certain,  that  the  great  poets  have  possessed 
themselves  of  the  substance  of  the  knowledge  of  their  times.  And  this  means 
that  the  great  poet  must  be  a  man  of  broad  mind,  of  deep  sympathy  —  a 
great  thinker  and  a  great  man. 

There  are  three  things  in  particular  which  serve  as  standards  in  all  ideali- 
zation, and  which  the  great  poet  must  rightly  apprehend.  He  must,  first 
of  all,  have  a  right  view  of  human  nature.  He  must  believe  in  freedom  and 
immortality.  "  No  great  poet  was  ever  a  fatalist."  The  poetry  of  mere  fate 


POETRY   AND    ROBERT   BROWNING.  533 

denies  man's  consciousness,  and  fails  to  inspire.  Emerson  was  better  than 
his  philosophy,  when  he  wrote  : 

44  So  near  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  duty  whispers  low, '  Thou  must,' 
The  youth  replies, '  I  can.'  " 

How  different  from  this  is  the  writing  of  George  Eliot,  with  her  exaggeration 
of  heredity  !  To  her,  life  is  but  the  working  out  of  inborn  tendencies.  Man 
may  struggle  and  he  may  pray,  but  his  nature  is  too  much  for  him  at  last. 
Those  who  have  seen  Elihu  Vedder's  illustrations  of  Omar  Khayyam  will 
remember  the  ever- recurring  swirl  that  images  human  life  ;  the  many  threads 
that  come,  no  man  knows  whence, —  that  go,  no  man  knows  whither ;  the 
gathering  of  these  threads  for  a  moment  into  the  knot  of  human  conscious- 
ness, and  then  the  scattering  of  that  consciousness  forever.  No  wonder  that 
at  that  centre  stands  the  wine-cup.  It  is  the  old  philosophy  of  the  brute  : 
"Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die." 

Now,  I  say  that  with  such  a  conception  as  this  there  can  be  no  proper 
idealization,  and  no  poetry  that  will  permanently  touch  the  heart  of  man. 
Life  is  not  worth  writing  poetry  about,  for  it  has  lost  its  dignity.  The  true 
poet  believes  less  in  environment,  and  more  in  will ;  less  in  heredity,  and 
more  in  freedom.  Charles  Kingsley  has  said  that  the  spirit  of  the  ancient 
tragedy  was  "man  conquered  by  circumstance,"  while  the  spirit  of  the 
modern  tragedy  is  "man  conquering  circumstance."  But  this  is  only  partly 
true.  Even  the  ancient  tragedy  had  its  Prometheus,  with  unconquerable 
will  asserting  his  freedom,  in  spite  of  the  thunderbolts  and  the  vultures. 
And  there  is  still  more  to  be  said.  The  thirst  of  conscience  for  reparation 
is  the  very  essence  of  tragedy,  whether  ancient  or  modern.  And  this  con- 
science witnesses  to  freedom  in  the  past,  and  to  an  immortality  of  retribution 
in  the  future.  Poetry  must  take  account  of  these  facts  in  the  nature  of  man, 
or  it  ceases  to  be  poetry.  Now,  we  claim  for  Robert  Browning  that  he 
recognizes  them.  In  his  pages  we  read  of  human  freedom.  Ixion  is  a  poem 
worthy,  for  its  spirit  and  its  power,  to  be  put  side  by  side  with  the  Prome- 
theus of  JEschylus.  In  it,  the  victim,  bound  to  his  iron  wheel,  can  still 
triumph  over  Jove.  In  Pippa  Passes,  the  innocent  peasant-girl  trips  in 
simple  gladness  from  scene  to  scene,  singing  as  she  goes  : 

44  God's  in  his  heaven, 
All's  right  with  the  world ! " 

but  her  little  song  rouses  conscience,  makes  vice  seem  hateful,  reveals  men 
to  themselves.  All  unconsciously  to  herself,  her  words  strike  right  and  left 
— "a  savor  of  life  unto  life,  or  of  death  unto  death,"  and  the  result  is  two 
murders  and  three  souls  saved.  I  know  of  no  poem  since  Macbeth  that  so 
portrays  the  agony  of  an  awakened  conscience.  In  this  day  of  Hegelian 
revival,  when  moral  evil  and  natural  evil  are  confounded  with  each  other, 
our  literature  needs  to  be  invigorated  by  a  fresh  breeze  from  Dante,  by 
Shakespeare's  pictures  of  remorse,  and  by  Eobert  Browning's  illustrations 
of  the  terrors  and  retributions  of  man's  own  moral  nature. 

If  the  poet  must  have  proper  views  of  human  nature,  it  is  yet  more 
important  that  he  should  have  proper  views  of  the  divine.  He  must  recog- 
nize the  fact  that  there  is  a  God.  A  poet  of  whom  it  can  be  said  that  "  God 


534  POETRY    AND    ROBERT   BROWNING. 

is  not  in  all  his  thoughts,"  has  missed  the  greatest  thought  of  poetry, — for 
"the  greatest  thought  of  the  finite  is  the  Infinite."  So  Jean  Paul  has  said, 
and  Mr.  Browning  would  adopt  his  phrase.  Our  author's  writing  is  so  full 
of  this  divine  element  that  many  a  reader  would  fain  call  him  a  religious 
philosopher,  if  not  a  religious  poet.  We  maintain  that  the  highest  poetry 
is  impossible  without  religion,  not  only  because  the  thought  of  God  is  the 
most  sublime  and  fruitful  of  thoughts,  but  because  from  this  loftiest  thought 
all  our  lower  thoughts  take  their  proper  measure  and  color.  He  who  has  no 
sense  of  God  can  never  look  at  finite  things  in  their  right  proportions.  He 
who  does  not  see  in  God  an  infinite  personality,  righteousness,  and  love,  can 
never  interpret  the  world,  with  its  sorrow  and  its  sin. 

Browning  believes  in  the  personality  and  righteousness  and  love  of  God. 
He  is  at  war  indeed  with  the  anthropomorphism  which  would  degrade  God  to 
the  level  of  human  appetites  and  passions.  His  Caliban  on  Setebos  is  a 
most  scathing  and  convincing  arraignment  of  superstitious  and  slavish  wor- 
ship. The  Epilogue,  in  which  David  stands  as  the  type  of  the  religion 
that  confines  God  to  place,  and  Renan  as  the  type  of  the  skepticism  that 
gazes  sensuously  into  heaven  until  the  last  star  of  faith  grows  dim  and 
disappears,  ends  with  Mr.  Browning's  own  declaration  of  faith  in  an  imma- 
nent Deity  : 

"  That  one  face,  far  from  vanish,  rather  grows. 
Or  decomposes  but  to  recompose, 
Become  my  universe  that  feels  and  knows." 

But  that  this  is  not  pantheism,  we  are  assured  by  other  poems  like  Saul, 
in  which,  not  content  with  an  unmoral  God,  he  declares  that  "  all's  Law,  yet 
all's  Love,"  and  maintains  that  incarnation  is  the  only  true  revelation.  So 
Pompilia  strikes  the  same  note,  when  she  says  : 

"  I  never  realized  God's  birth  before  — 
How  he  grew  likest  God  in  being  born." 

Ferishtah's  Fancies,  thought  by  some  to  be  only  a  collection  of  slight 
poems,  seems  to  me  to  be  one  of  the  most  significant  examples  of  the  poet's 
irresistible  tendency  to  the  expression  of  religious  ideas.  In  these  slight 
poems  I  find  the  following  subjects  successively  treated  :  1.  God  works  no 
unnecessary  miracles.  2.  Let  us  give  thanks  for  actual  blessings,  though 
much  that  we  desire  may  fail  us.  3.  Faith  and  love  go  together.  4.  Pray 
on,  though  you  see  no  answer  to  your  prayers.  5.  The  purpose  of  suffering 
is  purification.  6.  The  punishment  of  sin  is  dwarfing  of  nature.  7.  Ascet- 
icism fails  of  its  own  end.  8.  Love  must  go  before  knowledge.  9.  Life  is 
worth  the  living. — I  think  no  one  can  read  over  this  list  without  being 
convinced  that  here  is  a  poet  who  believes  in  God  as  well  as  in  the  soul. 

But  there  are  also  relations  between  man  and  God  upon  which  the  poet 
must  have  definite  opinions,  if  he  would  idealize  aright.  I  have  already 
referred  to  Saul,  by  way  of  evidence  that  Browning's  God  is  a  personal 
God,  a-  God  of  love,  a  God  self -revealed  aud  brought  down  to  our  human 
comprehension  in  the  incarnate  Christ.  I  wish  to  speak  of  this  same  poem 
as  embodying  the  true  idea  of  inspiration,  and  so  in  general,  of  the  com- 
munications of  God  to  man.  I  speak  of  this  poem  the  more  readily,  because 
it  is  perhaps  the  most  widely  known  and  the  most  easily  understood  of 
Browning's  longer  productions, —  the  fittest  of  all,  therefore,  for  a  beginner 


POETRY   AND   ROBERT   BROWNING.  535 


to  master.  The  title  of  the  poem  should  be  "  David,"  rather  than  "  Saul," 
for  the  interest  centres,  not  in  Saul's  hearing,  but  in  David's  song.  The 
shepherd-boy  has  been  brought  from  the  sheep-fold  to  chase  away  with  music 
the  abnormal  and  insane  depression  of  Saul's  spirit.  David  sings  of  nature 
and  her  beauty,  but  Saul  is  not  moved.  He  celebrates  Saul's  own  heroic 
deeds,  but  there  is  no  response.  David  rises  in  spirit,  as  he  sings  ;  in  love, 
he  takes  to  himself  Saul's  sorrow  ;  and,  as  he  does  so,  a  Spirit  greater  than 
his  own  takes  possession  of  the  singer  ;  through  his  own  love  for  his  monarch, 
he  is  lifted  up  to  understand  something  of  the  great  love  of  God  ;  his  human 
sympathy  becomes  the  vehicle  of  prophecy;  in  God  himself  he  sees  the  desire 
to  reveal  himself  in  human  form  to  men  ;  he  looks  into  the  far  future,  and 
cries  :  "  See  the  Christ  stand  !  " 

Is  there  any  other  poem  than  this  that  more  fully  and  truly  expresses  the 
method  of  divine  inspiration  ?  Here  is  a  using  of  human  faculties  and 
powers,  of  human  heart  and  tongue.,  yet  an  elevation  of  all  these  to  heights  of 
understanding  and  expression  which  unaided  humanity  is  powerless  to  reach. 
The  supernatural  uses  the  natural  as  its  basis  and  starting-point,  as  its  medium 
and  vehicle  ;  but  it  transcends  the  natural,  opening  to  it  the  far  reaches  of 
prophetic  vision,  and  attuning  it  to  the  melody  of  a  heavenly  song.  I  might 
speak  of  A  Death  in  the  Desert  —  an  attempt  to  depict  the  last  hours  of 
St.  John,  and  to  illustrate  how  human  nature,  fainting  and  failing  as  it  is, 
can  hospitably  receive  and  faithfully  express  the  mind  and  will  of  the  Spirit 
of  God.  But  I  find  nowhere  in  Browning's  writings  any  intimation  that  the 
gift  of  inspiration  proper  is  to  be  confounded  with  the  enlightenment  of 
Christian  men  in  general.  He  stops  with  the  faith  that  "holy  men  of  old 
spake  as  they  were  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost.  "  And  yet  the  obscure  and 
the  weak  may  be  God's  workmen  still  : 

"  All  service  ranks  the  same  with  God  — 
With  God,  whose  puppets  best  and  worst 
Are  we:  there  is  no  last  nor  first." 

Alfred  Tennyson  has  been  called  the  religious  poet  of  this  century,  appar- 
ently upon  the  ground  of  such  poems  as  The  Two  Voices,  The  Vision  of 
Sin,  and  In  Memoriam.  I  dislike  to  shock  the  sensibilities  of  Tennyson's 
admirers  ;  but  I  wish  to  record  my  belief  that  there  is  far  more  of  a  healthy 
religious  spirit  in  Browning,  than  in  Tennyson.  In  the  latter,  underneath 
the  faith,  there  is  a  generally  hidden,  but  sometimes  outcropping,  skepticism  ; 
so  that  I  should  hesitate  to  say  whether  his  poetry  had  been  quoted  the  more 
by  the  prophets  of  faith  or  the  prophets  of  unbelief.  This  cannot  be  said 
of  Browning.  I  do  not  read  fragments  of  his  writings  in  sermons  preached 
for  the  purpose  of  criticising  or  denouncing  the  old  faith.  I  do  find  him 
referred  to  in  reverent  discussions  of  the  law  and  the  attributes  of  God.  I 
am  inclined  to  commend  the  reading  of  Robert  Browning  to  all  preachers 
and  theologians,  as  well  as  to  all  thoughtful  Christian  people.  He  is  the 
most  learned,  stirring,  impressive,  literary  teacher  of  our  time  ;  but  he  is  a 
religious  philosopher  as  well.  He  has  expressed  himself  upon  a  larger 
variety  of  problems,  than  any  modern  poet.  He  who  would  serve  men's 
highest  interests,  as  secular  or  religious  teacher,  will  find  more  of  suggestion, 
more  of  illustration,  more  of  stimulus,  in  Browning,  than  in  any  modern 
writer.  To  quote  again  from  Walter  Savage  Landor  :  "His  is  the  surest 


536  POETRY    AND   ROBERT   BROWNING. 

foot,  since  Chaucer's,  that  has  waked  the  echoes  from  the  difficult  places  of 
poetry  and  of  life. " 

I  cannot  leave  this  general  subject  of  Browning's  idealizing  faculty,  with- 
out fairly  considering  two  objections  to  my  doctrine,  one  directed  against  the 
seriousness,  and  the  other  against  the  healthful  ness,  of  his  poetry.  I  grant 
that  there  is  at  times  an  apparent  levity.  This  may  sometimes  be  merely  a 
sign  that  he  is  consciously  master  of  his  theme  —  so  fully  master  that  he  can 
play  with  it.  The  cat  plays  with  the  mouse  she  has  caught, —  she  does  not 
care  to  play  with  the  dog.  But  Browning  himself  has  suggested  a  deeper 
and  more  constant  reason  than  this.  He  has  appropriated  as  motto  for 
Ferishtatis  Fancies  what  Collier,  in  his  edition  of  Shakespeare,  says  of 
that  great  master  :  "  His  genius  was  jocular,  but  when  disposed  he  could  be 
very  serious."  So  we  may  say  that  it  is  the  nature  of  Browning's  genius  to 
be  jocular. 

Is  jocularity  incompatible  with  seriousness ?  "I  am  never  merry  when  I 
hear  sweet  music,"  says  Jessica  in  the  Merchant  of  Venice.  Why  did  Jesus 
never  jest  ?  Would  he  have  seemed  to  us  possessed  of  a  larger  and  truer 
humanity,  if  the  humorous  element  had  appeared  in  him  ?  It  is  common  to 
say  that  our  Lord's  unique  work  of  suffering  and  death  involved  unique  and 
soul-crushing  burdens, —  for  him  to  laugh  would  have  been  as  incongruous 
as  for  us  to  laugh  at  a  funeral.  We  sing  :  "  He  wept  that  we  might  weep." 
Is  it  not  equally  true  to  say:  "He  wept  that  we  might  smile?"  Since 
"believing,  we  rejoice  to  see  the  curse  removed,"  may  we  not  maintain  that 
an  unhindered  development  of  all  parts  of  our  nature  is  first  rendered  pos- 
sible by  his  death  ?  I  think  no  one  can  doubt  that  there  is  a  provision  in 
our  nature  for  wit  and  jollity.  Great  men,  with  great  cares,  have  solaced 
themselves  with  jests.  We  do  not  think  either  Socrates  or  Abraham  Lincoln 
the  less  serious,  because  they  were  occasionally  jocular.  I  will  not  venture 
to  say  that  Browning  is  never  guilty  of  seeming  irreverence  ;  but  that  this 
seeming  irreverence  has  a  really  profane  intent,  would  be  hard  to  prove.  In 
general,  I  think  it  is  rather  the  bubbling  up  of  a  deep  effervescent  spring. 
It  is  part  of  his  idealizing  faculty  to  see  things  in  their  humorous  relations. 
His  jocularity,  though  sometimes  carried  to  an  extreme,  is  part  of  the  large- 
mindedness  of  the  man. 

And  this  opens  the  way  to  the  discussion  of  the  last  objection.  Is  Robert 
Browning's  poetry  healthful  in  its  influence?  We  must  grant  that  there  is 
a  certain  freedom  about  its  treatment  of  man's  physical  instincts,  which  now 
and  then  may  offend  critics  of  the  Teunysonian  school.  There  is  no  asceti- 
cism in  Browning.  He  does  not  attempt  to  do  without  the  body,  as  Shelley 
did.  But  neither  does  he  deify  the  body,  as  Swinburne  does.  Mens  sana 
in  corpore  sano,  is  his  motto.  He  believes  in  food  and  drink  —  but  in  food 
and  drink  mainly  as  means,  not  as  ends.  If  he  ever  speaks  of  sensuous 
things  with  something  of  Elizabethan  frankness,  we  must  remember  that 
there  is  a  mock-modesty  more  akin  to  vice  than  is  mere  freedom  in  speech. 
I  find  in  Browning  true  sentiment,  without  a  tinge  of  sentimentality. 

John  Stuart  Mill  once  defined  sentimentality  as  "a  setting  of  the  sympa- 
thetic aspect  of  things  above  their  aesthetic  aspect,  or  above  the  moral  aspect 
of  them  —  their  right  or  wrong. "  This  was  the  fault  of  the  early  novels, 
like  Eichardson's  Clarissa,  which  drew  such  oceans  of  tears  from  our  great- 


POETRY    AND    ROBERT   BROWNING.  537 

great-grandmothers,  but  whose  sickly  and  maudlin  sentiment  we  only  make 
merry  over  to-day.  Now,  I  think  it  a  great  tribute  to  the  healthfulness  of 
Robert  Browning's  poetry,  and  so  to  his  power  of  true  idealization,  when 
I  say  that,  as  for  this  mawkish  sentimentality,  he  will  have  none  of  it. 
Wordsworth  would  have  come  nearer  to  being  one  of  the  greatest  poets  if 
he  had  not  lacked  one  of  his  senses, —  not  one  of  the  five  senses,  but  that 
sixth,  most  important  sense  —  the  sense  of  the  ludicrous.  Browning's  sense 
of  the  ludicrous  stands  him  in  good  stead .  He  cannot  be  commonplace,  he 
cannot  be  nonsensical,  he  cannot  be  affected,  he  cannot  be  sentimental.  Our 
young  people  will  get  good  from  reading  such  poems  as  Dls  Aliter  Visum, 
because  Browning  does  not  believe  that  true  love  is  an  unreasoning  impulse, 
but  rather  regards  it  as  subject  to  judgment  and  conscience. 

Passion  is  not  its  own  justification  ;  the  sympathies  are  under  law  to  reason  ; 
feeling  should  have  a  basis  in  fact, —  these  are  truths  which  greatly  need  to 
be  taught  to  our  easy-going,  pleasure-loving  time,  and  no  one  has  taught 
them  so  well  as  Browning.  Out  of  his  books  there  blows  a  healthy  breeze, 
as  from  the  woods  and  the  hills,  to  brace  up  and  reinvigorate  a  literature 
that  was  fast  becoming  finical  and  dilettante.  And  I  think  I  am  not  mistaken 
in  saying  that  much  of  the  modern  progress  toward  direct  and  sensible 
speech,  both  in  the  pulpit  and  in  the  press  ;  much  of  the  new  simplicity  and 
vigor  which  differences  our  talk  from  the  bookish  conversations  of  Walter 
Scott's  novels ;  ay,  much  of  the  condensation  and  energy  of  recent  English 
poetry,  as  compared  with  the  long-winded  wearisomeness  of  Wordsworth, 
is  to  be  attributed  to  the  healthful  influence  of  Robert  Browning. 

Browning  is  greatest  as  a  creative  genius  ;  less  great  as  an  idealizer  ;  least 
great  as  a  literary  artist.  We  have  said  that  poetry  is  an  imaginative  repro- 
duction of  the  universe  in  its  ideal  relations  and  an  expression  of  these 
relations  in  rhythmical  literary  form.  It  is  this  standard  of  artistic  form 
by  which  we  have  still  to  try  our  poet.  Artistic  form  is  of  two  sorts,  or 
rather,  involves  two  elements :  first,  an  element  of  construction  ;  and 
secondly,  an  element  of  rhythmical  and  musical  expression.  In  considering 
the  constructive  element,  we  must  remember  that  true  poetry,  like  true 
science,  puts  before  us,  not  merely  facts,  but  facts  in  their  relations.  In  a 
great  poem  we  want,  not  the  materials  of  poetry,  but  an  organic  structure  ; 
not  bricks,  but  a  house.  It  is  a  serious  question  whether  that  can  be  a  great 
poem  which  compels  the  reader  to  do  the  poet's  work.  I  do  not  attempt 
just  here  to  decide  the  question  ;  I  only  suggest  it,  with  the  view  of  adducing 
an  argument  or  two  upon  each,  and  then  leaving  the  reader  to  judge 
for  himself.  For  all  ordinary  purposes,  and  in  all  ordinary  kinds  of  writing, 
the  world  has  come  to  accept  Herbert  Spencer's  principle  of  style  —  a 
contribution  to  human  knowledge,  by  the  way,  of  more  value  and  longer 
to  be  remembered  than  all  the  rest  of  his  philosophy  —  I  mean  the  principle 
of  "  economy  of  the  reader's  or  hearer's  attention."  Given  in  the  auditor, 
for  example,  a  certain  amount  of  intellectual  and  emotional  energy,  then 
the  less  of  this  energy  expended  in  grappling  with  the  mere  form  of  an 
address,  the  more  there  will  be  left  to  seize  upon  the  substance.  Hence  the 
wisdom  of  making  the  drapery  as  thin  as  possible,  that  the  real  form  may 
be  the  better  seen.  Avoid  all  involution  and  remote  allusion  that  will 
hinder  the  hearer  from  getting  at  the  sense.  Let  the  phrase  of  your  essay 


538  POETRY   AND    ROBERT   BROWNING. 

be  so  simple  that  he  who  runs  may  read.  So  order  your  material  that  it 
unfolds  most  easily  and  naturally,  each  new  sentence  adding  some  point  of 
interest,  and  all  tending  to  a  climax  of  thought  and  of  expression.  This 
is  the  art  of  putting  things.  The  French  excel  in  it.  Every  great  teacher 
is  in  this  respect  a  literary  artist.  He  knows  how  to  organize  his  matter  so 
as  to  produce  the  most  rapid,  comprehensive,  and  powerful  impression. 
And  this  is  the  first  thing  pointed  out  in  Milton's  description  of  true  poetry  : 
41  Simple,  sensuous,  passionate." 

Now  it  is  agreed  by  all  that  Browning  is  often  obscure,  and  that  this 
obscurity  resides,  not  alone  in  the  single  phrase  or  verse,  but  also  in  the 
whole  arrangement  of  his  material.  The  reader  often  begins,  as  I  myself 
began,  with  unprepossessed  and  even  favorable  mind,  only  to  find  that 
unexplained  allusions  throng  upon  him  ;  clews  are  presented  which,  being 
tracked  out,  seem  to  lead  nowhither ;  in  fact,  a  labyrinth  seems  to  be  the 
only  comparison  that  fits  the  poem.  Sage  doubts  suggest  themselves  either 
of  the  poet's  sanity  or  of  our  own.  Or,  is  he  trifling  with  us  ?  The  average 
reader  concludes  at  any  rate  that  what  is  not  worth  Mr.  Browning's  while 
to  make  intelligible,  it  is  not  worth  his  own  while  to  read.  The  very  multi- 
plicity of  questions  that  suggest  themselves  at  every  turn,  and  that  make  so 
lively  the  meetings  of  the  Browning  clubs,  are  an  offense  to  the  man  who 
does  not  love  to  think  much,  as  he  reads.  I  know  of  no  author,  ancient  or 
modern,  the  mention  of  whose  name  just  now  excites  more  violent  dispute. 
Certain  it  is  that  Browning  divides  the  world.  There  are  two  hostile  camps. 
If  he  is  not  of  all  poets  the  best  loved  by  his  friends,  he  is  surely  the  best 
hated  by  his  foes.  Indeed,  it  is  almost  amusing  to  hear  one  who  has  been 
cheered,  in  beginning  Sordello,  by  the  author's  assurance  :  ' '  Who  will,  may 
hear  Sordello's  story  told,"  and  then  has  floundered  through  what  he  cannot 
but  regard  as  a  mediaeval  literary  morass  —  I  say,  it  is  amusing  to  hear  such 
.a  one  describe  the  indignation  with  which,  at  the  close  of  the  poem,  he  read 
the  words  :  "Who  would,  has  heard  Sordello's  story  told." 

It  is  only  fair,  however,  to  listen  to  Browning's  defense.  His  method,  he 
would  say,  is  the  true  method,  because  it  is  the  method  of  life.  Suppose 
you  go  down  the  street  to-morrow  morning,  and  as  you  go,  perceive  in  the 
distance  a  great  crowd  stretching  from  curb  to  curb.  There  are  excitement, 
and  hurried  ejaculations,  and  much  rushing  to  and  fro.  You  draw  near, 
and  ask  some  person  upon  the  periphery  of  the  circle  what  it  is  all  about. 
He  gives  you  the  curt  and  fragmentary  answer,  "Murder  ! "  and  then  turns 
from  you.  You  press  your  way  inward,  questioning  others  as  you  can, 
until  gradually  there  rises  in  your  mind  the  structure  of  a  story  ;  hints, 
which  at  first  you  could  not  understand,  begin  to  be  interpreted ;  you 
modify  first  impressions  by  subsequent  information  ;  by  the  time  you  have 
reached  the  centre  of  the  crowd  a  whole  tragedy  of  love,  and  jealousy,  and 
crime,  and  death,  has  been  enacted  in  your  brain.  Compare  this  way  of 
getting  at  the  story  with  the  other  way  of  reading  about  it  all,  in  the  evening 
paper  of  that  same  day.  Which  of  these  ways  most  rouses  your  thinking 
powers,  most  excites  your  interest  and  sympathy?  Can  any  one  doubt 
that  it  is  the  former  ?  Now  this  is  Browning's  method, — he  thrusts  us  into 
the  turmoil  of  life,  and  compels  us  to  construct  the  story  for  ourselves,  He 
gives  us  facts,  but  only  in  a  fragmentary  way.  What  is  said  becomes  fully 


POETRY    AND    ROBERT   BROWNING.  539 

intelligible  only  in  the  light  of  further  knowledge.  What  is  the  result  ? 
Why  this  :  You  become  a  judicial  personage,  and  weigh  evidence  as  the  case 
unfolds  before  you.  You  become  yourself  a  poet,  a  creator  ;  and,  when  you 
have  done,  you  feel  that  the  poem  is  a  thing  of  life,  that  you  have  your  own 
hard-earned  conception  of  it,  that  it  is  your  poem  as  well  as  Mr.  Browning's. 

All  this  is  best  illustrated  in  the  case  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  As  those 
twenty-two  thousand  lines  pass  before  your  eyes,  your  first  impulse  is  to  give 
up  the  investigation, — the  case  is  too  complicated,  and  life  is  short.  But 
keep  on,  and  the  story  gets  a  hold  upon  you  ;  the  characters  become  instinct 
with  life  ;  each  new  aspect  of  the  case  is  like  a  new  revelation  ;  the  whole 
poem  becomes  a  mighty  living  structure,  wheel  within  wheel  —  the  fit  type 
and  representative  of  the  life  of  humanity,  moved  upon  from  above  by 
augelic  influences  and  seized  from  beneath  by  the  powers  of  hell.  When 
you  have  read  it  you  can  call  it,  "A  ring  without  a  posy,  and  that,  mine." 
In  this  very  sense  of  possession,  which  Browning's  poems  awaken,  I  see 
the  secret  of  the  intense  interest  he  excites  in  those  who  have  the  patience 
and  the  grace  to  read  him.  If  we  have  to  eat  our  bread  in  the  sweat  of  our 
brow,  Browning  would  say  that  this  is  precisely  what  he  has  been  aiming 
at, —  without  exercise  we  should  have  no  appetite,  no  enjoyment  of  our  food, 
no  profit  from  the  eating  of  it. 

I  confess  that  this  view  of  the  case  has  much  to  say  for  itself.  Certainly 
the  best  poetry  is  not  that  which  yields  its  full  meaning  at  the  first  cursory 
reading.  If  absolute  intelligibility  to  a  half-roused  mind  be  the  test  of 
poetry,  much  of  what  we  call  the  best  is  no  poetry  at  all.  No  ;  a  man 
<;annot  understand  the  best  poetry  without  being  something  of  a  poet ;  even 
AS  he  cannot  appreciate  Mount  Blanc  without  looking  at  it  from  some 
neighboring  height.  The  best  poetry  of  Shakespeare,  or  even  of  Tennyson, 
is  not  mastered  except  by  repeated  readings  ;  it  takes  years,  and  maturity 
indeed,  before  the  full  glory  of  some  great  passages  dawns  upon  us. 
Browning  compels  us  to  work  for  our  intellectual  living,  more  perhaps 
than  any  other  modern  poet ;  but  there  is  always  the  comfort  of  knowing 
that  there  is  a  real  bag  of  gold  at  the  end  of  this  rainbow,  and  that  there 
is  a  definite  place  where  the  rainbow  ends.  I  do  not  think  that  Browning 
is  obscure  for  the  mere  sake  of  obscurity  ;,  what  obscurity  there  is,  is  a  part 
of  his  art,  whether  the  principle  upon  which  it  rests  is  ill-judged  or  not. 
And,  with  practice,  the  obscure  becomes  plain.  In  fact,  I  find  that  the 
objection  upon  the  score  of  obscurity  is  urged  less  and  less  as  the  reader 
becomes  more  and  more  familiar  with  Browning's  method.  He  expects 
it,  he  sees  the  object  of  it,  he  is  stimulated  by  it,  he  ends  by  becoming  a 
qualified  admirer  of  it,  just  as  he  admires  the  twilight  and  the  growing 
splendor  of  the  stars. 

Thus  I  have  presented  with  all  fairness  the  considerations  pro  and  con, 
so  far  as  respects  the  constructive  element  in  Browning's  poetry.  I  wish  I 
<5ould  sum  up  and  give  the  verdict  squarely  upon  the  side  of  the  poet.  This 
I  fear  I  cannot  do.  I  could  do  so,  if  I  did  not  recognize  certain  "unex- 
plored remainders  "  in  his  writings,  the  meaning  of  which  I  have  some 
doubt  whether  even  Browning  himself  ever  knew.  In  Ferishtah's  Fancies 
there  are  certain  lines  printed  in  the  original  Hebrew ;  this  looks  to  me 
mischievous,  if  not  malicious.  A  noted  Greek  professor  said  that  he  could 
understand  Browning's  translation  of  Agamemnon  if  he  were  only  per- 


540  POETRY    AND    ROBERT    BROWNING. 

mitted  to  use  the  original  as  a  **  pony."  I  have  always  thought  it  doubtful 
whether  the  Romans  understood  their  own  great  poets  at  first  reading.  I 
have  some  sympathy  with  the  man  who  declared  that  if  the  Latins  had  had 
to  learn  their  own  language,  they  would  have  had  no  time  to  conquer  the 
world.  But  there  is  seldom  what  you  may  call  willful  and  needless  obscurity 
in  the  classic  poets.  Their  condensed  and  nervous  speech  was  meant  to 
pack  things  in  for  preservation ;  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  original 
package  sometimes  takes  time  to  untie.  So  Browning  means  to  pack  his 
thought.  Mrs.  Orr  tells  us  that  it  was  a  reproachful  note  of  Miss  Caroline 
Fox,  that  determined  him  nevermore  to  use  an  unnecessary  word.  Would 
that  he  had  added  the  determination  perfectly  to  organize  his  material 
before  he  began  to  write !  While  I  see  in  Browning  an  untold  wealth  of 
resource,  a  mind  most  eager  for  expression,  a  power  to  recognize  truth  in 
its  secret  hiding-places,  I  see  also  an  occasional  lack  of  judgment  as  to  what 
is  valuable  and  what  is  merely  curious,  and  a  lack  of  constructive  power 
to  make  the  most  of  the  matter  that  is  chosen.  He  seems  at  times  content 
with  first  drafts  ;  willing  to  put  down  out  of  a  teeming  mind  what  first 
comes  to  hand ;  and  ready  to  say,  upon  objection  made,  that,  if  the  reader 
cannot  understand  it,  so  much  the  worse  for  the  reader.  Here  he  is  some- 
thing less  than  a  great  literary  artist ;  for  true  art  is  intelligible,  and  no  unin- 
telligible poem  can  ever  become  immortal. 

I  cannot  leave  this  part  of  my  subject  without  putting  something  of  the 
poet's  least  intelligible  verse  side  by  side  with  something  of  his  simplest 
and  best.  I  know  few  passages  more  difficult  as  to  form,  yet  more  noble  for 
depth  and  insight,  than  this  one  from  The  Ring  and  the  Book  :  ( 1:  225  sq.) 

"  God  breathes,  not  speaks,  his  verdicts,  felt  not  heard— 
Passed  on  successively  to  each  court,  I  call 
Man's  conscience,  custom,  manners,  all  that  make 
More  and  more  effort  to  promulgate,  mark 
God's  verdict  in  determinable  words, 
Till  last  come  human  jurists  —  solidify 
Fluid  result,— what's  fixable  lies  forged, 
Statute, —  the  residue  escapes  in  fume, 
Yet  hangs  aloft  a  cloud,  as  palpable 
To  the  finer  sense  as  word  the  legist  welds. 
Justinian's  Pandect^  only  make  precise 
What  simply  sparkled  in  men's  eyes  before, 
Twitched  in  their  brow  or  quivered  on  their  lip, 
Waited  the  speech  they  called  but  would  not  come." 

Yet  this  passage  is  obscure  to  many,  merely  because  the  thought  is  profound. 

To  such  let  us  commend  The  Martyr's  Epitaph,  in  which  Browning  shows 

himself  capable  of  a  simplicity  and  grandeur  unsurpassed  in  English  poetry  : 

"  Sickly  I  was,  and  poor,  and  mean — 

A  slave ;  no  misery  could  screen 

The  holders  of  the  pearl  of  price 

From  Caesar's  envy ;  therefore  twice 

I  fought  with  beasts,  and  thrice  1  saw 

My  children  suffer  by  his  law. 

At  length  my  own  release  I  earned  ; 

I  was  some  time  in  being  burned, 

But  at  the  last  a  hand  came  through 

The  flame  above  my  head  and  drew 

My  soul  to  Christ,  whom  now  I  see. 

Sergius,  a  brother,  wrote  for  me 

This  testimony  on  the  wall ; 

For  me  —  I  have  forgot  it  all." 


POETRY    AND    ROBERT   BROWNING.  541 

The  truest  artistic  form  requires  something  more  than  the  constructive 
-element ;  it  implies  also  the  element  of  rhythmical  and  musical  expression. 
The  good  and  true  must  be  married  to  the  beautiful.  This  marriage  cer- 
tainly seems  made  in  heaven,  for  nothing  more  surprises  the  poet  than  the 
leaping,  from  his  brain,  of  thought  and  word  together  —  wedded  from  their 
birth.  In  this  matter  of  melodious  expression,  the  poets  differ  more  than 
in  almost  anything  else.  We  modern  and  English-speaking  people  owe,  in 
this  respect,  a  great  debt  to  Shelley.  I  find  in  him  a  "  linked  sweetness 
long  drawn  out,"  that  Milton  himself  was  never  master  of,  and  that  Swin- 
burne has  sought,  but  with  weaker  intellectual  powers,  to  copy.  It  is  a 
wonder  that,  with  Browning's  passionate  admiration  of  Shelley,  he  has  in 
his  own  writing  so  little  of  Shelley's  distinguishing  excellence.  In  this 
mastery  of  melodious  expression,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  is  greatly 
the  superior  of  her  husband.  Compare  Lady  Geraldine's  Courtship  with 
the  Flight  of  the  Duchess  ;  compare  My  Kate  with  The  Lady  of  Tripoli  ; 
and  you  cannot  help  seeing  that  the  wife  puts  into  her  verse  a  delicate 
sweetness  and  a  tremulous  emotion  which  the  husband  can  never  equal. 

Indeed,  for  a  reason  already  suggested  when  I  spoke  of  defects  of  con- 
struction, Robert  Browning  aims  not  to  be  an  emotional  poet.  And  here 
let  us  do  him  justice,  as  we  can  only  do  by  looking  at  the  matter  from  his 
peculiar  point  of  view.  Browning  found  the  literary  world  well-nigh 
enslaved  to  a  poetry  in  which  sense  was  sacrificed  to  sound,  in  which  melody 
of  phrase  took  the  place  of  thought,  in  which  mere  sweetness  covered  a 
multitude  of  sins  of  vagueness  and  rhapsody  and  inanity.  You  could  read 
such  poetry  when  half  asleep,  and  you  were  quite  asleep  when  you  were 
done.  Browning  thought  such  writing  beneath  the  dignity  of  the  poet. 
No  "  Airy,  fairy  Lilians  "  would  he  write.  His  poetry  should  carry  no  one 
to  heaven  on  flowery  beds  of  ease.  Men's  minds  should  be  alert,  if  they 
read  him  at  all.  Hence  his  brusque  air,  his  harsh  turns,  his  scorn  for  the 
merely  sensuous  and  quieting,  his  startling  us  from  dreams  into  sense.  A 
little  poem  of  his  illustrates  this  : 

"  Verse-making1  was  least  of  my  virtues :  I  viewed  with  despair 
Wealth  that  never  yet  was,  but  might  be,— all  that  verse-making  were, 
If  the  life  would  but  lengthen  to  wish,  let  the  mind  be  laid  bare. 
So  I  said  *  To  do  little  is  bad,  to  do  nothing  is  worse '  — 
And  made  verse. 

Love-making  —  how  simple  a  matter !    No  depths  to  explore, 
No  heights  in  a  life  to  ascend !    No  disheartening  Before, 
No  affrighting  Hereafter,—  love  now  will  be  love  evermore. 
So  I  felt, 4  To  keep  silence  were  folly  —  all  language  above,' 
I  made  love." 

It  reminds  me  of  an  out-of-door  play  of  my  early  days  which  bore  the 
name  of  "Snap  the  Whip."  A  long  line  was  formed  of  boys  taking  hold 
of  hands,  the  biggest  and  strongest  boy  at  one  end  of  the  line,  the  smallest 
and  most  unsuspecting  at  the  other,  many  fine  gradations  between.  The 
game  was  to  swing  the  line  around,  with  the  big  boy  for  the  centre,  and  to 
swing  it  around  with  such  momentum  that  the  little  boy  at  the  smadl  end 
should  be  thrown  off  like  a  comet  from  the  solar  system.  It  was  fine  fun 
for  the  big  boy ;  for  the  little  one  it  meant  the  general  demoralization  of 


542  POETRY   AND   ROBERT   BROWNING. 

his  attire  and  the  breaking  of  his  head  against  the  fence.  Many  a  time,  as 
I  have  read  Kobert  Browning  and  have  been  hurled  off  into  vacancy  by  one 
of  his  sudden  turns,  I  have  felt  like  the  little  boy  in  "  Snap  the  Whip. "  It 
is  all  very  well  for  Mr.  Browning,  but  how  about  the  unsophisticated  reader  ? 
Is  it  possible  for  him  to  escape  a  certain  sense  of  injury  ? 

Emotion,  music,  grace  —  these  are  not  so  native  to  Robert  Browning  as 
thought.  The  philosopher  often  overtops  the  poet.  His  harshness  is  not 
all  to  be  pardoned  upon  the  plea  that  it  is  a  higher  kind  of  art.  Much  of 
it  is  to  be  accounted  for  only  upon  the  ground  that  "it  is  his  nature  to." 
Verse  is  not  quite  spontaneous  with  him.  John  Stuart  Mill's  conception  of 
God  is  somewhat  similar.  The  imperfections  of  the  universe,  he  thinks, 
argue  either  lack  of  love  or  lack  of  power  in  the  supreme  Intelligence  ;  he 
prefers  to  doubt  the  power,  rather  than  to  doubt  the  love  ;  God  does  the  best 
he  can,  but  he  has  to  work  with  very  intractable  material.  And  so  Mill 
speaks  of  God  as  if  he  were  some  weak  old  man  trudging  up-hill  with  a 
mighty  burden  which  he  cannot  easily  manage,  which,  in  fact,  he  is  just  able 
to  carry  —  a  shocking  representation  of  Him  whom  we  know  to  be  infinite 
in  power  as  well  as  infinite  in  love.  I  have  sometimes  thought  that  the 
representation  was  an  excellent  one  of  merely  earthly  creators,  and  of  none 
more  so  than  of  Mr.  Browning.  His  material  at  times  seems  too  much  for 
him.  The  metal  is  not  hot  enough  to  run  freely  into  poetic  moulds ;  the 
metal  is  of  the  best,  but  the  power  to  shape  it  into  perfect  forms  —  the 
highest  measure  of  this  is  lacking. 

In  Italy  they  have  a  peculiar  way  of  cooking  and  serving  that  pretty  little 
bird,  the  ortolan.  It  is  transfixed  with  a  skewer,  but  upon  the  skewer  are 
also  put  a  piece  of  brown  toast  upon  the  one  side,  a  sage-leaf  upon  the 
other.  So  come,  in  thick  succession,  sage-leaf,  ortolan,  toast,  sage-leaf, 
ortolan,  toast,  repeated  as  many  times  as  need  be.  Browning  likens  his 
writing,  very  justly,  to  the  combination  of  these  three.  The  ortolan  repre- 
sents the  poetry ;  the  sage-leaf  furnishes  piquancy ;  the  brown  toast  is 
nothing  but  sound  sense.  I  admire  his  candor, —  few  poets  are  so  frank. 
My  only  fear  is  that  at  times  when  ortolans  were  scarce  and  thin,  Mr. 
Browning  may  have  made  up  for  their  lack  by  putting  two  sage-leaves  in 
place  of  one,  and  by  indefinitely  increasing  the  size  and  thickness  of  the 
brown  toast.  I  would  not  indulge  myself,  however,  nor  would  I  advise  my 
younger  readers  to  indulge,  in  the  calm  superciliousness  with  which  many 
intelligent  people  still  treat  Robert  Browning.  It  is  not  wise  to  assume 
that  so  steadily  growing  a  fame  and  so  marked  an  influence  upon  current 
literature  are  without  any  just  foundation.  It  is  best  to  take  account  of  the 
forces  of  our  time ;  we  cannot  afford  to  be  ignorant  of  them.  The  youth 
who  postponed  his  crossing  of  the  stream  until  the  water  should  flow  by 
had  to  wait  for  a  long  time.  So,  it  seems  to  me,  the  man  who  regards  what 
he  calls  the  "  Browning-cult "  as  a  mere  temporary  craze,  "  exspectat,  dum 
defiuit  amnis. "  Those  who  know  most  of  Browning  are  rather  inclined 
to  say  of  him  as  Isocrates  said  of  Heracleitus  :  ' '  What  I  know  of  him  is  so 
excellent  that  I  can  draw  conclusions  from  it  concerning  what  I  cannot 
understand." 

And  one  can  say  all  this  without  for  a  moment  surrendering  his  powers  of 
critical  judgment.  He  only  insists  that  wisdom  does  not  exclude  wonder^ 


POETKY   AND    ROBERT    BROWNING.  543 

and  that  we  live,  as  intellectual  and  spiritual  beings,  only  by  "admiration, 
hope,  and  love. "  The  nil  admirari  spirit  is  the  spirit  of  decrepitude  and 
death,  and  faith  in  great  men  is  next  to  faith  in  God.  I  would  not  have 
Kobert  Browning's  defects  of  artistic  form  blind  any  of  my  readers  to  the 
broad  humanity  of  the  poet  and  his  ideal  pictures  of  the  deep  thoughts  of 
man's  heart.  No  poet  of  this  century  is  so  widely  learned,  no  poet  has  so 
pondered  the  great  problems  of  existence,  no  poet  has  uttered  so  much  of 
important  truth.  There  is,  of  course,  a  higher  poetry  than  his,  a  poetry  of 
wider  range,  of  sweeter  sound,  of  deeper  spiritual  significance.  As  civili- 
zation goes  on,  imagination  will  not  fall  into  disuse,  but  will  reach  a  higher 
development.  To  believe  otherwise  is  to  fancy  that  an  inalienable  preroga- 
tive of  the  human  soul  can  be  sloughed  off  as  a  mere  excrescence,  or  can 
dwindle  till  it  ceases  to  be.  No,  imagination  belongs  to  man  ;  and,  as  with 
advancing  ages  man's  range  of  vision  widens,  imagination  will  only  be 
furnished  with  larger  and  nobler  materials  ;  will  only  have  deeper  insight 
into  the  ideal  relations  of  the  universe  ;  will  only  grow  in  power  to  express 
the  truth.  With  larger  truth  will  come  deeper  emotions,  and  with  deeper 
emotions  will  come  greater  perfection  of  artistic  form.  If  there  were  only 
as  much  of  us  at  all  times  as  there  is  at  some  times,  and  if  power  of  expres- 
sion only  answered  always  to  the  heart's  desire,  living  would  be  a  delight 
and  earth  would  be  heaven.  I  take  the  very  sense  of  imperfection  in  all 
poetry  of  the  past  as  an  incentive  to  look  forward.  I  not  only  anticipate 
no  decline  of  poetry,  but  I  confidently  predict  a  day  when,  under  the 
influence  of  a  diviner  spirit  than  any  earthly  muse,  poetry  shall  be  the  chief 
handmaid  of  religion,  the  incarnate  God  shall  be  its  chief  subject,  and  the 
poet  shall  undertake  "things  unattempted  yet  in  prose  or  rhyme."  I  look 
for  a  grander  poetry  on  earth, — but  I  am  not  content  with  this.  I  want  all 
God's  sons  and  daughters  to  prophesy  ;  I  trust  we  shall  all  be  poets  in  the 
New  Jerusalem  ;  I  long  for  the  great  future,  when  the  soul  can  fully  express 
herself,  when  form  shall  answer  to  spirit,  when  language  shall  be  the  perfect 
vehicle  of  thought,  and  when  all  speech  shall  be  song. 


L. 

ADDRESSES  TO  SUCCESSIVE  GRADUATING  CLASSES 

OF  THE  ROCHESTER  THEOLOGICAL   SEMINARY. 


1873: 
"THE  THREE  ONLIES." 


DEAR  BRETHREN  : —  It  is  my  pleasant  duty  to  declare  your  preliminary 
work  in  the  Rochester  Theological  Seminary  a*  at  length  completed,  to 
congratulate  you  upon  the  good  measure  of  success  with  which  that  work 
has  been  performed,  and  to  commend  you  to  the  guidance  and  blessing  of 
the  great  Head  of  the  Church  in  that  larger  work  to  which  you  go  and  which 
I  trust  he  has  called  you  to  do. 

There  is  an  element  of  sadness  in  this  occasion.  We  shall  see  your  faces, 
and  you  will  see  each  other's  faces,  no  more  for  many  a  year  —  perhaps  never 
again  until  we  all  come  to  lay  the  fruits  of  our  labors  at  the  Master's  feet. 
Yet  the  dominant  feeling  in  your  hearts  as  well  as  in  ours  to-night  is  one  of 
rejoicing, — in  yours,  because  you  break  through  the  last  obstacle  that  holds 
you  back  from  the  wider  life  and  broader  influence  to  which  you  have  been 
so  long  aspiring,  —  in  ours,  because  your  going  out  from  us  gives  us  new 
faith  that  Christ  is  making  the  Institution  from  which  you  graduate  a  power 
for  the  building  up  of  his  kingdom  in  the  world. 

Not  because  you  are  so  many  or  becaus&you  add  so  greatly  to  the  number 
of  his  ministers  do  we  rejoice,  but  rather  because  we  trust  that  under  God 
you  will  improve  the  quality  of  ministerial  work  in  the  land  and  the  world. 
In  one  sense  there  are  ministers  enough, — but  of  men  thoroughly  furnished, 
men  who  know  the  times,  men  who  know  the  truth  of  God  as  the  only  and  all- 
sufficient  remedy  for  the  evils  of  these  times  and  of  all  times,  men  who  have 
learned  from  God  the  secret  of  divine  wisdom  and  power  in  bringing  this  truth 
to  bear  upon  the  living  hearts  of  men,  men  who  believe  in  a  personal  God,  a 
present  Savior,  an  old  but  everlasting  gospel,  and  who  are  willing  to  give 
themselves  body  and  soul  for  life  and  death  to  the  preaching  of  it  —  of  these, 
though  thank  God  we  have  many,  we  have  not  enough.  If  you  be  such  men, 
my  brethren,  the  world  is  waiting  and  longing  for  your  coming  ;  God  calls 
you  forward  to  your  work,  assuring  your  success  and  your  reward  ;  and  all 
the  churches  of  our  Lord  cry  :  "  How  beautiful  upon  the  mountains  are  the 
feet  of  him  that  bringeth  good  tidings,  that  publisheth  peace,  that  bringeth 
good  tidings  of  good,  that  publisheth  salvation,  that  saith  unto  Zion,  Thy 
God  reigneth." 

The  German  poet  said  :  "Respect  the  dreams  of  thy  youth  !  "  There  is 

544 


1873:     "THE   THREE    ONLIES."  545 

a  loftiness  of  aspiration  and  an  enthusiasm  of  self-sacrifice  which  belong  to 
the  youth  of  Christ's  servants.  Now,  if  ever  in  life,  noble  voices  speak  within 
you,  urging  you  to  the  highest  consecration,  and  the  most  absolute  and 
faithful  following  of  the  path  marked  out  by  God.  I  would  be  the  mouth- 
piece of  the  Spirit  to-night.  I  would  stir  up  those  familiar  but  central 
thoughts  which  are  the  inspiration  and  power  of  every  successful  ministry. 
I  would  commend  to  you  anew  those  old  and  tried  ideas  and  powers,  which 
have  proved  their  strength  by  leading  the  march  of  the  kingdom  until  now. 

There  are  three  of  them, —  and  the  first  of  them  is  the  word  of  God.  In 
the  personality  of  that  word,  as  I  may  term  it,  speaking  as  with  living  voice 
to  him  who  reads  it  or  hears  it  preached,  discerning  as  it  does  the  thoughts 
and  intents  of  the  heart,  bringing  the  soul  into  contact  with  the  living  God, 
we  have  the  sufficient  proof  of  its  divinity  and  inspiration.  This  Institution 
has  sought  to  ground  you  in  that  word,  as  the  norm  of  faith,  the  source  of 
comfort,  the  guide  of  life.  Preach  that  word,  my  brethren,  in  its  due  pro- 
portion, in  its  relations  to  the  times,  in  its  sole  and  supreme  authority. 
Remember  that,  if  human  opinion  speak  not  according  to  that  word,  it  is 
because  there  is  no  light  in  it.  Remember  that  by  that  word  we  must  be 
approved  or  condemned  at  the  last  day.  Not  novelties,  not  paradoxes,  not 
sensations,  not  tricks  of  eloquence,  not  progressive  views,  but  the  old  word 
of  God  that  is  able  to  make  us  wise  unto  salvation  —  let  this  be  the  weapon, 
and  the  only  weapon,  of  your  ministry.  As  you  shall  bring  this  word  of  God, 
this  sword  of  the  Spirit,  to  bear  upon  the  conscience  and  the  heart,  with  all 
its  penetrating  and  clearing  power,  shall  your  work  be  judged  a  success  or 
a  failure. 

But  by  this  word  you  are  to  lead  men  to  something  beyond  the  word — to 
Him  who  speaks  through  the  word,  I  mean  to  the  living  Christ.  Not  imper- 
sonal truth,  viewless  and  impalpable,  a  breath  that  enters  the  ear  and  leaves 
it  as  soon,  but  a  living  personal  Redeemer,  who  makes  God  known  and 
brings  the  soul  into  relations  of  amity  and  communion  with  him  —  this  is  the 
unspeakable  gift  of  God  —  this  is  the  hope  of  the  ministry.  Not  faith  in  an 
abstract  God,  but  in  a  living,  present  Savior  —  one  whose  work  outside  of 
us  has  reconciled  God  to  us,  one  whose  work  within  us  has  reconciled  us  to 
God  —  this  is  the  faith  of  the  gospel.  The  hope  of  the  Church  and  the  world 
is  a  living  Christ  —  not  a  Christ  stretched  upon  the  crucifix,  not  a  dead 
Christ  entombed  and  buried,  but  a  risen  and  glorified  Savior,  exalted  to  give 
repentance  and  remission  of  sius. —  No  success,  till  you  bring  men  to  this 
faith  in  a  living  Jesus  and  to  personal  dealings  of  Jesus  with  their  souls, — 
actual  communication  of  life  to  life  —  heart  beating  against  heart, —  inter- 
course and  communion  with  One  whose  presence  and  being  are  more  real  to 
us  than  the  existence  of  the  world  around  us.  The  personal  knowledge  of 
this  Christ  —  introduction  to  him,  life  in  him  —  this  is  the  end  and  aim  of  the 
Christian  ministry. 

How  can  this  be  realized  ?  Partly  by  the  spirit  of  our  own  lives.  Do  you 
not  remember  how  some  unlettered  man  has  thrilled  you,  and  drawn  you  to 
Christ,  by  his  simple  words  of  love  to  Jesus  ?  Do  you  not  know  how  a  true 
Christian  man  makes  all  men  who  meet  him  feel  the  indefinable  attraction 
of  his  goodness  and  self-sacrifice  ?  Believe  that  the  presence  of  Christ  in 
you  will  give  you,  even  though  your  natural  powers  may  not  be  the  greatest, 
35 


546  ADDRESSES   TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

an  attraction  to  all  believers,  and  an  influence  to  draw  all  men  to  God.  The 
power  of  a  life  lived  by  faith  in  the  Son  of  God  —  why,  it  is  irresistible  !  He 
must  succeed  who  sides  with  God.  But  not  simply  because  his  own  spirit 
is  a  power.  No  !  there  is  a  divine  Spirit  that  makes  man's  weakness  strength, 
that  teaches  man  to  labor  and  to  pray,  and  that  supplements  his  efforts  with 
divine  efficiency. 

They  are  Luther's  "three  onlies  " —  these  powers  of  the  Christian  ministry 
—  the  word  of  God  only,  faith  in  Christ  only,  the  power  of  the  Spirit  only. 
Trust  these,  my  brethren.  In  the  strength  of  these,  go  forth  to  meet  this 
living  age,  and  the  living  God  shall  go  with  you.  There  is  no  work  so  noble 
on  earth  to  do  —  none  that  so  developes  mind  and  heart.  Whether  outward 
success  may  be  yours  or  not,  is  little  matter.  God  will  make  your  work  the 
means  of  developing  in  you  the  highest  manhood,  and  your  labor  shall  not 
be  in  vain  in  the  Lord.  As  you  come  back  in  future  years  to  this  scene  of 
your  early  studies  and  vows,  we  shall  greet  you  as  soldiers  who  bring  good 
news  from  the  fight, —  we  shall  send  you  out  again,  as  we  do  now,  laden  with 
our  prayers  that  God  will  give  you  a  multitude  of  trophies  in  the  great  con- 
flict. But  whether  the  reward  shall  come  on  earth  or  not,  be  willing  all  the 
same  to  labor,  with  God  and  the  angels  for  your  witnesses,  and  the  Judgment 
for  the  testing-day  and  day  of  triumph.  But  I  must  not  detain  you.  The 
time  of  preparation  is  past.  Your  work  calls  you.  Go  forth  to  meet  it. 
Quit  you  like  men,  and  may  the  grace  of  our  Lord,  Jesus  Christ,  the  love  of 
God,  and  the  communion  and  participation  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  be  with  you 
both  now  and  evermore,  Amen. 


1874  : 
TRUTH  AND  LOVE. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  :  —  This  hour  is  one  of  the  serious 
hours  of  life.  To  you,  because  it  marks  the  completion  of  your  preparatory 
work,  and  the  opening  of  the  great  doors  that  hitherto  have  shut  you  out  from 
the  business  of  life.  To  me  serious,  because  it  marks  the  close  of  my  first 
course  of  instruction,  the  end  of  the  first  imperfect  round  of  theological  inves- 
tigation. You  are  my  first  children,  and  first  children  have  a  peculiar  place 
in  the  parent's  heart  which  none  have  after.  I  may  be  confidential  with  you 
now,  and  tell  you  how  I  prayed  when  I  first  half  tremblingly  undertook  my 
work,  that  God  would  give  me  for  my  first  pupils  a  considerate  class  —  a 
class  by  whose  side  and  upon  whose  level  I  could  put  myself,  for  honest  and 
patient  and  earnest  study  of  God's  great  system  of  truth.  I  wish  to  thank 
you  publicly  for  the  kindness  and  candor  with  which  you  have  received  my 
teaching.  No  captious  or  ungentle  word  has  ever  been  spoken  even  in  the 
greatest  stress  and  fervor  of  our  disputings  together.  And  in  all  our  per- 
sonal relations  there  has  been  the  warmth  of  a  Christian  affection,  which  to 
this  hour  I  believe  has  not  ceased  or  even  diminished,  but  has  steadily 
increased  even  to  the  end.  It  has  been  my  joy  and  crown  to  see  that  con- 
verse with  the  truth  was  stiffening  the  fibre  and  widening  the  reach  of  your 
minds,  and  that  with  intellectual  progress  there  was  also  religious  growth. 


1874:   TRUTH  AND  LOVE.  547 

But  we  have  come  to  the  end  at  last.  Such  as  it  is,  and  whatever  it  is,  my 
mark  upon  you  has  been  made.  You  go  out  to  be  the  first  representatives 
of  my  training  and  influence.  Do  you  wonder  that  I  hesitate  to  say  the 
word  that  parts  us, —  that  I  would  fain  hold  you  still,  to  better  my  work, — 
that  it  is  with  great  sadness,  even  with  my  great  hopes  for  your  future,  that 
I  hasten  on  to  the  blessing  and  the  farewell  ? 

This  occasion  will  never  come  again,  and  none  resembling  it.  There  is 
more  of  personality  in  it,  than  ever  can  be  again.  And  though  this  address  ' 
is,  in  its  original  design,  an  expression  of  others'  good  wishes  than  my  own, 
you  will  allow  me  to  make  it  to-night  the  vehicle  of  my  own  thought  with 
regard  to  you,  and  so  a  summing  up  of  what  I  have  desired  the  general 
influence  of  Seminary  instruction  to  be.  I  can  only  indicate  the  two  main 
features  of  it.  First,  to  form  the  fixed  habit  of  earnest  pondering  and  inde- 
pendent judgment  with  regard  to  the  truth,  as  to  doctrine  and  duty.  That 
implies  a  fundamental  conviction  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  truth  in 
spiritual  things,  reality  corresponding  to  normally  conducted  thinking.  It 
implies  a  burning  desire,  an  unalterable  determination,  to  know  the  most  of 
this  truth  that  the  strength  and  range  of  our  understandings  will  admit.  It 
implies  the  instinct  of  progress  —  putting  shame  on  any  idolizing  of  past 
attainments,  and  making  willingness  to  accept  new  light,  from  every  quarter 
under  heaven,  the  very  watchword  of  all  investigation.  No  contemptuous 
sneering  at  opponents,  no  dogmatizing  as  if  wisdom  would  die  with  us,  but 
fair-mindedness  in  recognizing  objection  and  allowing  it  all  proper  weight, 
while  at  the  same  time  we  put  it  in  its  place  of  subordination,  if  that  be  its 
due.  It  implies  holding  to  the  truth,  standing  by  the  truth,  living  for  the 
truth,  and  living  out  the  truth  when  we  have  found  it, —  our  progress  ruled 
by  the  facts  of  revelation,  marked  not  by  disregard  of  them  but  by  greater 
reverence  for  them, —  no  arbitrary  and  irrational  progress,  but  a  progress 
according  to  law  —  the  double  law  of  nature  and  of  Scripture.  I  believe, 
my  brethren,  that  we  have  together  dug  down  to  some  great  rocky  facts  of 
being,  and  have  to  some  extent  built  alike  upon  these.  But  if  you  go  out 
to  complete  your  structure  of  Christian  doctrine,  brick  for  brick  like  that 
which  you  have  seen  us  build,  you  are  no  true  disciples  of  ours.  Kemember 
that  we  have  taught  you  that  the  word  of  God  is  infinitely  higher  than  all 
human  teachers, —  and  that,  if  you  are  to  be  living  men  influencing  your 
age  for  God,  you  must  "prove  all  things  —  holding  fast  only  that  which  is 
good." 

Secondly,  we  have  desired  that  the  discipline  of  this  Seminary  should  form 
in  you  the  habit  of  seeking  the  truth,  holding  the  truth,  speaking  the  truth, 
living  the  truth,  in  love.  Our  theological  institutions  have  often  been 
charged  with  making  men  critical  at  the  expense  of  the  emotional  life ;  intel- 
lectual at  the  expense  of  practical  power ;  learned  at  the  expense  of  piety. 
I  trust  you  have  proved  the  contrary  in  your  own  experience.  I  know  that 
clearer  views  of  truth  have  opened  new  fountains  of  emotion  within  you, 
given  you  new  weapons  for  practical  work,  drawn  you  into  closer  sympathy 
and  communion  with  Christ.  Let  me  remind  you  that  the  aim  of  all  our 
instruction  has  been  to  show  that  truth  and  love  are  not  only  consistent  with 
each  other,  but  that  truth  without  love  is  not  truth,—  that  only  love  can  find 
the  truth,  or  utter  the  truth,  or  hold  the  truth,  or  live  the  truth.  I  repeat  to 


548  ADDRESSES   TO    GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

you  now,  what  I  have  said  in  a  hundred  forms  before,  that  only  as  you  are 
men  given  to  Christ  in  a  self -sacrificing  love  that  reflects  the  love  of  Geth- 
semane  and  Calvary,  can  you  ever  know  the  inner  secrets  of  God's  word,  or 
have  power  to  win  a  single  soul  from  darkness  to  light.  Will  you  ever  forget 
that  no  true  preaching  and  no  true  living  for  God  is  possible  without  having 
Christ  himself,  the  living  love  of  God  within  ?  —  without  knowing  by  personal 
and  blessed  experience  that  union  with  Christ  which  is  the  central  fact  of  all 
theology  and  of  all  religion  ?  —  without  being  possessed  by  a  higher,  larger, 
more  enduring  energy  than  that  of  a  weak,  unstable,  human  will—  even  the 
energy  of  Christ's  loving,  indwelling  Spirit  ?  Forget  all  else,  my  brethren, 
but  forget  not  this.  By  it,  your  life  and  your  ministry  stand  or  fall.  You 
can  do  all  things  through  Christ  who  strengthens  you,  but  without  him  you 
can  do  nothing. 

I  trust  these  two  great  principles  of  all  noble  living  —  truth-seeking  and 
Christ-loving  —  have  taken  such  possession  of  you  here,  that  entrance  upon 
more  direct  and  active  labors  for  men's  salvation  will  be  no  shock  to  you, 
but  only  the  joyful  widening  of  your  sphere.  Our  hearts  go  forward  with 
you  into  the  future  before  you.  Your  future  is  our  future,  your  labors  our 
labors,  your  trials  our  trials,  your  success  our  success.  I  cannot  tell  you  of 
the  eagerness  with  which  we  shall  listen  for  tidings  of  you,  nor  of  the  joy 
with  which  we  shall  hear  that  you  are  growing  in  power  to  unfold  God's 
truth,  that  you  are  learning  new  spiritual  lessons  of  communion  with  Christ, 
that  you  are  developing  new  tenderness  and  patience  and  self -sacrifice  in 
your  care  for  the  flock  of  God,  and  in  your  toilful  efforts  to  bring  erring  and 
perverted  souls  into  the  fold.  Work  and  pray  for  Christ  and  his  Church  ; 
take  the  place  he  puts  you  in ;  think  not  of  reward ;  lose  your  lives  for 
God's  sake  ;  and  the  reward  will  be  sure  enough,  and  great  enough.  Having 
been  "faithful  over  a  few  things"  on  earth,  Christ  will  make  you  "rulers 
over  many  things  "  when  he  comes  in  the  Judgment.  Go,  then,  and  God  be 
with  you  !  Farewell. 


1875: 
MANHOOD  IN  THE  MINISTRY. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  All  earthly  things  come  to  an 
end,  and  we  have  reached  the  end  of  our  work  together.  It  is  not  simply 
custom  which  bids  me  address  to  you  this  parting  word.  You  have  been  faith- 
ful students,  and  we  believe  you  to  be  good  and  true  men.  Three  years  of 
mental  contact  and  of  harmonious  intercourse  cannot  be  terminated  without 
regrets,  and  these  regrets  I  express  not  only  for  myself  but  for  the  whole 
faculty,  including  that  instructor  whose  ill  health  and  absence  is  so  great  a 
source  of  grief  both  to  himself  and  to  us.  It  is  little  we  can  now  do  for  you. 
I  trust  our  best  lessons  have  been  already  learned  too  well  for  time's  effacing 
fingers  ever  to  blot  them  from  your  memories.  Yet  one  word  more  —  this 
it  is  —  be  true  men  in  order  that  you  may  be  true  ministers  of  Christ, — 
regard  the  culture  and  maintenance  of  your  own  manhood  as  a  prime  con- 
dition of  successful  service. 


1875  :     MANHOOD    IN   THE    MINISTRY.  549 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  I  would  not  have  you  follow  this  exhortation. 
It  is  possible  to  seek  self  first  and  Christ  last  —  to  identify  Christ  with  true 
manhood  rather  than  true  manhood  with  Christ.  It  makes  all  the  difference 
in  the  world  whether  we  make  Christ  or  man  the  centre  of  our  system  — 
whether  we  take  the  law  of  Scripture,  or  become  a  law  to  ourselves.  Our 
nature  is  perverted ;  we  cannot  wholly  trust  its  impulses.  Only  in  Christ 
do  we  find  the  true  humanity  —  the  archetype  and  standard  and  source  of 
true  manhood  for  us.  It  is  not  then  a  self -centered  development,  with  the 
distant  aim  of  honoring  Christ,  to  which  I  exhort  you.  What  I  do  urge 
upon  you  is  a  development  of  Christian  manhood,  after  Christ's  model  and 
by  the  help  of  his  Spirit,  as  prior  both  in  order  and  importance  to  the  mere 
official  work  and  outward  service  which  you  have  been  called  to  do. 

True  manhood  in  the  ministry, —  the  very  notion  is  a  negation  of  several 
ignoble  conceptions  of  ministerial  life  and  character.  You  are  not  hired 
caterers  to  popular  amusement,  or  special  policemen  to  ferret  out  public  or 
private  delinquencies  ;  you  are  not  expounders  of  an  abstract  system  or  creed, 
or  creatures  of  a  different  mould  and  order  from  your  fellows  to  deal  out 
salvation  to  them  by  any  external  appliances  or  ordinances.  You  are  to  be 
men  among  men,  meeting  men  on  their  own  level,  aiming  directly  at  their 
understanding  and  sympathy,  and  therefore  putting  away  as  one  of  Satan's 
devices  every  peculiarity  of  dress  or  tone  which  savors  of  mere  profession- 
alism and  which  turns  men's  thoughts  to  the  minister  rather  than  to  the 
man. 

The  more  obvious  elements  of  true  manliness,  such  as  moral  thoughtful- 
n«  >s,  decision  of  character,  and  resolute  courage,  I  do  not  need  to  mention 
to  you.  I  wish  to  emphasize  two  or  three  of  the  less  commonly  noticed 
characteristic's  of  true  manhood, — and  one  is  openness.  Openness  of  mind 
and  heart ;  openness  to  receive  —  openness  to  give.  It  has  been  called  a 
chief  element  of  greatness,  and  if  greatness  is  a  growth,  it  must  be  so  ;  for, 
only  where  there  is  the  openness  of  true  sympathy,  the  entering  into  the 
mind  and  life  of  others,  the  readiness  to  take  in  good  of  every  sort,  can  there 
IK-  real  growth  of  mind  or  heart.  The  narrow  prejudice  and  egotism  that 
shut  men  up  in  their  own  dignity  and  opinion  bar  out  the  very  material  of 
which  greatness  is  made,  and  they  equally  bar  out  that  which  is  greater  than 
greatness,  namely,  this  true  manhood  of  which  I  speak.  Openness  to  give 
also  —  the  openness  that  gathers  in  all  treasures  of  nature  and  art,  literature 
and  life,  only  to  melt  them  in  the  fires  of  Christian  love  and  send  them  forth 
new-stamped,  with  Christ's  image  and  superscription  marked  upon  each  coin, 
so  that  every  fact  of  the  world  becomes  a  witness  to  God  and  his  salvation 
—  this  openness  of  receiving  and  giving  is  necessary  to  make  us  men.  You 
have  a  mind  and  heart  and  will  of  your  own.  God  has  renewed  these  pow- 
ers of  yours,  and  has  given  you  experience  of  his  grace.  Now  let  what  is  in 
you  come  out.  Away  with  that  shamefacedness  and  timidity  and  suspicious- 
ness  that  are  born  of  unbelief  and  vanity  and  supreme  care  for  self.  Cast 
yourselves  upon  God,  and  then  tell  out  your  very  souls  to  men.  You  will 
not  only  be  true  men  yourselves,  but  you  will  make  true  men  of  others  ;  for 
it  is  the  law  of  progress  of  God's  kingdom  that  mind  should  answer  to  mind 
and  heart  to  heart,  and  that  the  openness  of  true  manhood  should  be  self- 
communicating. 


550  ADDRESSES  TO    GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

I  have  another  element  to  add  which  is  hard  to  name,  but  which  seems  to 
me  specially  important,  —  let  me  call  it  spontaneity  of  movement.  I  mean 
by  it  a  self-determined  activity  of  all  the  powers.  That  is  a  tnie  notion  of 
our  relation  to  God's  Spirit  which  holds  that  we  are  to  be  possessed  by  God 
and  used  by  God  just  as  really  as  if  we  were  inert  instruments  or  machines, 
but  that  is  a  very  false  notion  of  the  relation  which  holds  that  therefore  we 
are  nothing  more  than  inert  instruments  or  machines.  Would  that  we  could 
utterly  rid  ourselves  of  the  notion  that  God's  working  in  the  human  soul 
makes  us  any  the  less  truly  men,  or  supersedes  in  any  degree  our  own  activ- 
ity. Christianity  is  not  passivity, — it  is  new  life  and  energy  and  will.  The 
preacher  who  idly  waits  for  his  sermon  or  his  audience  to  come  to  him, 
instead  of  working  out  his  sermon  and  gathering  his  audience,  needs  to  be 
taught  the  first  principles  of  Christ's  work.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  a  man 
is  to  have  no  will  of  his  own,  but  there  is  also  a  sense  in  which  he  is  to  be 
all  will.  He  is  to  do  God's  will  with  all  the  power  of  his  own  will.  He  is 
to  be  irrepressible  in  his  invention,  his  enterprise,  his  onset.  Like  water 
running  down  hill,  if  he  is  checked  in  one  direction,  he  is  to  find  his  way 
downward  in  another.  Men  are  to  be  reached,  something  is  to  be  accom- 
plished. The  preacher  is  to  be  all  things  to  all  men,  if  by  any  means  he 
may  save  some.  The  strongest  thing  in  the  universe  that  we  know  anything 
about  next  to  God,  is  a  living  human  will,  and  it  is  God's  purpose  that  this 
human  will  shall  serve  him.  There  are  quite  enough  ministers  who  fancy 
that  their  whole  work  for  God  is  that  of  suffering  God's  will.  The  great 
trouble  with  the  ministry  of  our  time  is  that  there  are  so  many  in  its  ranks 
who  have  to  be  supported  —  mere  hangers-on  and  camp-followers,  instead 
of  soldiers  and  leaders  in  the  fight.  I  pray  you,  if  no  place  comes  to  you, 
make  a  place  for  yourselves.  Strike  out  some  new  path  into  the  moral 
wastes  of  city  or  country  or  world.  Such  were  all  the  early  laborers  of  the 
church  of  Christ.  Serving  an  apprenticeship  of  this  sort,  beginning  at  the 
lowest  round  of  the  ladder,  proving  the  power  of  the  gospel  upon  the  least 
promising  subjects  and  in  the  least  promising  conditions,  will  make  men  of 
you,  and  will  give  you  a  power  and  influence  in  the  future  which  now  you  can- 
not measure.  Use  your  wills,  then  ;  determine  upon  success  ;  hew  your  way 
toward  it.  Be  sure  that  Christ  your  Master  would  have  you  no  waifs  upon 
the  surface  of  the  stream,  but  active  and  original  powers  to  turn  the  current 
of  the  world's  history  into  the  channel  of  his  purposes.  He  has  sent  you  to 
make  your  mark  upon  society  and  the  church,  and  to  summon  up  resolve 
and  determination  and  daring  to  fullfil  this  calling  is  not  pride  or  arrogance 
or  overweening  ambition,  but  is  that  very  working  out  of  your  own  salva- 
tion which  proves  that  God  is  working  in  you  to  will  and  to  do. 

Openness  —  spontaneity  —  these  are  two.  But  there  is  one  more  —  I  mean 
concentration.  This  is  an  age  of  division  of  labor.  Specialties  in  study  and 
work  rule  the  day.  No  man  can  now  be,  like  Michael  Angelo,  painter, 
sculptor,  architect,  poet,  man  of  society,  all  in  one.  No  man  can  make  him- 
self a  lawyer  without  devoting  himself  to  law  —  and  to  some  department  of 
the  law.  So  with  medicine  —  so  with  trade.  And  yet  many  a  minister  of 
Christ  fancies  that  he  can  be  an  investigator  in  science,  and  a  writer  for 
reviews,  and  an  amateur  in  art,  and  a  popular  lecturer,  and  still  do  justice 
to  the  pulpit.  Dr.  Chalmers  thought  so  in  his  youth.  It  was  only  when 


1875  :    MANHOOD   IN   THE   MINISTRY.  551 

Dr.  Chalmers  changed  his  mind  and  gave  himself  body  and  soul  to  preach- 
ing, that  he  began  to  stir  Scotland.  Of  all  things  essential  to  true  manhood 
this  is  behind  none,  namely,  unity  of  purpose  ;  and  of  all  pitiable  spectacles 
this  is  one  of  the  most  pitiable  —  a  universal  dilettante  in  the  ministry.  To 
move  men  in  masses  by  the  power  of  Christ's  gospel  —  is  not  this  enough  to 
stir  one  man's  pulses  with  enthusiasm  ?  The  cry  about  decline  of  the  pulpit 
means  simply  this,  that  preachers  have  sometimes  been  ashamed  of  their 
work,  and  have  ceased  to  make  full  proof  of  their  ministry.  Preaching  has 
not  lost  its  power,  where  men  put  all  their  power  into  preaching.  The  pul- 
pit is  a  very  throne  for  the  man  who  will  spend  himself  in  it.  I  do  not 
disparage  broad  studies.  I  say  the  preacher  must  be  open  to  every  whisper 
of  the  world,  but  I  do  say  that  the  pulpit  must  be  the  focus  of  the  whisper- 
ing gallery  where  all  sounds  converge.  The  homiletical  habit  must  be  the 
dominant  habit  of  the  preacher's  soul.  In  that  pleading  with  men  on  behalf 
of  the  living  God,  all  endowments  and  all  culture  may  have  part,  and  all 
themes  in  heaven  and  earth  may  be  laid  under  tribute  for  argument  or  cor- 
roboration  ;  but  none  of  these  endowments  and  none  of  this  learning  will  be 
worth  a  straw  to  one  of  you,  if  they  be  not  made  wholly  subservient  to  the 
one  purpose  of  making  you  able  ministers  of  the  New  Testament  and  good 
stf\\;irds  of  the  manifold  grace  of  God. 

Be  true  men,  then,  in  order  that  you  may  be  true  ministers, —  men  of  open 
mind  aud  heart,  men  of  will  and  spontaneous  energy,  men  devoted  to  a 
single  aim.  But  every  review  of  this  sort  inevitably  leads  us  back  to  the 
point  from  which  we  started.  You  cannot  be  true  men  —  men  of  the  stamp  I 
have  indicated  —  without  being  true  ministers.  The  man  makes  the  minister, 
but  the  minister  also  makes  the  man.  Only  as  you  know  Christ  and  love 
Christ  and  obey  Christ,  only  as  you  live  in  him  and  are  ruled  by  him,  can 
you  really  be  any  of  these  things.  But  you  know  all  this.  This  has  been 
the  staple  of  our  teaching  and  talk  and  prayer  for  three  years  past.  Only 
in  Him  who  is  the  perfect  flower  and  embodiment  of  true  humanity  —  the 
head  and  source  of  a  new  human  nature  answering  to  the  divine  idea  —  can 
we  find  again  the  true  manhood  which  was  lost  in  the  fall.  But  there,  in 
the  risen  and  glorified  Jesus,  it  is,  for  us  and  for  all. 

You  go  forth  on  different  errands,  some  to  teach,  some  to  preach, —  some 
to  carry  the  torch  of  salvation  out  into  the  heathen  darkness,  some  to  keep 
the  lights  burning  at  home.  But  your  work  is  one,  and  your  Lord  is  one. 
Alike  you  aim  to  bring  men  to  the  comprehension  and  attainment  of  Chris- 
tian manhood.  You  can  do  this,  only  as  you  yourselves  grow  up  into  the 
stature  of  perfect  men  in  Christ  Jesus,  only  as  the  minister  becomes  in  the 
highest  sense  the  man.  I  commend  you  to  that  perfect  man  who  is  God 
also,  and  who  is  able  to  make  you  like  himself.  I  bid  you  depend  wholly 
upon  him.  But,  as  my  last  word  to  you,  I  urge  you  not  to  satisfy  yourselves 
with  passive  trust  and  waiting,  but  with  open  soul  and  vigorous  resolve  and 
unity  of  purpose,  to  "quit  you  like  men"  in  this  one  and  only  life  that  is 
given  you  to  live,  and  which  from  this  moment  opens  before  you. 


552  ADDRESSES  TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

1876: 
WOEK  AND  POWER. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  With  much  struggle  you  have 
by  God's  favor  pushed  your  way  to  your  present  stage  of  preparation  for 
the  gospel  ministry.  You  have  all  of  you  in  various  ways  commended  your- 
selves to  your  instructors  in  this  Institution,  and  we  send  you  forth  with  the 
confidence  that  your  training  here  will  prove  not  to  have  been  in  vain.  It 
tempers  the  sadness  of  our  parting  with  you  to  think  that  you  constitute 
our  annual  quota  ©f  reinforcement  to  the  leaders  of  Christ's  militant  church. 

You  can  well  understand  how  hope  for  your  future  should  mingle  with 
anxiety.  Life  is  so  short,  eternity  is  so  long,  that  which  is  now  has  in  it  so 
much  of  that  which  is  to  come,  that  I  cannot  let  you  go  without  reminding 
you  again,  and  with  the  solemnity  of  a  last  appeal,  of  a  relation  most  needful 
to  be  considered  in  these  our  times, — I  mean  the  relation  between  work  and 
power.  You  have  sharpened  your  tools ;  your  work  is  before  you ;  have 
you  the  power  that  will  enable  you  to  do  it  for  God  ? 

Of  the  two,  power  is  the  primary  and  more  important.  In  a  great  machine- 
shop  a  hundred  men  may  stand  at  their  lathes,  ready  with  their  tools  for  work, 
but  a  slight  neglect  or  mistake  in  the  engine-room  may  cut  off  the  steam  and 
render  their  skill  of  no  avail.  He  would  be  a  sorry  miller  who  should  devote 
his  whole  attention  to  setting  the  burr-stones  and  buying  the  wheat,  while  he 
gave  no  care  to  provide  a  water-supply  to  run  his  wheel.  The  wise  manu- 
facturer will  have  his  reserves  of  power  for  exigencies,  and  will  make  sure 
of  the  connections  between  that  power  and  the  looms  it  is  to  move.  Nature 
makes  no  mistakes  here.  She  stores  up  nervous  force  in  the  brain  like 
electricity  in  a  Ley  den  jar, —  when  the  critical  moment  comes,  there  is  hard- 
ness to  the  muscle  and  strength  to  the  blow.  The  power  that  moves  our 
modern  world,  so  far  as  its  material  progress  is  concerned,  is  derived  from 
the  coal-measures  which  nature  made  ready  ages  ago.  And  now  if  God  and 
man  make  so  much  of  power,  shall  the  Christian  minister  forget  it,  when  he 
has  a  work  to  do  compared  with  which  the  mighty  achievements  of  secular 
industry  and  the  greatest  movements  of  the  natural  world  are  but  child's 
play? 

For  all  power  we  are  dependent.  We  are  not  self -moving  machines.  The 
body  must  be  fed, —  the  mind  must  be  disciplined  and  furnished.  No  man 
is  self-made, —  no  man  is  self -sustained.  Whatever  of  power  he  uses  or  has, 
he  gets  from  outside  himself.  He  draws  upon  and  employs  God's  power. 
Dependence  is  the  condition  of  finite  being.  But  what  is  true  even  in  the 
natural  realm  is  far  more  profoundly,  intensely  true  in  the  realm  of  spirit. 
For  all  spiritual  life  and  energy  we  are  absolutely  dependent  upon  God.  No 
spiritual  work  done  without  him  can  prosper  ;  but  that  is  not  the  whole  of 
it  —  severed  from  Him  we  can  accomplish  nothing.  Shut  the  sluice-gate 
through  which  God's  power  flows  into  you, — the  mill-race  runs  dry,  the 
sound  of  the  grinding  is  low,  soon  it  ceases  altogether.  Cut  off  your  base  of 
supplies  in  God  and  the  provision  of  his  Spirit, —  you  are  in  the  enemy's 
hands  ;  you  are  captured  or  you  starve.  To  learn  this  lesson  that  we  have 
no  strength  of  ourselves  —  this  is  the  end  of  precept  and  warning,  of  chastise- 


1876  :   WORK  AND  POWER.  553 

ment  and  humiliation.  We  cannot  keep  our  own  souls  alive, — much  less  can 
we  bring  out  from  their  graves  the  spiritually  dead.  But  all  is  changed 
when  God's  power  is  given  to  us.  Then  wonders  are  wrought  in  the  renew- 
ing of  human  hearts,  fit  to  be  compared  with  that  marvel  of  the  ages  when 
the  soul  of  God  was  put  into  the  body  of  the  dead  Christ  and  he  was  raised 
from  the  tomb  in  life  and  glory. 

The  power  exists  —  as  real,  as  mighty,  as  accessible  as  the  forces  of  nature 
which  man  bends  to  his  purposes  of  art  and  industry.  How  are  we  to  obtain 
and  use  it  ?  Just  as  we  obtain  and  use  any  other  power — by  acting  according 
to  its  laws.  No  man  really  compels  nature  to  serve  him,  except  by  obeying 
her.  We  discover  her  methods  and  apply  them,  and  then  we  say  that  we 
control  her.  So  this  Niagara-power  of  spiritual  influence  in  God  we  bind 
to  our  work,  only  as  we  discover  its  laws  and  submit  ourselves  to  them.  For 
here  is  more  than  nature  —  more  than  blind  force,  such  as  men  conceive  to 
move  the  spheres.  Here  is  a  living  will,  a  personal  and  present  God.  We 
use  his  power  only  as  we  are  used  by  Him.  We  secure  his  help  and  inspi- 
ration only  as  we  recognize  him  as  Supreme  and  Sovereign,  blowing  where 
he  listeth,  dividing  to  every  man  severally  as  he  will,  and  in  that  conviction 
turn  ourselves  from  agents  into  instruments,  and  deem  it  our  highest  honor 
to  be  arrows  in  the  hand  of  the  Almighty. 

That  was  excellent  theological  instruction  that  Christ  gave  for  three  years 
to  his  apostles,  but  he  did  not  deem  them  fitted  for  their  work  till  they  had 
received  another  and  a  higher  gift  —  the  gift  of  the  Spirit.  They  had  done 
work  for  him  before,  but  it  was  like  work  done  on  a  hand  machine,  where 
the  energy  was  mostly  spent  in  turning  the  crank.  After  Pentecost,  they 
were  power-machines, —  no  effort  now  —  they  could  not  but  speak  the  things 
they  had  seen  and  heard.  Enthusiasm  —  EV  &e £  —  they  had  this,  now  that 
they  were  possessed  by  the  Spirit  of  God.  Their  faces  had  a  strange  light, 
their  voices  a  strange  tenderness,  their  very  gestures  a  strange  power,  to 
impress  and  move  and  win  men  to  the  service  of  their  Lord.  Their  faith 
became  contagious.  Doubt  vanished,  as  it  heard  the  story  of  Christ.  Through 
the  work  of  the  Spirit,  the  cross  of  shame  became  the  power  of  God. 

We  have  no  right  idea  of  the  Christian  ministry,  unless  we  conceive  of  it 
as  a  prophetic  office.  No  miracle-working,  no  revelation  of  new  truth,  but 
special  direction  and  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  unfolding  and  appli- 
cation of  the  old  truth  of  the  Bible  to  men's  present  circumstances  and  needs 
—  this  is  the  New  Testament  prophesying  to  which  you  are  called.  And 
what  shall  a  prophet  be  without  the  Spirit  ?  And  how  shall  the  Spirit  be 
obtained  or  retained  without  prayer?  The  apostles  "gave  themselves  to 
prayer,  and  to  the  ministry  of  the  word. "  Let  the  ministry  of  to-day  in  like 
manner  make  prayer  and  preaching  coordinate  in  rank  and  importance ;  let 
them  give  to  supplication  for  the  gifts  of  the  Spirit  the  first  place  and  the 
best  place  in  their  time  and  regard, — instead  of  making  a  be-all  and  end-all 
of  direct  efforts  to  impress  strong  hearts  with  truth  which  the  preacher  cannot 
feel  himself  ;  in  short,  let  the  work  of  the  ministry  be  only  a  supplement  to 
the  continuous  seeking  of  power  from  on  high ;  and  Pentecost  will  come 
again,  never  more  to  cease  from  the  earth,  until  every  heart  of  man  has  felt 
Christ's  power  to  save. 

May  God  put  it  into  your  hearts,  my  brethren,  to  be  examples  of  a  new 


554  ADDRESSES  TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

ministry  of  the  Spirit  to  the  century  of  history  upon  which  the  land  is  just 
about  to  enter.  If  the  close  of  the  two  decades  and  a  half  in  the  life  of  this 
Seminary  which  is  marked  by  this  Anniversary  could  be  signalized  by  the 
sending  forth  of  thirteen  men  who  believed  in  "the  power  of  the  Spirit 
only"  as  the  means  by  which  Christ's  truth  is  to  triumph — believed  it  so 
that  they  gave  their  lives  to  the  practical  proving  and  illustrating  of  it, —  it 
would  be  worthy  fruit  of  all  this  quarter-century  of  theological  education. 
Not  less  of  knowledge  or  training  or  labor  —  but  more  of  the  Spirit  of  God 
to  interfuse  this  knowledge  and  training  and  labor  with  an  energy  foreign 
to  mere  human  nature  —  springing  from  the  boundless  depths  of  the  divine 
heart  and  manifesting  the  resistless  movement  of  the  divine  will !  If  he  who 
was  with  us  when  the  year  began  —  your  teacher  in  the  word  of  God  which 
he  so  humbly  and  implicitly  believed  and  which  he  so  vividly  and  thoroughly 
expounded  —  but  wrho  to-night  in  a  nobler  assembly  celebrates  a  nobler  fes- 
tival than  ours, — if  he  could  speak  to  you  from  the  midst  of  that  uncreated 
light  where  there  is  no  seeming,  but  only  endless  and  perfect  vision  of  the 
truth,  would  it  not  be  to  say  some  words  like  these  :  ' '  Be  first  true  men  of 
God,  possessed  by  God,  subject  to  God.  Seek  first  God's  power,  through 
prayer  and  obedience.  Receive,  through  faith,  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  promise 
of  the  Father.  Then  ponder  and  preach  his  truth,  with  the  Spirit  sent  down 
from  heaven,  so  that  your  faith  and  the  faith  of  men  may  stand,  not  in  the 
wisdom  of  men,  but  in  the  power  of  God." 

My  brethren,  there  is  a  voice  that  speaks  to  you, — but  it  is  a  better  voice 
than  that  of  any  sainted  one.  It  is  the  voice  of  him  whom  Dr.  Hackett 
served  on  earth,  and  whom  he  serves  in  heaven.  The  words  come  echoing 
down  to  us  from  the  time  when  they  were  first  spoken  in  the  upper  chamber 
from  which  the  twelve  apostles  were  to  go  forth  to  preach  the  gospel  of  the 
kingdom.  They  are  Christ's  words  to  you  also,  as  you  go  out  to  do  his  work 
in  the  world.  Listen  and  you  shall  hear  him  saying  : — "Peace be  unto  you  ! 
As  my  Father  hath  sent  me,  even  so  send  I  you.  Receive  ye  the  Holy 
Ghost." 


1877  : 
COURAGE,  PASSIVE  AND  ACTIVE. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  You  have  fulfilled  your  course 
of  preliminary  study  for  the  ministry.  Your  class  is  the  largest  ever  gradu- 
ated from  the  Seminary,  yet  death  has  not  once  invaded  your  ranks.  The 
last  labors  of  Hackett  and  Buckland  have  been  spent  upon  you,  and  you 
have  joined  in  our  sorrow  over  their  loss.  Common  chastisements  and  warn- 
ings have  drawn  us  nearer  to  each  other,  and  to  Christ.  We  will  interpret 
your  feelings  to-night  by  our  own.  Your  instructors  cannot  see  this  peculiar 
intimacy  of  association  come  to  a  close  without  poignant  regret.  We  sorrow 
that  we  shall  see  your  faces  no  more.  We  have  no  fears  for  you.  The  place 
you  have  taken  and  the  work  you  have  done  are  guarantees  under  God  for 
your  future.  That  future  will  hardly  be  changed  by  anything  I  shall  say 
to-night.  But  knowing  how  your  work  looms  up  before  you,  and  how  an 


1877:   COUKAGE,  PASSIVE  AND  ACTIVE.  555 

ingenuous  mind  shrinks  from  its  untried  responsibilities,  I  would  fain  speak 
one  word  in  such  a  tone  that  it  may  echo  and  re-echo  down  the  long  reaches 
of  your  public  career,  and,  whenever  memory  repeats  it  from  her  walls,  may 
give  you  new  hope  and  inspiration. 

That  one  word  is  —  Courage.  It  is  a  large  word.  There  is  a  passive  cour- 
age. It  is  the  Scripture  i»7ro//ov/}  —  patience,  fortitude,  endurance.  Nothing 
more  needed,  when  we  have  to  suffer,  or  to  stand  and  wait.  It  is  the  martyr- 
spirit.  It  lives  in  you,  it  lives  in  myriads  of  believing  hearts,  though,  like 
smouldering  embers,  it  takes  the  wild  wind  of  adversity  or  of  persecution  to 
strip  it  of  its  ashy  crust,  and  reveal  its  steady  glow.  But  the  martyr  is  not 
only  a  sufferer, — he  is  a  witness.  There  is  something  positive  and  aggres- 
sive about  him.  He  gives  testimony.  And  to  give  testimony  requires  courage 
of  another  sort  —  active  courage  —  that  independent,  whole-hearted,  out- 
spoken courage  which  the  New  Testament  calls  Trappr/oia,  or  boldness.  It  is 
this  active  courage  that  I  would  commend  to  you.  I  know  that  if  you  have 
this,  you  will  have  the  other.  If  the  fire  is  only  kept  up,  there  will  be  coals 
enough  for  the  time  of  need. 

And  now  let  me  mention  three  things  in  which  this  courage  will  inevitably 
manifest  itself.  The  first  is,  intelligent  independence, —  I  exhort  you  to  this. 
Not  the  audacity  of  questioning  or  superseding  revelation ;  not  the  folly  arid 
self -sufficiency  of  ignoring  past  interpretations  of  revelation  ;  but  the  duty 
of  going  directly  to  the  sacred  oracle  to  hear  what  God  the  Lord  will  speak. 
I  bid  you  believe  and  preach  what  you  find  in  God's  word,  though  all  the 
theologies  of  all  the  world  are  against  you.  Value  your  own  opinions  formed 
by  humble  and  prayerful  study  of  the  Scriptures.  They  are  as  good  as  any 
other  man's  opinions, — at  any  rate,  they  are  the  only  opinions  of  decisive 
value  to  you.  When  you  have  found  the  truth,  be  free  to  express  the  truth. 
Speak  it  out  while  you  feel  it,  and  as  you  feel  it,  without  too  great  particu- 
larity of  phrase.  Show  your  mind  and  your  heart  to  men.  Be  so  sincere 
and  transparent  and  demonstrative  that  you  are  willing  to  blunder.  Let  no 
overbearing  man,  let  the  terror  of  no  audience,  face  you  down.  Have  a  proper 
self-confidence.  Magnify  your  office.  Make  no  apologies.  Let  no  man 
despise  your  youth.  There  are  a  great  plenty  of  men  who  are  run  in  one 
mould.  In  your  first  creation  and  in  your  new  creation,  God  gave  you 
peculiarities  of  mind  and  heart  and  will.  He  would  have  you  lead  a  life,  and 
exert  an  influence  for  him,  in  some  respects  different  from  that  of  any  other 
servant  of  his  that  ever  breathed  upon  this  planet.  Have  courage  then  to 
be  yourselves. 

Intellectual  independence  —  that  is  the  first  manifestation  of  active  cour- 
age. The  second  is,  practical  force.  You  may  be  different  from  every  other 
human  being,  yet  make  no  mark  to  indicate  it.  Let  us  be  thankful  that  our 
national  spirit  demands  of  every  man  positive  achievement.  Better  not  live 
at  all,  than  to  do  nothing  in  the  world.  To  be  a  mere  recipient,  to  spend 
one's  days  in  self -culture,  to  float  through  life  artistically  reclining  upon  the 
cushions  of  a  gondola — this  can  be  tolerated  in  the  old  world,  but  not  in  the 
new.  It  belongs  to  classic,  not  to  Christian  times.  "What  wilt  thou  have 
me  to  do  ?  " —  that  is  the  keynote  of  the  new  dispensation.  My  brethren, 
God  sends  you  out  to  accomplish  something.  You  are  to  make  yourselves 
felt.  You  are  to  turn  the  world  upside  down.  When  you  take  the  bow,  you 


556  ADDRESSES   TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

are  to  let  the  arrows  of  divine  truth  fly  full  and  strong,  and  straight  to  the 
mark.  You  must  put  your  life  into  your  work.  Soul  and  body  must  go 
together.  The  vast  majority  of  men  appreciate  nothing  purely  intellectual. 
Only  through  the  stir  of  the  emotions,  and  the  physical  energy  of  the  man 
who  addresses  them,  will  they  be  awakened  to  attend  to  the  truth  he  preaches. 
If  you  cannot  reach  them  by  preaching,  then  reach  them  by  private  and  per- 
sonal influence.  Be  all  things  to  all  men,  if  by  any  means  you  may  save 
some.  Do  not  be  fettered  by  traditional  rules  of  ministerial  conduct,  when 
these  bar  your  access  to  men's  hearts.  Devise  new  methods,  set  on  foot  new 
enterprises.  No  Fabian  policy,  in  the  conduct  of  this  warfare.  Not  simply 
to  "hold  the  fort"  that  is  already  ours,  but  to  "storm  the  fort"  of  the 
enemy — for  this  are  we  sent.  Christ  holds  us  to  this  putting  forth  of  prac- 
tical force,  this  doing  of  aggressive  work,  and  here  is  the  field  for  Christian 
courage. 

And  now  all  this  would  be  at  the  hazard  of  the  preacher's  own  salvation, 
if  there  were  not  a  third  work  of  courage.  I  mean  spiritual  living.  No  one 
but  he  who  has  tried  it,  knows  what  courage  it  takes  to  live  a  spiritual  life 
above  the  average  standard  of  the  community  or  the  church.  You  never 
know  the  bitter  hostility  of  the  world  to  Christ,  until  you  see  households 
divided,  and  enmities  occasioned,  by  simple  faithfulness  to  the  Master  on  the 
part  of  some  one  of  his  disciples.  The  church  too  often  is  willing  to  bear 
the  ministrations  only  of  one  who  will  speak  kindly  of  its  sins,  and  not  too 
urgently  of  its  duties.  Simply  to  give  to  secret  prayer  the  time  that  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  nourish  one's  heart,  in  this  age  of  predominantly  outward 
activities,  requires  in  the  minister  a  continual  struggle.  To  live  so  far  above 
his  people  that  this  struggle  shall  have  ceased  and  prayer  be  his  life  —  this, 
to  the  mass  of  Christians,  is  unhoped  for  and  almost  unheard  of  sanctity, — 
and  the  demand  that  they  should  come  up  to  a  standard  so  lofty  is  an  irri- 
tating impertinence.  To  contend  against  these  resisting  influences  requires 
that  Christ's  servant  should  die  daily.  Yet  without  thus  contending,  how- 
can  his  ministry  be  other  than  a  failure  ?  He  is  to  lift  men  up  to  a  higher 
life.  How  can  he  do  this,  unless  he  lives  that  life  himself  ?  Nothing  but  a 
high-hearted  boldness,  a  very  sublimity  of  courage,  will  enable  even  a  min- 
ister of  the  gospel  in  these  days  to  meet  the  first  and  most  fundamental 
demand  of  his  office  —  the  living  of  a  spiritual  life. 

You  know  whither  these  remarks  are  tending.  Christ  has  made  provision 
for  all  these  sublimities.  The  passive  courage  that  we  term  patience,  forti- 
tude, endurance  ;  and  the  active  courage  which  we  term  independence,  force, 
spirituality, —  both  these  are  given  to  us  in  Him  in  whom  we  are  complete. 
There  is  a  boldness  which  consists  of  meekness  and  humility  —  the  boldness 
of  the  man  who  knows  that  he  has  the  truth,  not  his  own  truth,  but  God's 
truth,  the  truth  that  the  world  is  dying  for,  the  truth  that  will  stand  the 
test  of  the  last  great  day  ;  the  boldness  of  the  man  who,  by  whatever  pro- 
cess, has  come  to  the  conviction  that  God  has  sent  him  to  proclaim  the 
truth,  that  a  woe  is  on  him  if  he  preach  not  the  gospel,  and  that  eternal  woe 
or  eternal  blessedness  for  some  who  hear  him  depends  upon  their  acceptance 
or  rejection  of  the  message  he  brings ;  the  boldness  of  the  man  who  has 
implicit  confidence  in  God  and  in  his  promises,  who  believes  that  God  is 
with  him  in  his  preaching,  helping  him  to  speak  and  helping  his  hearers  to 


1878  :  TRUE  DOGMATISM.  557 

hear,  and  who  therefore  declares  to  men  with  a  solemn  rejoicing  the  whole 
counsel  of  God.  And  this  boldness,  my  brethren,  so  magnificent  in  its  nature 
and  in  its  results,  the  very  crown  and  summit  of  all  gifts  of  God,  this  is  no 
dream  of  a  wild  imagination,  but  the  rightful  possession  of  every  one  of  us 
whom  Christ  has  put  into  his  ministry. 

Courage,  then,  in  its  essence  as  well  as  in  its  etymology,  is  a  matter  of 
the  heart  —  the  possession  only  of  him  whose  heart  is  one  with  the  heart  of 
Christ.  It  is  not  a  thing  of  native  endowment  alone,  nor  simply  a  product 
of  reason  and  experience.  The  true  courage  of  the  Christian  minister  has 
its  chief  source  in  that  divine  Person  who  has  constituted  himself  the  heart 
of  our  heart  and  the  life  of  our  life.  My  brethren,  if  it  were  in  my  power, 
I  would  pour  out  upon  you  such  fullness  of  grace  and  strength  for  the  work 
before  you,  as  should  leave  you  never  for  a  moment  conscious  of  intermit- 
tency  or  lack.  What  I  would  do  but  cannot,  Christ  can  do  and  will.  I 
point  you,  to  Him  as  the  only  and  the  unfailing  source  of  courage.  It  is  for 
you  now  to  point  others  to  Him.  Do  it  with  such  zeal,  such  determination, 
such  faith,  such  self-devotion,  that  over  you,  when  you  die,  may  be  said 
those  words  which  were  spoken  at  John  Knox's  grave  :  "  Here  lies  one  who 
never  feared  the  face  of  man." 


1878: 
TRUE  DOGMATISM. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  The  Providence  of  God  that  has 
brought  you  by  varied  but  converging  ways,  first  to  your  meeting,  as  stu- 
dents, and  now  to  your  parting,  has  doubtless  been  preparing  your  work  for 
you,  as  well  as  you  for  your  work.  God's  Providence  and  God's  Spirit  sup- 
plement each  other.  As  each  age  rises,  new  men  arise  to  take  the  lead  of  it 
and  to  turn  its  activities  into  Christian  channels.  The  preachers  of  a  past 
generation  give  place  to  the  preachers  of  the  modern  time.,  because  of  the 
great  law  that  men  are  influenced  most  by  those  who  are  in  sympathy  with 
them.  The  everlasting  gospel  is  everlasting  because  of  its  power  of  endless 
adaptation  to  the  conditions  of  the  humanity  it  is  to  save.  And  you,  who  are 
sent  out  to  teach  an  age  different  in  some  respects  from  any  that  has  gone 
before,  must  in  some  respects  be  different  men  from  God's  servants  in  the 
past,  if  you  are  to  succeed  in  your  ministry.  "  Like  people,  like  priest,"  is 
a  maxim  that  has  a  good  meaning  as  well  as  a  bad.  As  this  is  an  age  of 
intelligence,  rapid  thinking,  hatred  of  shams,  you  can  mould  it  for  Christ 
only  by  being  educated,  alert  and  genuine  men. 

But  it  is  to  another  point  that  I  wish  to  call  your  special  attention.  It  is 
an  age  in  which  all  beliefs  that  take  possession  of  men's  minds,  whether  in 
science,  literature  or  philosophy,  intensely  and  dogmatically  assert  them- 
selves. If  you  would  cope  with  the  age's  skepticism  and  indifference,  its 
pre-occupation  and  hostility,  you  must  meet  this  assurance  of  unbelief  with 
the  sublimer  assurance  of  faith  ;  you  must  believe  something  with  all  your 
heart,  and  then  you  must  declare  it  and  stand  for  it,  and  offer  combat  to  all 
who  come.  To  this  doubting,  questioning  time,  you  must  present  some- 


558  ADDRESSES   TO    GRADUATING    CLASSES. 

thing  beyond  all  doubt  or  question  —  the  eternal  truth  of  God, — present  it 
with  the  true  dogmatism  of  an  unwavering  faith.  Then  your  faith  shall  be 
contagious,  and  those  who  hear  you  shall  believe  and  live. 

Is  there  a  body  of  definite  truth  for  which  you  may  thus  safely  stand  ? 
And  has  this  truth  laid  hold  of  you,  so  that  you  glory  in  nothing  else  but  the 
preaching  of  it?  These  are  the  two  great  questions.  I  trust  your  course  of 
instruction  and  investigation  in  this  Seminary  has  settled  the  first  one  for 
you.  I  know  that  there  are  many  "  winds  of  doctrine  "  at  present  blowing ; 
much  doubt  whether  the  apostles  fully  knew  whereof  they  affirmed,  and 
whether  even  Christ's  teaching  was  not  an  accommodation  to  his  times. 
There  are  many  who  question  whether  we  can  be  sure  enough  what  the  New 
Testament  teachings  are,  to  warrant  us  in  drawing  a  hard  and  fast  line  any- 
where, and  saying  "  This  is  truth,"  and  "  That  is  a  lie. "  But  just  this,  John 
did  —  that  Boanerges  whose  love  could  brook  no  slight  upon  Christ  or  his 
truth.  And  we  have  failed  in  our  teaching,  if  we  have  not  awakened  within 
you  a  new  and  profound  conviction  that  a  magnificent  and  organic  scheme 
of  doctrine  is  made  known  in  the  Scriptures  —  a  scheme  of  doctrine  whose 
foundations  are  the  nature  and  decrees  of  God,  whose  various  parts  have 
fixed  and  unchangeable  relations  to  each  other,  and  whose  structure  towers 
above  all  human  systems  and  embraces  truth  with  regard  to  heaven  as  well 
as  with  regard  to  earth. 

One  of  the  Bampton  Lecturers,  Garbett  by  name,  has  pointed  out  very 
clearly  a  distinct  inculcation  of  this  principle  by  one  of  the  apostles.  In  an 
age  of  heresy  and  conflict  Jude  exhorts  his  readers  to  ' '  contend  earnestly 
for  the  faith  once  for  all  delivered  to  the  saints. "  Notice  how  much  is  implied 
here.  First,  he  assumes  the  existence  of  a  definite  and  well-known  body  of 
truth  called  "  the  faith."  The  belief  of  the  church  was  not  something  vague 
and  changeable,  but  it  consisted  of  a  clear  and  organized  mass  of  religious 
doctrine,  distinctly  separable  from  the  errors  that  assailed  it,  and  recognized 
by  all  believers  as  characteristic  of  the  Christian  church.  Secondly,  this 
body  of  truth  is  characterized  by  completeness  and  finality  ;  it  is  not  sus- 
ceptible of  addition  or  diminution  ;  it  is  the  faith  "once,"  or  as  it  should  be 
translated,  "  once  for  all,  delivered  to  the  saints."  Thirdly,  there  is  an 
authority  about  it,  because  it  has  not  originated  in  human  reasonings  or  in 
human  speculations,  but  has  been  given  from  above  ;  it  is  "  the  faith  once 
for  all  delivered,"  by  God.  And  fourthly,  this  faith  has  been  given  as  a 
sacred  trust  to  a  particular  body,  namely,  the  church,  that  they  may  keep  it 
and  defend  it, —  the  faith  has  been  "  delivered  to  the  saints. "  And  thus  we, 
as  ministers  of  the  church,  are  trustees,  and  into  our  hands  this  priceless 
treasure  has  been  put,  to  ensure  not  only  its  safety  and  purity,  but  its  uni- 
versal diffusion  through  the  world.  What  can  humble  us,  what  can  exalt 
us,  more  than  this,  that  we  who  are  "  less  than  the  least  of  all  saints,"  are  yet 
chosen  to  be  "stewards  of  the  mysteries  of  God,"  and  that  "this  grace  is 
given  us,"  that  we  might  present  "  the  unsearchable  riches  of  Christ  "  ! 

You  have  the  objective  faith  —  the  system  of  divine  truth  ;  have  you  the 
subjective  faith  —  the  confidence  and  zeal  that  will  lead  you  to  devote  your 
lives  to  its  propagation  and  defense  ?  This  is  the  last  question.  I  invite 
you  to  severe  self-scrutiny,  while  you  answer  it.  There  is  much  to  weaken 
this  faith  in  OUT  day.  The  skeptical  habit  is  the  prevalent  habit  of  the  time. 


1878  :   TRUE  DOGMATISM.  5591 

The  oldest  and  most  settled  beliefs  have  become  open  questions.  God  and 
conscience,  heaven  and  hell,  are  all  marked  with  interrogation-points.  Dog- 
matic reviews  have  given  place  to  critical  journals  in  which  doubters  and 
disputants  hold  prolonged  symposia.  Laxity  of  doctrine  —  aye,  scorn  of 
doctrine  —  is  epidemic.  I  beg  you,  stop  where  you  are  and  go  no  further 
toward  the  work  of  the  ministry,  if  you  are  not  ready  to  meet  this  half -ques- 
tioning, half-denouncing  spirit,  with  faith  in  the  living  Christ  and  in  the 
absolute  truth  and  saving  power  of  his  word.  If  you  have  still  the  idea  that 
Christian  doctrine  is  dead  dogma,  that  it  is  a  human  invention  instead  of  a 
deliverance  of  God,  that  it  weakens  the  human  intellect  instead  of  nourishing 
it  with  its  proper  food,  and  fetters  the  mind  instead  of  expanding  it  with  its 
vital  breath,  —  in  fine,  if  to  contend  earnestly  for  the  old  faith  seems  to  be 
dogmatism,  in  the  narrow  and  mean  sense  of  positiveness  where  there  is  no 
certainty, —  then  turn  back,  the  pulpit  is  no  place  for  you.  But,  if  you  know 
whom  you  have  believed,  if  God  has  revealed  his  Son  in  you,  if  you  have 
indubitable  assurance  that  the  Scripture  doctrines  of  sin  and  salvation  are 
the  very  truth  of  God,  then  go  forward,—  declare  the  whole  counsel  of  God  : 
whoever  may  refuse  to  hear,  God's  Spirit  will  make  your  word  a  word  of 
power,  and  you  shall  both  save  yourselves  and  those  who  hear  you. 

One  year  ago  this  evening  the  class  that  preceded  yours  stood  in  like  man- 
ner before  me.  How  well  we  remember  one  of  the  members  of  that  class, 
the  manly  but  gentle,  the  noble  but  modest,  Albert  J.  Lyon.  As  I  think  of 
his  tall  and  graceful  form,  and  then  of  the  thorough  scholarship  and  deep 
devotion  that  he  showed  in  his  Seminary  course,  I  thank  God  that  I  was 
permitted  to  instruct  him.  He  gave  himself  to  the  work  of  missions.  With 
all  the  ardor  of  his  ardent  nature,  he  went  across  the  intervening  oceans  to 
Christianize  and  civilize  a  mountain  tribe  in  Northern  Burmah.  God  spared 
his  life  just  long  enough  to  permit  him  to  see  in  the  distance  the  hills  where 
he  had  expected  to  labor,  and  there,  before  the  first  year  was  over,  he  was 
called  from  work  to  rest,  from  labor  to  reward.  How  pathetically  and 
impressively  his  example  speaks  to  us  to-night !  Out  from  that  new-made 
grave  the  other  side  of  the  sea  there  comes  a  voice,  speaking  to  us  of  the 
glory  of  a  Christian  service  performed  under  the  eye  and  direction  of  the 
great  Captain  of  our  salvation,  even  though  that  service  may  only  be  one  of 
suffering  and  death.  May  the  Spirit  that  animated  him  be  yours  !  If  you 
go  and  continue  in  that  Spirit,  your  life  will  not  be  in  vain,  even  though  that 
life  be  short. 

In  this  last  address,  which  marks  the  termination  of  three  years  of  intimate 
spiritual  and  intellectual  fellowship  —  years  in  which  you  have  commended 
yourselves  individually  and  collectively  to  your  instructors  as  candid  and 
faithful  Christian  men  —  I  bid  you  for  my  last  admonition  to  be  true  dog- 
matists ;  not  dealers  in  negations,  nor  fanciers  in  literature,  nor  liberalists 
in  doctrine ;  but  positive  preachers  of  a  positive  faith.  Listen  to  no  theory 
of  development  which  would  add  to  or  take  from  the  written  word ;  and  yet 
let  every  sermon  that  you  preach  show  that  the  old  truth  has  had  a  new  and 
living  development  in  your  apprehension  and  experience.  ' '  Be  not  ashamed 
of  the  testimony  of  our  Lord."  Be  satisfied  with  the  breadth  of  his  mercy. 
Proclaim  his  terms  of  salvation.  Preach  his  gospel  as  the  final  and  the  only 
hope  of  the  sinner.  One  only  life  is  given  you  to  live.  Let  the  "Woe  is 
me !"  sound  through  it.  Let  it  be  said  that  for  you  "to  live  is  Christ.'* 


560  ADDRESSES  TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

Then,  whether  your  lives  be  long  or  short,  whether  you  labor  on  Christian 
or  on  heathen  soil,  whether  your  apparent  success  be  great  or  small,  you  will 
be  sure  of  the  "honor  that  comes  from  God  only."  There  is  a  day  whose 
splendors  will  outshine  the  brightest  triumphs  of  the  world.  Not  for  the 
present  time,  with  its  flatteries  and  its  pleasures,  let  us  live,  but  for  that  day 
when  one  approving  word  from  Christ  our  Lord  will  well  repay  a  life-time  of 
suffering  for  his  truth.  With  hopefulness,  but  with  solemnity  also,  go  to 
work  as  ministers  or  servants  of  the  word, —  for  by  that  word  you,  as  well 
as  those  to  whom  you  preach,  will  be  judged  at  the  last  day. 


1879: 
GOD'S  LEADINGS. 

BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  You  have  reached  the  end  of  a 
long  course  of  preparatory  study.  The  most  of  you  go  now  for  the  first 
time  to  be  pastors  of  churches  at  home,  or  preachers  of  the  gospel  abroad. 
To  all  of  you,  I  do  not  doubt,  this  breaking  with  the  old,  and  entrance  upon 
the  new,  is  a  time  of  serious  self-examination.  You  recognize  your  weakness 
and  un worthiness,  and  say,  "Who  is  sufficient  for  these  things?"  But  at 
this  crisis  of  your  lives  you  feel  also  the  stress  of  Providence.  Another  hand 
has  guided  you.  A  thousand  converging  lines  of  divine  influence  find  their 
focus  at  the  spot  where  you  now  stand.  You  perceive  that  there  is  no  real 
significance  in  this  hour,  unless  God  has  had  to  do  with  your  past  life  and 
will  have  to  do  with  your  future.  As  you  look  out  upon  that  future,  you  see 
as  you  never  saw  before,  that  you  need  to  be  led  by  God.  My  last  words  to 
you  will  have  this  for  their  subject : —  "  God's  Leadings  of  His  Servants  in 
the  Ministry." 

There  is  an  external  leading  of  God's  Providence,  of  which  the  subjects  of 
it  are  unconscious.  He  leads  the  blind  by  a  way  that  they  know  not.  He 
ordered  your  birthplace,  your  early  associations,  your  later  experiences.  On 
some  slight  influences,  such  as  a  casual  meeting,  the  loss  of  a  letter,  a  shower 
of  rain,  a  trivial  indisposition,  the  caprice  of  a  friend,  you  now  see  that  your 
whole  earthly  career  has  been  made  to  depend.  What  caused  you  to  choose 
the  ministry  ?  A  very  little  thing  may  have  turned  your  thoughts  toward  it  at 
the  first.  As  you  have  gone  on  in  life  you  have  been  gathering  up  the  threads 
of  the  past  and  weaving  them  into  a  definite  pattern.  You  have  begun  to 
see  the  meaning  of  incidents  in  your  history  which  you  could  not  understand 
years  ago.  All  through  David's  early  life  with  its  varied  experiences  and 
wonderful  vicissitudes  —  shepherd-boy,  oiitlaw  and  monarch,  by  turns  —  we 
see  how  God  was  fashioning  a  heart  to  sing  such  songs  of  sorrow  and  rejoic- 
ing as  might  be  the  vehicle  of  his  church's  devotions  through  all  coming 
time.  In  Luther's  obscure  origin  and  literary  ambition  and  monastic  strug- 
gles, we  see  how  God  was  preparing  a  familiar  but  powerful  voice  for  the 
great  German  discontent  with  Papal  corruption  of  Christianity.  God  was 
in  the  whole  complex  mass  of  events  that  prepared  the  way  for  the  Jewish 
kingdom  and  the  Protestant  Reformation.  But  God  has  been  equally  in  the 
past  influences  which  have  shaped  your  lives.  Evil  has  been  overruled  for 


1879  :   GOD'S  LEADINGS.  561 

your  good.  Sorrow  has  softened  you.  Difficulties  have  awakened  new 
energy.  Even  your  own  sins  have  shown  you  your  weakness,  and  the  weak- 
ness of  mere  human  nature.  The  way  has  opened  before  you,  when  every 
earthly  power  conspired  to  close  it.  God  has  gone  before  you,  as  truly  as  He 
led  those  Israelites  by  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day,  and  of  fire  by  night. 

On  the  front  of  an  ancient  house  in  the  city  of  Chester,  England,  is  an 
inscription  that  comes  down  from  old  Puritan  times  :  "  God's  Providence  is 
our  Inheritance."  Take  this  for  your  encouragement  to-night.  If  you  go 
on  God's  errands,  God's  Providence  will  work  for  you.  It  is  hard  to  preach 
without  this.  To  stand  alone  in  a  universe  of  evil  influences,  all  combining 
to  thwart  your  efforts  and  kill  the  seed  you  sow,  this  is  enough  to  discourage 
the  most  earnest  and  patient  soul.  But  this  is  not  your  lot.  The  minister 
of  Christ  has  the  assurance  that  all  things  work  together  for  his  good,  and 
for  the  good  of  the  cause  for  which  he  labors.  No  sooner  does  he  put  his 
hand  to  God's  work,  than  He  to  whom  all  power  is  given  in  heaven  and  earth 
makes  all  the  forces  of  the  universe  conspire  to  further  his  labors.  No  word 
that  he  speaks  shall  be  useless.  No  weapon  formed  against  him  shall  prosper. 
His  eyes  may  be  blind  to  them,  but  there  are  horses  and  chariots  of  fire  round 
about  him.  The  world  and  life  and  death  are  his  servants,  and  the  kingdom 
of  God  is  advanced  by  his  seeming  failure,  as  well  as  by  his  seeming  success. 

It  is  a  great  thing  to  have  this  external  leading  of  God,  and  many  a  stalwart 
worker  has  had  it  without  knowing  it.  But  I  wish  to  impress  upon  you 
to-night  the  fact  that  you  may  have  something  better  even  than  this,  namely, 
an  internal  leading  of  God  —  a  leading  of  his  Spirit  that  supplements  the 
leading  of  his  Providence.  God's  Providences  are  dark  to  us,  until  his 
Spirit  interprets  them  and  brings  us  into  harmony  with  them.  But  it  is 
possible  to  see  God's  hand  in  the  events  of  every  day,  to  discern  the  signs 
of  the  times,  to  be  filled  with  the  knowledge  of  God's  will.  This  is  the  work 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  As  I  have  said  to  you  elsewhere,  he  interprets  to  us 
God's  Providences  as  he  interprets  to  us  God's  Scripture.  He  presses  our 
own  powers  into  the  service.  He  energizes  our  own  faculties,  so  that  we 
exercise  a  common-sense  that  after  all  is  very  uncommon,  and  a  judgment 
free  from  selfish  bias.  And  the  result  is  that  while  we  never  allow  ourselves 
to  act  blindly  or  irrationally,  but  accustom  ourselves  to  weigh  evidence  with 
regard  to  duty,  the  Holy  Spirit  gives  us  an  understanding  of  circumstances, 
a  sense  of  God's  providential  purposes  with  regard  to  us,  which  makes  our 
true  course  plain  to  ourselves,  although  we  may  not  always  be  able  to  explain 
it  to  others.  So  God  points  out  to  us  the  place,  the  time,  and  the  method 
of  our  work.  No  great  servant  of  God  has  ever  lived  who  was  not  at  times 
seized  with  a  spirit  of  desire  and  prayer,  such  as  no  powers  of  his  own  nature 
could  account  for,  and  then  with  impulses  to  do  and  dare  for  God,  such  as 
worldly  men  and  even  uuinstructed  Christians  would  call  madness.  But 
wisdom  is  justified  of  her  children,  and  myriads  of  times  in  the  history  of 
his  church,  God  has  shown  that  the  seeming  madness  was  foresight,  and 
that  the  audacity  of  his  servants  has  struck  blows  for  truth  that  resounded 
throughout  the  world. 

Do  you  know  anything  more  magnificent,  my  brethren,  than  a  life  in 
which  the  external  leading  of  God's  Providence  is  accompanied  by  a  constant 
internal  leading  of  his  Spirit  ?     Do  you  think  it  some  extraordinary  and 
36 


562  ADDRESSES   TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

inaccessible  grace,  to  which  you  may  not  aspire  ?  Not  so.  "As  many  as  are 
led  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  they  are  the  sons  of  God."  This  grace  belongs  by 
right  to  all  ministers  and  to  all  Christians.  You  believe  in  each  element 
separately.  I  call  upon  you,  as  the  condition  of  highest  success  in  your 
ministry,  to  believe  in  both  at  once  and  together.  Realize  your  relation  to 
Christ,  and  you  can  believe  in  them  ;  for  Christ  is  not  only  the  external  ruler 
and  administrator  of  God's  providential  government,  but  he  is  also  the 
inspirer  and  director  of  his  people.  In  Christ,  the  two  poles  touch,  and  like 
the  positive  and  negative  wires  of  a  battery,  their  meeting  results  in  the  light 
and  heat  of  an  intelligent  Christian  activity.  Christ  outside  of  us  by  his 
Providence  pushes  on  the  whole  mass  and  movement  of  the  world  ;  Christ 
inside  of  us,  by  his  Spirit,  pushes  us  on,  so  that  we  keep  abreast  of  our 
time  —  nay,  lead  it  —  for  Him,  to  his  own  ends  of  glory  and  salvation. 

To  be  up  with  the  times,  in  this  sense,  is  truly  to  live.  A  ministry  that  is 
not  thus  led  by  God  is  worse  than  useless.  One  touch  of  God's  finger  can 
give  you  more  of  strength  than  all  the  self-moved  efforts  of  a  life-time.  The 
inspiration  of  the  Almighty  can  give  you  more  understanding  than  all  the 
wisdom  of  this  world  without  it.  Will  you,  by  obedience  and  purity,  keep 
yourselves  open  to  divine  suggestions,  or  will  you  go  out  to  your  work  in 
the  impotence  of  your  own  natural  powers,  to  misrepresent  Christ,  to  lead 
astray  the  immortal  beings  who  look  to  you  for  guidance,  and  perchance  to 
be  castaways  yourselves  ?  Brethren,  I  am  persuaded  better  things  of  you 
than  this.  I  hear  you  cry  with  Moses,  "If  thy  presence  go  not  with  me, 
carry  me  not  up  hence  !  "  And  I  hear  God's  voice  of  answer,  "My  presence 
shall  go  with  thee,  and  I  will  give  thee  rest !  " 

Go  then,  nay  brethren,  to  the  solemn  work  before  you,  strong  in  the  Lord 
and  in  the  power  of  his  might.  Because  you  have  God's  Providence  for 
your  backer,  be  hopeful  and  aggressive.  Because  God's  Spirit  leads  you 
on,  let  no  rebuffs  or  defeats  dishearten  you.  Persist  and  conquer.  God  will 
provide  places  for  you,  just  as  soon  as  you  are  prepared  for  places.  Seek 
them  from  God,  more  than  you  seek  them  from  men.  Hold  them  as  God- 
given,  when  once  God  brings  them  to  you.  So,  serving  your  apprenticeship 
to  his  ministry  in  your  early  years,  and  serving  your  generation  by  his  will 
through  life,  you  will  find  at  last,  with  a  great  number  who  have  been  saved 
through  your  labors,  that  as  Christ  by  his  Providence  and  Spirit  has  prepared 
you  for  heaven  and  a  crown  of  righteousness,  so  he  has  prepared  heaven  and 
a  crown  of  righteousness  for  you.  With  the  earnest  prayer  that  this  may  be 
so  with  each  of  you,  I  bid  you,  for  myself  and  on  behalf  of  the  Faculty  of 
the  Seminary,  an  affectionate  farewell. 


1880  : 
SELF-MASTERY. 


BRETHREN  or  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  When  our  Lord  sent  out  his 
eleven  disciples  to  subdue  the  world,  there  was  only  one  thing  that  prevented 
its  looking  like  the  prelude  to  a  tragedy,  and  that  was  that  they  obeyed  him. 
A  few  perfectly  disciplined  soldiers  are  stronger  than  a  mob,  and  a  little  band 


1880  :     SELF-MASTERY.  563 

of  Christians  who  move  at  the  word  of  Christ  can  beat  down  all  opposition. 
As  you  go  out  to-night  to  reinforce  the  noble  army  of  his  ministers,  we  have 
hope  for  you  because  we  trust  that  you  have  got  yourselves  under  control. 
We  know  that  if  you  have  mastered  yourselves,  you  can  master  the  world. 
And  this  is  the  theme  of  the  few  remarks  I  make  to  you  in  parting  : —  Self- 
mastery  essential  to  power  in  the  ministry. 

What  sort  of  self-mastery,  each  one  of  you  knows  for  himself  better  than 
I  can  tell  him.  All  your  experience  and  all  my  teaching  has  been  in  vain,  if 
you  have  not  learned  that  self  is  our  worst  enemy  ;  that  Satan  has  no  power 
over  us  except  when  he  finds  an  ally  within  us  ;  that  this  traitorous  element 
inside  the  citadel  lurks  in  different  places  in  different  men  ;  and  that,  wherever 
this  is,  there  the  fight  for  self-mastery  must  be  fought.  Christian  ministers 
may  find  their  besetting  sin  in  the  indulgence  of  bodily  appetites.  An 
excessive  vitality  may  find  mere  common  food  and  drink  a  source  of  temp- 
tation. Defective  vitality  may  look  to  stimulants  for  strength.  Constitu- 
tional indolence  may  need  the  continual  spur  of  strenuous  resolve.  Excitable 
passions  may  need  the  constant  bridle  of  watchfulness  and  prayer.  I  say  to 
you,  my  brethren,  that  if  you  cannot  conquer  yourselves,  on  this  lowest  plane 
of  mere  physical  habits,  the  ministry  is  no  work  for  you.  No  man  can  bring 
others  into  subjection  to  Christ,  so  long  as  he  is  a  slave  himself.  He  need 
not  be  an  ascetic,  but  he  must  keep  the  body  under — like  the  boxer,  strike 
it  under  the  eye  and  make  it  his  servant  —  lest,  after  having  preached  to 
others,  he  should  be  himself  a  castaway. 

There  is  another  sort  of  self-mastery  which  pertains  to  the  intellectual 
being.  There  is  no  success  in  the  ministry,  for  the  man  who  cannot  use  his 
own  mind.  The  preacher  who  compels  the  attention  of  this  intensely  active 
generation  must  know  how  to  think.  Thoughts,  and  not  pious  phrases,  must 
be  the  staple  of  his  public  address.  But  thinking,  until  it  becomes  habit 
and  delight,  is  the  hardest  of  work.  The  power  of  thinking  can  be  attained 
only  by  giving  over  the  nursing  of  one's  moods,  and  by  setting  one's  self 
resolutely  to  do  each  day's  task  of  study  or  of  prayer.  Let  me  exhort  you 
from  the  very  beginning  of  your  ministry  to  have  your  fixed  hours — the 
earliest  and  the  best  hours  —  for  actual  grappling  with  the  great  subjects  of 
preaching.  Abhor  dawdling.  Give  yourselves  no  rest,  until  you  have  made 
your  minds  facile  instruments  to  do  your  bidding.  There  is  no  recipe  for 
driving  out  evil,  like  keeping  the  mind  full  of  the  good.  Enthusiastic 
absorption  of  one's  self  in  study  and  in  work  will  scatter  the  whole  brood  of 
low  desires  and  frivolous  ambitions  which  crowd  into  every  vacant  corner  of 
the  soul  and  clamor  for  dominion.  Of  all  men,  the  minister  of  Christ  needs 
most  to  keep  his  own  heart,  lest  the  voice  of  flattery,  or  the  love  of  power, 
or  the  attractions  of  society,  or  the  pursuit  of  abstract  truth,  or  even  the 
selfish  seeking  of  his  own  personal  religious  joy,  should  draw  him  aside  from 
his  one  duty  of  publishing  Christ.  The  surface  of  the  ocean  which  men  can 
see  is  nothing  to  the  great  invisible  depths.  God  demands  the  consecration 
to  himself  of  the  hidden  world  of  the  thoughts.  And  no  Christian  minister 
is  safe  himself,  or  a  safe  teacher  of  others,  who  does  not  feel  the  deep  neces- 
sity of  bringing  every  thought  into  captivity  to  the  obedience  of  Christ. 

There  are  other  regions  still  in  which  self-mastery  is  a  condition  of  success, 
but  I  can  mention  only  those  which  have  to  do  with  the  will,  and  which. 


564  ADDRESSES  TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

require  not  so  much  active  exertion  as  they  do  submission.  Many  a  man 
fails  in  life  because  he  is  bent  on  acting  upon  some  merely  ideal  plan,  and  is 
unwilling  to  work  under  actual  conditions.  This  is  rebellion  against  divine 
Providence,  and  argues  pride  and  selfishness  —  not  nobility  of  purpose.  The 
first  lesson  for  the  statesman  and  for  the  pastor  alike  is  that  he  must  take 
things  as  they  are,  and  consult  the  practicable.  He  may  do  this,  without  at 
all  lowering  his  standard  of  right,  or  altering  in  the  least  his  fixed  determi- 
nation to  realize  that  right  in  ultimate  practice.  But  he  has  certain  consti- 
tutional limitations  of  talent ;  his  opportunities  are  narrower  than  he  might 
desire  ;  his  helpers  may  be  few.  He  may  find  that  he  is  misapprehended 
and  opposed  ;  that  those  for  whom  he  works  need  a  process  of  education, 
before  they  can  accept  his  standards  or  enter  into  his  plans  ;  that  the  imper- 
fections and  negligences  of  Christians  are  directly  in  his  way.  There  are 
two  wrong  methods  of  dealing  :  first,  that  of  denunciation,  and  secondly, 
that  of  despair.  The  first  is  the  failure  of  passion  ;  the  second,  the  failure 
of  unbelief.  The  servant  of  the  Lord,  on  the  one  hand,  must  not  strive, — 
ill-temper  is  confession  of  defeat ;  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  must  he  abandon 
the  conflict, —  abandonment  is  defeat.  But  the  true  way  is  the  way  that  is 
hardest  to  mere  human  nature  —  the  way  of  self-restraint,  of  patient  prepa- 
ration for  victory,  of  giving  up  one's  own  will  and  plan,  for  the  time,  until 
others  can  be  trained  to  adopt  and  further  it.  Our  democratic  church -polity 
is  a  very  good  system  for  very  good  people.  But  sometimes  the  people  are 
not  very  good.  Then  our  polity  is  the  best  of  all  schools  for  the  minister. 
But  how  will  he  ever  pass  the  test,  unless  he  has  learned  to  rule  his  own  spirit  ? 
Xenophon  tells  us  that  the  youthful  Cyrus  was  taught  to  obey,  in  order  that  he 
might  know  how  to  command.  Be  willing  to  bide  your  time,  my  brethren. 
Do  not  let  the  first  breath  of  trouble  in  your  churches  frighten  you  from 
your  posts.  Stand  by  ;  be  masters  of  yourselves,  though  it  cost  you  days  of 
bitterness  ;  hold  on  to  God  and  to  the  truth,  and  your  submissive  persistence, 
your  humble  boldness,  your  contagious  faith,  will  bring  even  your  enemies 
to  rally  as  one  man  to  your  support,  or  will  deprive  them  of  all  power  to 
hinder  your  triumph.  These  victories  over  self  are  the  greatest  victories 
gained  in  this  world.  No  paeans  are  sung  over  them,  but  God  sees  them 
and  blesses  them,  and  the  conquest  of  their  own  wills,  on  the  part  of  his 
ministers,  is  the  precursor  of  conquest  for  the  cause  which  they  serve. 

These  are  the  various  spheres  in  which  the  minister  of  Christ  must  be 
master  of  himself.  Why  must  he  thus  conquer  himself  ?  Because  this  only 
can  give  him  conscious  sincerity.  No  man  can  fight  a  devil  outside  of  him, 
when  he  is  harboring  that  same  devil  in  his  own  heart.  He  must  cast  out 
the  devil  from  within,  or  the  outward  struggle  will  be  only  a  pretense.  And 
he  will  be  more  or  less  conscious  that  it  is  a  pretense.  It  is  a  dreadful  thing 
to  face  —  those  hundreds  of  scrutinizing  eyes  that  peer  into  your  soul  from 
the  public  audience  —  a  dreadful  thing  to  face,  when  you  are  not  quite  honest 
with  yourself.  You  thought  you  were  going  to  brave  it  out,  with  superficial 
fervors  or  with  curious  intellectualisms.  But  ah,  the  very  sinews  of  your 
strength  are  cut, — you  are  divided  against  yourself;  the  secret  sin  is  bla- 
zoned before  your  eyes,  if  not  before  the  eyes  of  your  congregation ;  you 
might  as  well  be  dumb,  so  far  as  effective  speech  is  concerned.  What  you 
want  is  such  conscious  sincerity  as  shall  enable  you  to  throw  yourself  and 


1880  :    SELF-MASTERY.  565 

your  whole  life  without  reserve  into  the  battle, —  but  a  miserable  simulacrum 
and  shell  of  yourself  is  all  that  is  left  you.  And  so  we  have  the  preaching 
of  compromises  —  compromises  with  fashionable  customs,  with  smoothly- 
named  immoralities,  with  current  skepticisms,  with  novelties  in  church- 
order  or  church-disorder.  The  truth  is,  that  no  man  can  possibly  preach 
the  cross  of  Christ  and  all  that  cross  represents,  unless  he  has  been  and  is- 
crucified  with  Christ  in  his  own  personal  life.  The  Jesuits  did  well  when 
they  prefaced  all  public  work  by  that  long  retreat  for  self -mortification  and 
self-renunciation.  And  the  Church,  the  true  Society  of  Jesus,  should  not 
think  its  ministers  qualified  for  service,  until  they  have  so  mastered  them- 
selves as  to  bear  about  in  the  body  the  dying  of  the  Lord  Jesus. 

Only  such  self-mastery  can  enable  the  preacher  to  impress  others.  Men 
look  at  the  preacher,  and  their  first  question  is :  "  What  is  there  in  him  ? 
Has  he  any  religion  —anything  different  from  what  we  have  ourselves?" 
He  needs  to  answer  that  question  by  showing  in  his  own  person  two  things  : 
first,  the  penetration  and  spirituality  of  God's  law  ;  and,  secondly,  the  con- 
quering power  of  the  personal  Christ.  How  can  he  be  an  example  of  what 
God  requires,  unless  in  his  measure  he  presents  like  Christ  the  law  of  God 
drawn  out  in  living  characters  ?  How  can  he  be  an  example  of  what  Christ 
can  accomplish,  unless  he  shows  in  himself  that  desires  and  affections,  habits 
and  inclinations,  which  he  once  could  not  conquer,  are  brought  now  into 
subjection,  and  that  he  is  a  victor,  inviting  others  to  come  and  share  in  his 
triumph  and  rejoicing  ?  Oh,  my  brethren,  the  young  men  of  your  congre- 
gations will  learn  more  from  your  personal  habits  of  self-indulgence  or  self- 
denial,  than  they  will  ever  learn  from  your  sermons  !  Only  as  Christ  leads 
you  in  triumph,  will  you  be  able  to  induce  others  to  swell  his  conquering 
train.  And  your  preaching,  whether  true  or  false,  cannot  be  indifferent  in 
its  results.  It  will  either  be  a  savor  of  life  unto  life,  or  of  death  unto  death. 
Most  of  all,  it  is  important  to  remember  that  only  the  self-ruling  spirit  can 
secure  for  a  minister  the  favor  and  blessing  of  God.  For  God  sees  the  heart. 
He  knows  whether  it  is  truly  submitted  to  him ;  though  man  may  not  see 
through  disguises,  God  does.  We  have  learned,  I  trust,  that  it  is  not  our 
talent  or  administration  that  wins  true  success,  but  only  the  mighty  working 
of  his  Spirit.  Oh,  the  absurdity  and  madness  of  expecting  success  in  the 
ministry,  when  our  own  being  is  a  chaos  of  warring  elements,  not  subject  to 
<  >ur  true  selves  nor  to  God,  and  so  not  able  or  worthy  to  be  made  the  channel 
for  God's  grace  to  flow  in  to  others  !  It  was  well  for  Mr.  Moody  that  he 
resolved  to  show  in  himself  how  much  God  was  willing  to  do  through  a  man 
perfectly  consecrated  to  his  service.  Are  you  willing,  my  brethren,  to  bring 
your  whole  being  under  control,  in  order  that  God's  Spirit  in  its  fullness 
may  rest  upon  you  ? 

And  now  how  may  this  self-mastery  be  acquired  ?  We  do  not  endanger 
the  divine  side  of  the  truth,  when  we  say  that  there  is  requisite  a  resolute 
will.  Christianity  does  not  make  man  a  self-less  organ  of  God's  working. 
We  are  not  to  lose  our  wills,  but,  in  a  true  sense,  to  have  more  of  will  than 
ever  before.  God  works  in  and  through  man's  working.  Your  true  selves 
must  rise  up  against  the  false,  and  put  these  down.  But  then  all  this,  in 
sole  dependence  upon  him  who  worketh  in  us.  In  Christ  alone  do  we  find 
our  true  selves,—  in  him  alone  attain  real  freedom  and  power.  This  truth 


566  ADDRESSES   TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

of  union  with  Christ,  as  you  well  know,  has  been  the  centre  and  burden  of 
my  teaching.  I  bring  you  to  it  once  more  at  this  critical  moment  of  your 
lives,  when  like  the  king  of  Babylon,  you  stand  at  the  parting  of  the  ways. 
In  that  truth  lies  the  solution  of  all  mysteries,  the  answer  to  all  perplexities, 
the  overcoming  strength  for  all  conflicts,  and  specially  for  the  conflict  with 
yourselves.  You  desire  to  know  how  you  may  attain  this  self-mastery  ?  The 
answer  is  :  "  They  that  are  Christ's  have  crucified  the  flesh,  with  its  affections 
and  lusts."  Christ  has  himself  conquered,  and  he  waits  to  make  you  par- 
takers of  his  victory.  By  faith  receive  him,  and  you  shall  be  more  than 
conquerors  through  him  that  loved  you.  Only  the  Son  of  God,  joining  his 
almighty  wisdom  and  strength  to  yours,  can  enable  you  to  subdue  yourselves. 
But  he  is  able  to  save,  unto  the  uttermost,  all  them  that  come  to  God  through 
him. 

My  dear  brethren,  we  have  loved  you,  and  have  followed  your  course  with 
the  deepest  interest,  until  now.  But  love  itself  prompts  us,  as  we  look  on 
toward  your  future,  to  reiterate  this  one  precept,  that  you  prepare  for  work 
outside  of  you,  by  work  in  your  own  souls.  The  life  that  is  before  you  is 
but  a  little  thing,  and  soon  over.  It  may  be  a  mere  beating  of  the  air,  with 
nothing  done,  at  the  end  of  it.  There  may  be  less  of  purity  and  strength  at 
the  end,  than  at  the  beginning  ;  less  of  thought  and  of  power,  both  in  preach- 
ing and  in  life.  Or,  it  may  be  the  constantly  widening  battle-field  and  victory 
of  a  constantly  stronger  combatant  —  a  combatant  more  believing,  more  suc- 
cessful, more  humble  —  as  the  years  pass  on.  And  beginnings  make  endings. 
He  that  is  faithful  in  that  which  is  least  is  faithful  also  in  much.  Beginning 
in  your  own  heart  and  mastering  that  for  Christ,  then  carrying  your  victo- 
rious arms  into  the  small  field  of  your  first  service  and  winning  that  also  for 
your  Redeemer,  you  shall  be  preparing  for  yet  wider  conflicts  and  wider 
responsibilities.  For  though  beginnings  make  endings,  they  are  not  them- 
selves the  endings.  These  last  are  beyond  the  sphere  of  sense  and  time. 
There,  he  who  has  been  faithful  over  a  few  things  shall  be  ruler  over  many 
things,  and  they  who  have  mastered  self  and  the  world  shall  be  advanced  to 
positions  of  high  responsibility  in  God's  great  empire.  There  are  bad  endings 
and  good  endings.  In  the  case  of  every  one  of  you,  may  God  prevent  the 
former  ;  may  he  grant  the  latter  !  Preaching  Christ's  gospel,  may  you  save 
both  yourselves  and  those  who  hear  you  !  And  may  you  have  the  evidence 
and  pledge  of  this  final  victory,  in  the  present  daily  and  hourly  conquest  of 
yourselves ! 


1881  : 
MENTAL   QUALITIES  REQUISITE  TO  THE  PASTOR. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  Some  years  ago  there  was  placed 
upon  the  Index  Prohibitorius  at  Rome,  a  book  which  bore  this  title  :  "The 
Priesthood  a  Chronic  Disorder  of  the  Human  Race. "  It  was  a  skeptical  book. 
It  protested  against  churches,  because  they  so  easily  became  machines; 
against  pastors,  because  they  so  easily  became  bishops.  And  yet  the  refuta- 
tion of  the  book  was  in  its  title.  When  the  priesthood  was  called  a  chronic 


1881  :    MENTAL   QUALITIES   REQUISITE  TO   THE    PASTOR.       5G7 

disorder  of  the  human  race,  it  was  confessed  that  there  is  an  instinct  in 
humanity  which  prompts  it  to  seek  religious  guidance.  The  inference  should 
have  been  that  a  wise  and  benevolent  God  will  somewhere  provide  a  supply 
for  this  need  in  a  true  ministry  of  his  word. 

You  go  out  to-night  to  meet  this  crying  want  of  humanity,  and  you  go 
believing  that  God  calls  you.  We  share  this  confidence  with  you.  We  are 
glad  that  so  many  churches  are  to  receive  as  pastors  men  so  good  and  true  as 
you  have  proved  yourselves  to  be.  We  have  done  what  we  can  for  you,  and  in 
many  respects  you  are  well  furnished  for  your  work.  But  there  is  a  training 
which  books  can  never  give.  There  are  good  gifts  which  teachers  can  never 
impart.  And  this  suggests  the  subject  of  my  brief  parting  address  :  —  The 
mental  qualities  requisite  to  the  highest  success  in  the  pastorate.  Notice 
that  I  speak  of  qualities  requisite,  not  for  success  in  preaching  only,  but 
for  success  in  the  whole  work  of  influencing  men,  whether  in  public  or  in 
private.  Notice  that  I  do  not  say  "requisite  to  success,"  but  "requisite 
to  the  highest  success."  You  must  not  be  discouraged  if  you  seem  to  your- 
selves to  be  almost  lacking  in  one  or  another  of  these  qualities.  Notice  that 
I  do  not  say  "  spiritual  qualities,"  but  "mental  qualities."  I  speak  of  those 
only  which  at  least  in  some  degree  belong  to  you  by  nature,  and  which  it  is 
quite  in  your  power  to  cultivate.  Indeed,  to  a  thoughtful  mind,  one  of  the 
chief  attractions  of  the  pastorate  is  the  stimulus  it  furnishes  to  the  very 
characteristics  of  mind  and  heart  which  I  am  about  to  mention.  The  very 
work  of  the  pastor  for  others  draws  out  all  parts  of  his  own  nature,  and 
makes  him  a  living  example  of  well-rounded  and  developed  manhood. 

The  pastor  is  a  shepherd,  and  the  business  of  a  shepherd  is  to  care  for  the 
flock.  He  is  to  care  for  them  by  being  a  teacher  and  example  of  the  truth. 
Now  one  of  the  most  important  of  the  mental  qualities  required  for  this 
work  is  frankness.  The  minister  of  the  gospel  should  not  be  a  man  of 
concealments  or  evasions.  In  his  preaching  he  should  think  right,  and  then 
he  should  say  out  what  he  thinks.  He  should  be  open-minded  to  receive 
truth,  and  then  he  should  be  open-minded  to  communicate  it.  No  human 
creature  is  more  despised  by  discerning  men  than  the  trimmer,  or  the  man  of 
policy,  in  the  pastorate.  They  feel  that  converse  with  the  things  of  eternity 
ought  to  give  him  strong  convictions,  boldness  of  utterance,  freedom  from 
the  trammels  of  party.  He  should  be  willing  to  tell  men  their  faults,  if  need 
be.  He  is  to  "reprove,  rebuke,  exhort,"  as  well  as  to  invite  and  comfort. 
If  you  have  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  and  exercise  a  wise  moderation,  you  can  do 
this  without  repelling  those  whom  you  seek  to  influence.  They  will  respect 
the  man  who  deals  squarely  with  them.  Be  sure  that  in  your  private  inter- 
course with  your  church  there  be  nothing  underhanded.  Abhor  all  wire- 
pulling and  indirection.  Have  good  ends,  and  go  straight  at  them.  No 
toadying,  and  no  mock  humility.  Let  no  man  despise  your  youth.  Take 
responsibility.  Stand  forth,  and  do  your  work.  None  but  a  manly  religion 
is  worth  the  having.  You  wish  to  cultivate  the  open  and  sincere  spirit  in 
others.  Show  them  an  example  of  noble  Christian  frankness  in  yourselves. 

But  there  can  be  a  frankness  that  is  oppressive  and  discouraging.  It  is 
not  the  fault-finding  tendency,  which  I  would  have  you  cultivate.  Add  to 
your  frankness,  therefore,  as  the  second  quality  of  mind  requisite  to  the 
highest  pastoral  success,  a  hopefulness  of  spirit.  The  best  men  tire  at  last 


568  ADDRESSES  TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

of  minute  and  incessant  criticism.  We  are  saved  by  hope,  and  we  must  try 
to  put  hope  into  those  we  teach.  You  are  not  to  be  prophets  of  lamentation, 
nor  is  it  your  main  business  to  denounce.  Many  a  man's  failure  in  the  min- 
istry has  been  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had  no  confidence  in  the  Christian 
character  of  his  hearers.  He  has  dealt  with  them  as  if  they  were  reprobates, 
instead  of  taking  it  for  granted  that  they  were  subjects  of  God's  grace  —  imper- 
fect indeed,  but  still  on  the  whole  intending,  when  they  know  God's  will,  to 
do  it.  Such  dark  views  with  regard  to  the  condition  of  the  church  are  often 
born  of  an  arrogant  and  self-righteous  spirit.  Paul  took  for  granted  that 
the  Corinthians  were  saints,  and  in  beginning  his  epistles  he  called  them  so. 
And  Paul  was  not  only  a  gentleman,  but  a  Christian.  If  you  would  make 
men  better,  you  must  recognize  the  good  which  God  has  wrought  in  them 
already.  Praise  your  people,  then,  more  than  you  blame  them.  Show,  in 
public  and  in  private,  that  you  appreciate  what  they  do  for  you  and  for  the 
cause.  Tell  them,  not  only  of  their  failings,  but  of  their  excellencies  of  char- 
acter, as  Paul  did.  Speak,  not  only  of  needs,  but  of  possibilities.  Set  over 
against  the  depth  of  sin  the  infinite  riches  of  the  believer  in  Christ.  In 
practical  matters,  take  a  cheerful  view  of  the  situation.  Joy  wins  more 
hearts  then  tears  ever  did.  A  mournful  and  ascetic  Christianity  belies  its 
very  name.  Go  to  your  work,  then,  confident  that  you  will  win.  Be  hopeful 
men, —  or,  if  you  are  by  nature  despondent,  keep  your  despondency  to  your- 
selves, as  a  weakness  and  a  sin.  Be  careful  not  to  utter  your  moodiness  and 
your  fears,  for  utterance  reacts  upon  the  spirit  that  prompted  it  and  makes 
it  more  intense.  Since  it  is  Christ  and  no  human  leader  whom  you  follow, 
be  persuaded  that  he  will  lead  you  to  conquest.  We  can  believe  all  things, 
because  Christ  is  our  hope. 

And  yet  it  is  possible  for  a  pastor  to  be  frank  and  hopeful,  while  at  the 
same  time  he  is  hard.  Frankness  and  hopefulness  may  make  him  rash.  A 
driving  energy  is  quite  consistent  with  an  unfeeling  self-will.  As  the  third 
quality  of  mind  requisite  to  the  highest  pastoral  success,  therefore,  I  would 
urge  you  to  add  to  your  frankness  and  hopefulness,  a  true  sympathy.  I  do 
not  mean  a  maudlin  sentimentality  ;  I  do  not  mean  an  unctuous  graciousness  ; 
I  do  not  mean  a  quivering  sensibility.  The  sympathy  to  be  cultivated  must 
be  calm.  There  should  be  a  certain  dignity  and  sobriety  in  it.  It  should 
be  a  hearty,  manly  fellow-feeling,  that  shows  itself  in  helpful  words  and 
helpful  deeds.  Who  can  estimate  the  power  of  it,  in  a  pastor  !  To  be  the 
true  friend  of  all  his  flock,  to  have  compassion  for  the  erring,  interest  in  the 
poor,  a  smile  for  the  children,  a  word  in  season  for  the  weary,  a  tear  for  the 
bereaved  —  this  is  the  pastor's  mission  ;  this  will  so  knit  him  to  his  church, 
that  separation  will  seem  like  death.  True  sympathy  can  never  be  put  on  ; 
it  is  an  inward  grace,  a  virtue  of  the  heart.  A  kind  natural  disposition  is 
much ;  but  the  tenderness  of  soul  which  Christ  gives  to  the  penitent  and 
saved  sinner  is  more.  No  merely  natural  sympathy  is  equal  to  the  demands 
of  your  work,  my  brethren.  Paul  never  could  have  so  longed  after  his  con- 
verts, except,  as  he  himself  says,  " in  the  heart  of  Jesus  Christ."  Joined  to 
Christ,  as  he  was,  he  was  capable  of  entering  into  other's  griefs  and  needs, 
as  he  never  could  have  done  without.  Unostentatious,  yet  untiring,  his 
love  passed  all  selfish  bounds ;  he  will  love  them  the  more,  the  less  he  be 
loved.  And  this  is  the  first  question  which  your  people  will  ask  of  you,, 


1882  :   ADAPTATION.  569 

namely,  "Has  lie  a  Christian  heart  in  him ?  Does  he  love  Christ,  and  love 
his  people  ?  Has  he  the  instinct  of  the  shepherd,  to  support  the  weak,  com- 
fort the  sorrowing,  seek  the  lost  ?  "  May  our  Lord  give  you  this  power  of 
sympathy,  and  enable  you  to  comfort  others  with  the  comfort  with  which 
you  yourselves  are  comforted  of  God. 

And  now  these  remarks  must  come  to  a  close.  I  trust  you  have  seen  the 
inner  connection  of  them.  I  have  been  speaking  of  mental  gifts  —  frankness, 
hopefulness,  sympathy.  I  have  been  urging  you  to  be  open,  cheerful,  warm 
of  spirit.  You  have  doubtless  recognized  that  these  natural  gifts  are  but  the 
obverse  human  side  of  those  lofty  graces  of  the  Holy  Spirit  which  the  Apostle 
to  the  Gentiles  has  joined  forever  in  triple  union,  namely,  faith,  hope,  and 
love.  And  so  we  have  indicated  the  true  source  of  these  human  excellencies 
of  character.  Faith  will  give  us  frankness  ;  hope  will  give  us  cheerfulness ; 
love  will  give  us  sympathy.  Remember  the  divine  Author  of  them,  and  look 
to  him.  You  may  easily  have  your  natural  frankness  turned  to  suspicious 
reticence  ;  your  youthful  cheer  darkened  into  fearful  forebodings  ;  your 
ready  sympathies  chilled  into  hardness  of  heart,  —  and  all  this  by  the  misap- 
prehensions and  disappointments  and  hostilities  of  life.  You  need  a  higher 
and  more  constant  source  of  supply  than  the  inspirations  of  your  own  hearts. 
Such  a  supply  you  have  in  the  omnipotent  Spirit  of  Christ, —  for  the  faith, 
hope  and  love  which  he  imparts  abide  forever. 

We  expect  you  to  be  a  class  of  preachers.  You  have  shown  that  you  have 
tastes  and  gifts  in  this  direction.  But  remember  that  you  are  called  to  be 
pastors  also,  and  accept  this  last  word  of  exhortation  in  which  we  urge  you  to 
seek  from  God,  and  to  cultivate  by  effort  of  your  own,  the  frankness,  hope- 
fulness and  sympathy  needful  to  the  best  success.  As  you  have  the  source 
of  these  qualities  in  the  Spirit,  so  you  have  the  model  of  them  in  Christ  —  the 
frankest,  most  hopeful,  most  sympathetic,  of  all  shepherds  of  the  sheep. 
Follow  Christ's  example.  Take  heed  unto  yourselves,  and  to  all  the  flock 
over  which  the  Holy  Ghost  shall  make  you  overseers,  to  feed  the  Church  of 
God  which  he  hath  purchased  with  his  own  blood.  To  this  work  we  now 
dismiss  you.  May  you  so  perform  it,  as  to  reflect  honor  upon  this  training 
school  of  Christian  pastors  !  May  you  so  perform  it,  to  the  very  end,  that 
when  the  Chief  Shepherd  shall  appear,  you  shall  receive,  at  his  hands,  a 
reward  more  welcome  than  any  earthly  praise  —  the  crown  of  glory  that  never 
fades  away  ! 


1882  : 
ADAPTATION. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  It  is  something  to  have  finished 
your  course  in  this  Seminary.  It  argues  industry,  persistence,  capacity. 
We  congratulate  you.  But  it  is  something  more,  at  the  end  of  life  to  say, 
"  I  have  finished  my  course,"  and  to  look  back  upon  the  battle  fought  and 
the  victory  won.  What  is  the  relation  between  the  work  of  the  Seminary 
and  the  work  of  life  ?  It  is  the  relation  between  science  and  art,  between 
principles  and  practice.  Here  you  have  learned  the  theory  of  religion, — 


570  ADDRESSES  TO    GRADUATING    CLASSES. 

there  you  are  to  carry  out  the  theory,  and  to  apply  it.  It  is  vain  to  say  that 
the  preacher  can  get  along  without  theology.  He  needs  a  knowledge  of 
theology  more  than  the  lawyer  needs  knowledge  of  law,  or  the  physician 
needs  knowledge  of  medicine.  For  theology  is  nothing  more  than  the  con- 
nected exhibition  of  the  facts  of  God's  word.  An  infidel  lecturer  has  recently 
said  that  the  Aurora  Borealis  is  beautiful,  but  that  it  is  a  poor  light  to  grow 
corn  by.  God's  truth,  however,  is  not  a  shifting  Aurora,  but  a  steady  sun- 
light, and  no  corn  can  be  grown  without  sunshine.  You  have  been  getting 
possession  of  this  truth,  or  rather,  it  has  been  getting  possession  of  you. 
The  great  doctrines  of  man's  guilt  and  ruin,  and  of  God's  free  grace  in  Christ, 
have  assumed  new  meaning  and  dignity  as  you  have  studied  them.  They 
have  moulded  your  characters.  You  have  seen  their  power  in  others.  Now 
you  go  to  test  this  truth  in  a  larger  field,  and  in  a  more  independent  way. 
Your  success  will  depend,  in  great  part,  upon  your  skill  in  turning  the  abstract 
into  the  concrete,  and  in  applying  it  to  living  minds  and  hearts.  My  parting 
counsel  to  you  is  that  you  study  adaptation. 

A  minister  of  the  last  generation  was  once  asked  by  a  youthful  preacher 
how  he  should  overcome  his  excessive  timidity  in  presence  of  his  congrega- 
tion. The  older  advised  his  younger  brother  to  think  of  his  audience  as  a 
lot  of  cabbages  planted  in  rows  before  him.  It  is  a  good  illustration  of,  the 
impersonal  quality  attributed  to  the  preaching  of  that  day.  God  was  con- 
ceived to  be  the  only  speaker  —  the  only  agent.  Ministers  and  people  alike 
were  but  so  many  cabbages.  We  protest  against  this  ignoring  of  the  intel- 
lects and  wills  of  men, — it  leaves  to  God  no  moral  realm  in  which  to  work. 
We  urge  oh  the  contrary,  as  essential  to  the  preacher's  success,  the  recog- 
nition of  varieties  among  his  auditors,  and  his  duty  to  feed  each  one  with 
food  convenient  for  him.  Milk  for  babes,  meat  for  the  full-grown,  —  to  each 
his  portion  in  due  season.  He  that  winneth  souls  is  wise,  and  his  wisdom 
largely  consists  in  bringing  out  of  his  store  things  new  or  old,  according  to 
the  special  needs  of  his  hearers.  There  is  a  sense,  of  course,  in  which  Christ 
is  the  one  and  only  need  of  the  soul.  But  in  him  is  an  infinite  fullness,  all 
the  treasures  of  wisdom.  He  is  to  be  presented  in  all  his  offices,  in  all  his 
relations,  as  the  friend  of  the  poor,  the  comforter  of  the  sorrowing,  the  chil- 
dren's teacher,  the  refuge  of  the  doubting,  the  forgiver  of  sin,  the  guide 
through  life,  the  hope  of  heaven.  All  human  institutions  are  to  be  brought 
under  Christ's  control.  His  gospel  touches  life  everywhere,  and  is  to  be 
applied  to  its  regulation  and  uplifting.  As  in  public  worship,  by  a  process 
of  synthesis,  the  minister  is  to  gather  together  all  the  wants  and  woes  of  his 
congregation,  and  present  them  before  God  in  prayer,  so  in  his  preaching, 
by  a  reverse  process  of  analysis,  he  should  bring  the  truth  of  God  to  bear 
by  turns  upon  every  relation  of  life,  yes,  even  upon  the  spiritual  condition 
of  each  individual  soul.  He  is  a  physician  of  souls,  and  if  he  be  a  true  one, 
he  will  recognize  the  fact  that  no  two  cases  under  his  care  are  just  alike, 
that  no  one  treatment  will  do  for  all  the  maladies  which  sin  brings  in  its 
train,  that  each  patient  presents  a  new  and  peculiar  opportunity  for  the  exer- 
cise of  his  healing  art. 

Allowing,  then,  the  need  of  adaptation  in  preaching,  how  shall  we  secure 
it  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  much  can  be  learned  from  a  study  of  Christ's  own 
methods.  Never  in  all  the  world  was  there  such  illustration  of  the  "  word 


1882  :   ADAPTATION.  571 

in  season,"  as  in  Christ's  teaching.  To  him  every  conjuncture  of  circum- 
stances was  an  opportunity,  and  no  opportunity  was  ever  lost.  As  you  listen 
to  his  words,  you  perceive  that  he  made  every  occasion  great.  A  most  intense 
and  vivid  personality  seems  to  discern,  as  by  a  divine  insight,  the  distinct  and 
solitary  personality  of  each  soul  with  which  it  deals,  and  so,  knowing  what  is 
in  man,  Christ  speaks  to  that  soul  words  that  as  precisely  meet  his  need,  as 
if  there  were  none  other  in  the  universe  to  whom  they  could  apply.  So  in 
general,  the  word  of  God  searches  us  out,  and  says,  "Thou  art  the  man. "  We 
must  study  its  directness,  its  particularity,  its  exactness  of  adaptation  to  each 
varying  shade  of  human  character  and  condition. 

But  we  should  also,  by  a  process  of  spiritual  diagnosis,  acquaint  ourselves 
with  the  mental  traits  and  religious  difficulties  of  our  hearers, —  for  we  cannot 
lay  claim  to  any  intuitive  or  divine  knowledge.  We  must  study  human 
nat  ure,  not  in  a  general  way,  but  by  close  observation  and  prolonged  thought 
of  the  dispositions,  habits,  failings,  troubles,  temptations,  of  those  to  whom 
we  minister.  We  should  encourage  them  to  make  known  their  wants  and 
their  aspirations.  We  should  talk  over  with  them  beforehand  the  subjects 
w<-  propose  to  preach  upon  for  their  benefit,  so  that  every  sermon  shall  have 
a  living  interest  to  us,  and  at  least  to  some  one  soul  among  our  hearers. 
Casuistry  and  the  confessional  have  had  their  dark  and  hideous  side.  The 
Christian  preacher  may  have  the  good  of  both,  by  discussing  the  principles 
upon  which  any  given  case  of  conscience  is  to  be  decided,  and  by  having  an 
open  ear  and  an  open  heart  to  the  acknowledgments  and  resolves  of  those 
who  long  for  some  earthly  confidant  and  adviser.  All  this  implies  much  and 
constant  pastoral  work,  and  shows  how  impossible  it  is  to  separate  the  faith- 
ful preacher  from  the  faithful  pastor.  He  cannot  preach  to  the  heart,  or  from 
the  heart,  without  having  first  got  into  the  heart.  He  must  know  his  people, 
in  order  to  adapt  God's  truth  to  their  special  needs.  And  he  can  know  his 
people,  only  by  prayerfully  studying  the  special  cases  that  come  before  him 
in  his  work  as  pastor. 

A  single  word  with  regard  to  the  results  of  this  effort  to  secure  adaptation. 
However  imperfectly  it  may  siicceed,  it  will  certainly  give  a  reality  and 
effectiveness  to  preaching  which  would  be  impossible  without  it.  The  ser- 
mon of  a  year  ago  will  not  do  now, — it  must  be  made  over,  pitched  to  a 
new  key,  furnished  with  new  points  of  connection,  illustrated  from  the 
events  of  to-day,  sent  home  to  some  new  hearts  by  words  that  revive  its 
memories  or  suggest  its  needs.  Dronings  and  abstractions  will  cease  from 
the  pulpit,  when  every  preacher  has  in  his  heart  and  puts  into  his  sermon  the 
spirit  of  the  text,  "  To-day,  if  ye  will  hear  his  voice,  harden  not  your  hearts." 
There  will  be  a  manliness  of  utterance,  a  sympathy,  an  earnestness  of  appeal, 
when  the  preacher  talks  no  longer  to  men  in  the  mass,  but  feels  in  his  very 
soul  that  he  is  addressing  live  and  palpitating  human  hearts,  aye,  sometimes 
even  performing  upon  them  a  work  of  spiritual  vivisection,  though  the  sur- 
gery may  be  kind  and  with  intent  to  heal.  True  adaptation  in  preaching 
will  save  us  from  sensationalism  on  the  one  hand  —  the  essence  of  which  is 
the  exhibition  of  the  preacher,  —  for  the  preacher  will  be  lost  in  the  thought 
of  others  and  of  the  truth  which  will  help  and  save  them.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  will  save  us  from  preaching  over  our  people's  heads  —  addressing 
.some  superhuman  or  inhuman  ideal  of  human  nature,  while  the  particular 


572  ADDRESSES   TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

cases  before  us  are  ignored  or  forgotten.  The  philosophy  that  pays  no- 
attention  to  facts  may  be  very  brilliant  and  lofty,  but  it  is  very  cold  and  use- 
less,—  it  is  also  very  narrow.  Breadth  in  preaching  is  only  to  be  cultivated 
by  letting  it  reflect  the  endless  variety  of  the  phases  of  truth  and  life,  as  we 
find  them  in  the  great  heart  of  man,  and  in  the  heart  of  Him  in  whose  image 
we  are  made. 

We  honor  Christ  and  his  living  word,  then,  when  we  seek  to  show  their 
adaptations  to  the  special  wants  of  men.  System  is  good,  but  it  is  good  for 
nothing  when  it  becomes  an  idol,  when  it  is  preached  for  itself  alone.  I 
urge  you  to  be  doctrinal  preachers,  but  doctrinal  only  in  the  most  practical 
sense, —  men  who  make  doctrine  a  power  to  move  the  will  to  obedience  to 
Christ.  I  do  not  know  a  more  glorious  vocation  than  that  of  preaching  such 
a  gospel  in  such  a  way,  of  sounding  all  the  heights  and  depths  of  human 
experience,  of  applying  the  truth  of  God  to  all  varieties  of  men  so  as  to  heal 
all  sorts  of  blight  and  ruin  in  the  soul,  to  summon  forth  all  sorts  of  beauties 
of  character,  and  to  elicit  all  sorts  of  praises  for  Him  who  has  made  and 
redeemed  mankind.  May  God  go  with  you  as  you  go  upon  this  mission, 
my  brethren.  May  he  give  you  much  of  his  Spirit.  May  he  enable  you  to 
adapt  your  proclamation  of  the  old  and  unchanging  truth  to  the  conditions 
and  needs  of  individual  men,  so  that  a  multitude  shall  be  led  to  Christ 
through  your  ministry,  and  so  that  your  work  shall  be  an  integral  part  of 
that  collective  ministration  of  the  church  by  which  to  principalities  and 
powers  in  heavenly  places  shall  be  make  known  the  manifold  wisdom  of  God. 


1883  : 
FAITH  THE  MEASURE   OF  SUCCESS. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  Your  days  of  pupilage  are  now 
over,  and  you  are  soon  to  be  teachers  of  the  churches.  You  have  been  good 
learners  here,  and  this  past  docility  is  a  guarantee  of  future  power.  Before 
any  man  can  preach  the  gospel,  he  must  receive  it  as  a  little  child.  We  trust 
that  you  thus  receive  God's  truth.  You  do  not  create  the  truth, —  God  gives 
it  to  you.  Let  me  now,  in  these  closing  words  of  counsel,  remind  you  that 
the  measure  of  your  faith,  in  accepting  the  truth  and  proclaiming  it,  will  be 
the  measure  of  your  success  as  ministers  of  Christ. 

A  different  doctrine  from  this  is  broached  of  late  —  the  doctrine  that  reason, 
and  not  Scripture,  is  the  final  standard  of  appeal.  In  recent  discussions  with 
regard  to  Eschatology,  it  has  been  maintained  that  plain  Biblical  statements 
must  be  denied  their  full  weight  in  determining  our  faith,  because  we  cannot 
bring  them  into  harmony  with  our  conceptions  of  human  freedom.  Not 
only  is  everlasting  punishment  relegated  to  the  category  of  questionable 
doctrines,  but,  upon  the  same  ground  that  they  are  inconsistent  with  certain 
assumed  metaphysical  or  moral  principles,  the  doctrine  of  a  common  sin  of 
the  race  in  Adam  and  the  doctrine  of  a  veritable  bearing  of  the  penalty  of  sin 
in  Christ,  are  declared  to  be  absurd  and  outworn  errors.  Instead  of  asking 
what  Scripture  says,  and  taking  that  as  binding  upon  our  faith  and  our  con- 


1883  :     FAITH   THE    MEASURE   OF   SUCCESS.  573 

science,  reason  is  first  to  determine  what  is  worthy  of  God,  and  to  take  that 
only  for  Scripture. 

I  know  well,  from  our  intercourse  in  private  as  well  as  in  the  lecture-room, 
that  this  pernicious  view  is  held  by  no  one  of  you.  But  there  are  forms  of 
words  frequently  used  which  seem  to  imply  it,  although  those  who  use  them 
would  abhor  this  conclusion.  Is  reason  the  criterion  of  religious  truth? 
In  a  certain  sense,  yes ;  in  the  sense  of  these  critics,  no.  We  can  know 
nothing  except  by  our  reason, —  for  the  reason  is  the  mind's  whole  power 
of  knowing.  But  this  is  a  very  different  thing  from  saying  that  we  can 
know  nothing  except  by  our  reasoning  faculty,  for  the  reasoning  or  logical 
faculty  is  but  a  small  part  of  the  reason.  My  whole  intuitional  nature, 
with  all  my  powers  of  sense-perception  and  of  belief  in  testimony,  lies  out- 
side the  domain  of  mere  reasoning  or  logic.  While  reason,  in  the  larger 
sense,  may  be  the  criterion  of  truth,  mere  reasoning  never  can  be.  I  am 
obliged  to  accept  a  thousand  facts,  in  nature  and  in  my  own  soul,  which  I  can 
never  explain.  I  take  them  for  true,  because  reason  tells  me  they  are  true, 
not  because  reasoning  tells  me  so. 

Now  this  testimony  of  my  own  nature  is  trustworthy,  because  it  is  the 
testimony  of  God,  who  made  my  nature.  God  is  truth,  and  truth  is  God. 
Hence  the  only  ultimate  criterion  of  truth  is  God  and  God's  revelations. 
My  nature  is  a  criterion  of  truth,  only  as  it  is  in  the  image  of  God.  When 
my  nature  becomes  perverted,  it  misrepresents  God, —  as  the  colored  glass 
misrepresents  the  landscape,  or  as  the  chromatic  aberration  of  the  telescope 
misrepresents  the  stars.  Then  Christ,  the  true  image  of  God,  the  true  human 
nature,  becomes  the  real  criterion  of  truth  to  me,  and  when  he  who  is  the  Eter- 
nal Word  speaks  his  words  to  me,  I  am  bound  to  listen,  believe,  and  obey. 

Or,  put  it  in  another  form.  God  alone  is  truth,  and  only  God  can  make 
known  himself,  or  the  truth,  to  any  human  creature.  How  am  I  to  judge  of 
what  God,  or  truth,  is  ?  Only  by  what  God  has  told  me.  How  has  God 
told  me  ?  First,  by  his  revelation  in  nature,  including  my  own  constitution  ; 
secondly,  by  his  revelation  in  Scripture.  Can  I  perfectly  trust  the  first? 
Yes,  so  far  as  God  has  made  himself  known  in  it, —  provided  my  constitution 
is  not  impaired  or  blinded  by  sin.  But  here  are  two  fatal  difficulties  :  There 
are  many  things  I  need  to  know,  which  God  has  not  made  known  in  nature, 
and  many  of  those  which  he  has  made  known  I  cannot  rightly  discern,  on 
account  of  the  diseased  condition  of  my  spiritual  vision.  Both  on  account 
of  natural  weakness  and  of  moral  perversity,  my  reason  is  fallible.  I  am  like 
a  man  partially  blind.  Some  things  I  must  take  upon  testimony.  So  my 
ultimate  criterion  of  truth  must  be,  not  my  own  reason,  but  the  Scriptures  ; 
not  what  God  tells  me  in  my  own  nature,  for  that  voice  is  greatly  weakened 
and  obscured,  but  what  God  tells  me  clearly  and  externally  in  his  written  word. 

I  should  be  the  last  to  deny  —  rather  I  should  be  the  first  to  maintain  — 
that  in  all  this  process  reason  is  active.  It  is  reason  that  must  feel  her  own 
weakness  and  need  of  superior  help ;  it  is  reason  that  must  examine  the 
credentials  of  the  revelation  that  professes  to  supply  this  need  ;  it  is  reason 
that  must  accept  this  revelation  and  reduce  its  facts  to  order  and  system  ;  in 
this  sense,  reason  is  a  preliminary  criterion  of  truth.  But  reason  is  not  the 
iiltimate  criterion  of  truth,  because  her  last  utterance  and  her  highest  wis- 
dom are  to  confess  her  insufficiency,  to  resign  her  place  of  authority,  and  to 


574  ADDRESSES   TO    GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

make  way  for  a  mightier  and  clearer  revelation  of  God  —  the  revelation  of 
God  in  the  Bible.  Henceforth  it  is  the  part  of  reason,  not  to  criticize,  but 
to  submit. 

To  go  further  than  this,  and  to  assert  for  reason  the  right  to  accept  or  to 
reject  whatever  of  Scripture  may  suit  her  preconceptions  or  her  fancies  —  this 
is  to  abuse  reason.  Of  all  methods  of  human  thought,  rationalism  is  the 
most  irrational.  To  make  reason  the  ultimate  criterion  of  truth,  is  to  assert 
that  the  finite  mind  can  comprehend  and  challenge  the  infinite  ;  that  reason 
is  the  superior  and  truth  the  inferior  ;  that  the  corrupted  revelation  of  God 
in  my  nature  is  more  trustworthy  than  that  perfect  law  of  the  Lord  which 
converts  the  soul ;  that,  because  man  was  once  made  in  the  image  of  God,  we 
can  now  construct  God  in  the  image  of  corruptible  man.  Thank  God,  God's 
power  of  giving  is  infinitely  greater  than  man's  power  of  receiving,  and  my 
power  to  take  in  is  not  the  limit  or  the  criterion  of  truth.  Reason  is  not  a 
latent  omniscience,  is  not  a  power  of  discovering  or  of  judging  all  truth,  but 
in  its  highest  activities  is  rather  a  power  of  taking  what  is  freely  given  to  it 
by  Him  who,  with  his  revelation,  provides  also  the  Spirit  of  truth  to  enlighten 
our  minds  and  enlarge  our  faculties  to  take  it  in. 

Faith,  then,  whether  in  God  or  in  God's  word,  is  the  highest  act  of  reason  ;. 
and  this  reason,  although  it  is  a  preliminary  criterion  of  truth,  is  not  the 
ultimate  criterion.  God's  word  is  the  only  final  standard  of  appeal.  To  the 
law  and  to  the  testimony, —  if  reason  speaks  not  according  to  their  voice,  it  is 
because  there  is  no  light  in  her.  With  all  my  heart  I  congratulate  you,  my 
brethren,  that  you  have  this  sure  and  safe  rule  by  which  to  test  your  erring 
fancies,  and  to  measure  the  new  utterances  that  claim  your  credence  and 
support.  We  live  in  a  day  when  the  old  truths  are  questioned,  when  the 
world's  faith  is  unsettled,  when  multitudes  bow  to  nothing  as  ultimate 
authority.  Satan's  suggested  doubt  as  to  the  inspiration  of  the  word  :  "Yea, 
hath  God  said  ?  "  is  followed,  as  in  Eden,  by  the  open  denial,  "Ye  shall  not 
surely  die."  The  rejection  of  eternal  punishment  and  the  rejection  of  the 
Bible  go  together,  and  both  errors  proceed  from  the  apotheosis  of  human 
reason  and  its  elevation  above  God's  word.  The  man  who  enters  the  min- 
istry, professing  to  be  a  teacher  of  Christian  truth  and  a  steward  of  the  mys- 
teries of  God,  while  yet  he  attributes  greater  weight  to  the  conclusions  of 
his  own  reason  than  he  gives  to  the  plain  declarations  of  Scripture,  or  who 
interprets  Scriptural  utterances  in  some  non-natural  sense  instead  of  bowing 
to  them  as  the  end  of  all  controversy,  enters  the  ministry  with  a  lie  in  his 
right  hand,  and  can  hope  to  be  only  a  propagator  of  dishonesty  and  a  means 
of  ruin  to  the  souls  whom  he  misleads.  But  the  man  who  accepts  the  whole 
word  of  God  as  inspired,  and  fairly  interpreting  it  declares  the  whole  counsel 
of  God  to  men,  will  not  only  save  himself  and  those  who  hear  him,  but  will 
find  at  last  that  he  builded  better  than  he  knew,  that  his  utterances  were 
infinitely  more  true  than  he  thought,  that  death,  judgment  and  eternity  wit- 
ness to  their  divine  and  everlasting  validity. 

All  other  human  callings  have  to  do  mainly  with  local  and  temporal  inter- 
ests, and  the  truth  with  which  they  deal  is  of  a  partial  and  inferior  sort.  It 
is  the  glory  of  your  calling,  my  brethren,  that  you  are  to  preach  that  word 
of  God  which  liveth  and  abideth  forever,  and  by  which  you  and  your  hearers 
alike  are  to  be  judged  at  the  last  day.  It  is  a  sublime  vocation.  I  pray  you, 


1884  :     HABITS    IN    THE    MINISTRY.  575 

value  your  inestimable  privilege.  And  may  Christ,  who  is  himself  the  truth , 
give  you  grace  to  preach  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the 
truth,  so  long  as  he  gives  you  breath,  and,  when  death  comes,  may  you  be 
able  to  say,  with  Paul,  that  you  have  kept  the  faith  and  that  you  have  won 
the  crown. 

1884: 
HABITS  IN  THE  MINISTRY. 

BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  The  Faculty  of  the  Seminary 
desire  to  express  to  you  their  appreciation  of  the  faithful  work  you  have  done 
during  the  past  three  years,  and  their  high  hopes  for  your  future.  Other 
things  being  equal,  industry  and  regularity  in  one's  preparatory  training 
determine  his  after  success.  The  habits  of  the  past  will  follow  you  as  you 
go  into  your  new  life.  If  you  have  been  faithful  in  little,  you  will  probably 
be  faithful  in  much.  Some  of  you  may  be  conscious  that  you  have  not  done 
your  utmost  in  your  Seminary  course.  Still  you  have  the  opportunity  to 
mend.  New  habits  can  be  formed.  As  a  theme  of  encouragement  or  admon- 
ition to  all,  think  then  for  a  moment  of  habits  —  what  they  are,  what  sorts 
of  them  need  to  be  cultivated,  how  this  cultivation  is  to  be  managed,  how 
results  justify  this  cultivation. 

A  habit  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  decision  of  the  will  so  repeated 
that  it  becomes  easy.  You  are  familiar  with  the  law  by  which  the  action  of 
one  faculty  affects  all  the  others.  Every  volition  has  its  influence  upon  the 
ideas  and  upon  the  feelings,  and  these  last  are  motives  to  new  volition. 
Volitions,  therefore,  tend  to  repeat  themselves, —  the  oftener  they  are  put 
forth,  the  more  likely  it  is  that  they  will  be  put  forth  again.  What  is  done 
at  first  with  an  effort,  comes  at  last  to  be  done  spontaneously.  And  so  our 
habits  are  the  surest  indications  of  character,  because  they  are  the  settled 
movements  of  the  soul.  Each  one  of  them  represents  a  thousand  consoli- 
dated volitions.  A  good  habit  is  a  tremendous  power  for  good.  Evil  habits 
are  the  very  fetters  of  the  evil  one.  One  of  the  greatest  of  our  moral  tasks, 
therefore,  is  to  turn  isolated  or  sporadic  action  into  habitual  action,  or  in 
other  words,  to  give  our  transient  decisions  for  the  right  the  continuity  and 
moral  force  of  habits.  And  there  is  no  pursuit  in  life  where  this  automatic 
movement  of  our  powers  is  more  indispensable  to  success  than  in  the 
ministry. 

There  are  certain  habits  which  I  urge  you  to  form  at  the  very  beginning 
of  your  ministerial  life.  One  of  them  is  the  devotion  of  a  solid  hour  at  the 
beginning  of  each  day  to  study  of  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  Scriptures.  Become 
masters  of  the  Greek  Testament.  Begin  your  work  at  it  the  very  first  morn- 
ing that  you  reach  the  place  of  your  first  settlement.  Keep  it  up,  summer 
and  winter,  rain  or  shine,  sermon  or  no  sermon,  sick  or  well.  You  are  to  be 
primarily  teachers  of  God's  word ;  you  must  know  that  word  through  and 
through  ;  you  must  be  full  of  it ;  you  must  be  mighty  in  the  Scriptures. 
But  this  you  cannot  be,  unless  you  devote  a  part  of  the  best  time  of  every 
day  to  study  of  the  Bible,  apart  from  any  special  work  of  preparation  for  the 
pulpit. 


576  ADDRESSES   TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

Another  habit  which  I  would  recommend  you  to  cultivate  from  the  very 
first  is  the  homiletical  habit.  And  by  this  I  mean  the  habit  of  seizing  upon 
every  novel  truth  of  Scripture,  every  suggestion  of  theological  or  scientific 
literature,  every  instructive  or  bright  remark  heard  in  conversation,  every 
exigency  in  public  affairs  or  in  the  private  fortunes  of  those  about  you,  every 
unfolding  of  your  own  needs  or  desires  in  secret  prayer  before  God,  as  mate- 
rial for  the  awakening,  encouraging,  admonishing  of  the  flock  to  which  you 
minister.  Eemember  always  that  you  are  a  teacher,  that  the  teacher  must 
first  be  taught,  that  God  teaches  by  his  Providence  as  well  as  by  his  word, 
that  whatever  God  teaches  you,  you  are  to  teach  others,  that  whatever  inter- 
ests you,  affects  you,  moves  you,  can  be  made  a  means  of  interesting,  affecting, 
moving  others.  Open  your  eyes  then  to  see  the  homiletical  significance  and 
importance  of  all  your  reading  and  of  all  your  experience  ;  let  all  the  currents 
of  your  life  pour  themselves  into  your  preaching  ;  that  preaching  cannot  be 
tame  or  powerless,  which  reflects  and  represents  all  the  passions,  hopes  and 
endeavors  of  a  live  and  true  man,  as  he  is  moved  upon  by  the  countless 
influences  of  God's  twofold  revelation  in  nature  and  in  the  Bible. 

So  much  with  regard  to  the  habit  of  taking  in.  One  word  now  about  the 
habit  of  giving  out.  I  beg  you  to  cultivate  the  demonstrative  habit.  Many 
ministers  are  as  busy  as  bees  in  gathering, — but  the  product  is  shut  up  in  a 
dark  hive, —  only  the  smallest  portion  of  it  is  ever  brought  out  to  the  light. 
There  is  a  reticence,  a  shyness,  a  backwardness  in  the  expression  of  our- 
selves, that  constitutes  a  subtle  foe  to  all  ministerial  success.  This  unde- 
monstrativeness  often  excuses  itself  upon  the  ground  of  humility, — but  it  is 
false  humility,  in  men  who  are  set  to  be  ambassadors  of  Jesus  Christ,  who 
have  the  word  of  the  living  God  to  preach,  and  to  whom  are  promised  all 
the  gifts  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Freedom  of  utterance  is,  of  course,  to  a  large 
degree,  the  result  of  quick  thought  and  ready  sympathy,  but  it  is  also  the 
cause  of  quick  thought  and  ready  sympathy.  Here,  as  well  as  elsewhere, 
the  more  we  give,  the  more  we  have.  Learn  then  to  be  yourselves,  to  say 
out  what  is  in  you,  with  manliness  of  tone,  with  strength  of  voice,  if  need 
be.  Let  your  whole  nature,  your  whole  experience,  your  whole  life,  in  short, 
all  there  is  of  you,  speak  for  Christ. 

Only  one  habit  more  shall  be  mentioned  —  I  mean  the  believing  habit. 
As  respects  your  brethren,  cherish  the  spirit  of  confidence ;  take  them  at 
their  best;  trust  them  as  men  and  as  Christians.  " Believing  all  things, " 
says  the  apostle.  Men  will  not  believe  in  you,  unless  you  believe  in  them. 
Some  ministers  carry  about  with  them  an  atmosphere  of  criticism  and  of 
suspicion.  They  do  not  believe  in  men.  And  as  a  result  they  do  not  love 
them,  nor  hope  for  them.  And,  so  long  as  you  have  no  confidence  in  them, 
you  can  do  them  little  good.  How  different  the  open,  cheery,  sympathetic, 
hopeful  spirit  that  sees,  in  every  Christian,  a  branch  of  the  true  vine,  unfruit- 
ful for  the  time  it  may  be,  yet  dear  to  Christ,  and  still  capable  of  bringing 
forth  abundant  fruit.  But  better  than  the  habit  of  believing  in  men  is  the 
habit  of  believing  in  God.  I  exhort  you,  in  this  day  when  the  old  landmarks 
of  doctrine  are  so  frequently  obscured  by  the  fogs  of  speculation,  to  believe 
in  God.  The  preacher  doth  not  live  by  bread  alone,  but  by  every  word  that 
proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  God.  Believe  not  only,  but  glory  in  believ- 
ing,—  make  it  your  business  to  believe, — be  in  this  respect  an  example  to 


1884:    HABITS    IK    THE    MINISTRY.  577 

those  you  teach.  As  Peter  and  John  fastened  their  eyes  stedfastly  upon  the 
blind  man,  and  the  courage  and  faith  of  their  hearts  passed  through  their 
eyes,  as  it  were,  into  him,  so  let  the  spectacle  of  your  faith  exert  all  around 
you  a  contagious  influence,  and  lead  men  themselves  to  trust  the  healing 
Son  of  God. 

I  can  give  only  a  single  sentence  to  the  question  how  this  cultivation  of 
right  habits  is  to  be  managed.  It  is  to  be  managed  by  persistent  putting 
forth  of  single  imperative  volitions,  often  against  the  tendency  of  our  natural 
impulses  and  desires  —  volitions  repeated  continuously  in  dependence  upon 
the  help  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  And  what  I  say  with  regard  to  the  advantages 
of  such  cultivation  I  must  condense  almost  as  much.  You  know  what  nerve- 
centres  are,  and  how  physiologists  tell  us  that  by  a  sort  of  involuntary  and 
automatic  action  these  nerve-centres  become  lieutenants  of  the  will  and  per- 
form its  behests  even  while  we  are  apparently  unconscious  of  their  operation. 
I  give  the  command  to  walk.  There  are  nerve-centres  that  take  the  com- 
mand from  my  will  and  execute  it, — I  go  down  the  street,  putting  forth  no 
further  conscious  volitions  ;  these  subordinate  powers  do  the  work  for  me. 
The  result  is  that  my  brain  is  left  free  for  conversation  with  a  friend,  or  for 
thought  about  my  sermon.  Every  habit  formed  is  in  like  manner  a  getting 
of  the  lower  powers  to  do  our  work,  with  the  result  that  the  intellect  and  will 
are  left  free  for  other  and  higher  concerns.  Habits,  therefore,  economize 
our  time  and  strength.  The  true  pastor's  maxim,  "  Never  do  anything  your- 
self that  you  can  get  any  one  else  to  do  for  you,"  applies  to  his  own  faculties 
and  powers.  Conscious  will  should  never  do  what  it  can  get  any  of  the 
lower  powers  to  do  for  it.  But  it  is  more  than  economy, —  it  is  safety  also. 
Many  a  time,  when  selfish  or  indolent  impulses  would  rule,  they  can  be 
repressed  by  the  simple  thought  that  this  is  not  our  habit.  The  love  of  con- 
sistency saves  us.  Routine  is  itself  a  blessing.  And  these  habits,  if  they 
are  only  habits  of  daily  pondering  God's  work,  of  seeking  its  applications  to 
human  life,  of  uttering  its  truths  to  others,  of  trusting  God  and  our  brethren, 
will  not  only  be  the  surest  signs  of  a  sanctified  intellect  and  a  self-sacrificing 
heart,  but  they  will  powerfully  influence  us  to  holiness  and  self-sacrifice,  and 
so  make  the  preacher  a  living  example  of  the  gospel  which  he  preaches. 

Be  sure,  my  brethren,  that  what  you  are  will  influence  your  hearers  more 
than  what  you  preach.  I  look  forward  to  earnest,  persistent,  unselfish, 
consecrated  lives,  to  be  lived  and  spent  by  this  Class  for  Christ  and  for  his 
church.  God  has  been  with  you  thus  far,  and  he  will  guide  you  still.  Though 
you  may  be  widely  separated,  the  memories  of  these  three  years  of  close 
companionship  in  sacred  studies  will  be  a  refreshment  and  strength  to  you, 
and  you  will  still  be  united  to  one  another  and  to  us  by  that  one  Spirit 
through  whom  we  all  have  access  to  the  Father.  May  God  fill  your  places 
here  by  men  as  good  and  true,  and  raise  up  for  the  ministry  a  multitude  as 
well  prepared  for  their  work  !  We  rejoice  to-night  that  we  have  been  able 
to  do  anything  towards  forming  your  intellectual  and  moral  habits,  in  prepa- 
ration for  your  sacred  calling.  Be  faithful  to  what  you  have  been  taught, — 
better  still,  be  faithful  to  the  word  of  God,  as  the  Spirit  of  God  shall  show 
you  its  meaning.  You  have  been  a  pride  and  a  comfort  to  us.  Our  hearts, 
our  hopes,  our  prayers  go  with  you.  We  expect,  the  churches  expect,  Christ 
expects,  noble  services  from  the  class  of  eighteen  hundred  and  eighty-four. 
37 


578  ADDRESSES   TO   GRADUATING    CLASSES. 

1885: 
THE   PEEACHEE'S  DOUBTS. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  This  is  an  hour  of  contrasts,  a 
time  of  sadness  and  of  gladness,  an  ending  and  a  beginning.  We  part  from 
you  regretfully,  for  you  have  been  faithful  students  of  God's  truth  ;  hope- 
fully, for  you  go  to  preach  this  truth  to  others.  You  have  made  your  way 
to  your  present  convictions  through  struggles  ;  you  have  gained  for  your- 
selves a  firm  assurance  of  the  great  truths  of  Christianity.  You  believe  that 
the  Scriptures  are  a  special  revelation  from  God,  and  that  they  represent 
God  as  triune,  creating,  redeeming  and  judging  the  world  in  Jesus  Christ. 
You  believe  that  man  is  fallen,  congenitally  depraved  and  wholly  dependent 
for  salvation  upon  the  atoning  sacrifice  of  Calvary  and  upon  the  regenerating 
grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  You  believe  that  out  of  the  ruins  of  this  fallen 
humanity  God  is  building  up  a  glorious  church,  which  is  to  be  his  temple 
and  dwelling-place  forever,  and  that  without  connection  with  that  great  and 
invisible  body,  of  which  all  earthly  organizations  are  more  or  less  perfect 
types  and  symbols,  men  abide  in  darkness  and  death. 

But  it  is  not  about  your  beliefs  —  it  is  about  your  doubts,  that  I  wish  to 
speak  to  you.  The  preacher's  doubts,  and  what  he  is  to  do  with  them  —  this 
is  my  theme.  And  the  first  thing  I  would  say  is,  that  Christianity  gives  place 
and  room  for  doubt.  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  that  it  is  right  to  doiibt  God, 
—  I  do  mean  that  it  is  often  right  to  doubt  what  men  say  about  him.  Jesus 
did  not  doubt  God,  but  he  did  doubt  the  interpretations  of  the  Scribes  and 
Pharisees.  To  doubt  God's  existence,  or  to  doubt  God's  word  when  it  is 
clearly  set  before  us,  is  sin,  but  when  man  or  Satan  says  God  is  so  and  so,  or 
that  his  word  means  this  or  that,  it  may  be  a  duty  to  doubt,  and  doubt  may 
be  the  only  road  to  truth.  Though  you  have  a  fixed  belief  with  regard  to 
the  main  matters  of  theology,  you  well  know  that  there  are  a  thousand  ques- 
tions yet  unanswered,  and  with  regard  to  these  you  are  free  as  the  air  to  use 
your  intellects  and  to  interpret  the  Bible  for  yourselves.  About  many  com- 
monly received  opinions  you  will  have  your  doubts.  Your  doubts  may  be 
a  sign  of  mental  progress.  You  can  make  the  truth  effective,  only  by  strip- 
ping off  the  cerements  with  which  custom  has  bound  it,  and  by  bringing  it 
forth  in  new  life  and  power  from  its  sepulchre. 

But,  secondly,  remember  that  while  Christianity  leaves  place  and  room 
for  doubt,  the  incidents  are  not  the  essence  of  Christianity,  and  a  thousand 
differences  of  belief  about  details  will  not  affect  the  truth  of  the  general 
scheme.  Let  us  never  imagine  that,  because  we  cannot  explain  certain  appar- 
ent difficulties,  the  whole  system  may  be  a  delusion.  The  astronomer  does 
not  give  up  gravitation,  simply  because  the  movements  of  certain  satellites 
as  yet  refuse  to  be  brought  under  its  law.  Men  may  worship  securely  in  a 
great  cathedral,  although  many  a  superficial  stone  of  its  exterior  seems 
crumbling  and  falling  from  its  place.  So  we  are  to  believe  that  the  founda- 
tion of  God  standeth  sure,  in  spite  of  manifold  perplexities  with  regard  to 
the  details  of  Christian  truth. 

Thirdly,  even  as  respects  these  minor  matters  of  the  faith,  remember  that 
doubt  is  not  refutation.  You  are  not  the  first  that  have  seen  these  difficulties. 


1885:  THE  PREACHER'S  DOUBTS.  579 

There  were  brave  men  before  Agamemnon.  The  Holy  Spirit's  enlightening 
influences  have  been  given  to  others  besides  yourselves.  When  you  begin 
to  doubt  accepted  interpretations,  therefore,  do  not  take  it  for  granted  at 
once  that  your  doubts  are  just.  Carry  your  doubt  a  little  further,  and  doubt 
yourselves  —  your  perspicacity,  the  comprehensiveness  of  your  thought,  the 
completeness  of  your  induction  of  facts.  Take  advice  —  not  the  advice  of 
doubters  like  yourselves  only,  but  the  advice  of  men  who  have  worried 
through  with  their  doubts,  and  who  at  least  think  they  have  got  out  of  the 
quagmire  upon  solid  ground.  Read  books  —  not  the  books  of  the  enemies 
of  Christ  and  his  gospel  exclusively,  for  you  may  so  saturate  yourselves  with 
plausible  unbelief,  as  utterly  to  unfit  yourselves  for  sober,  independent  judg- 
ment,—  but  the  books  of  the  great  Christian  thinkers,  the  Butlers,  the  Pascals, 
and  in  modern  days  the  Dorners  and  the  Smiths,  of  the  church.  Above  all, 
live  in  the  self -evidencing  sunlight  of  the  Scriptures  ;  make  the  word  of  God 
the  man  of  your  counsel ;  ten  to  one,  if  you  will  permit  it  to  do  so,  the  Bible 
will  explain  itself. 

Fourthly,  do  not  preach  new  doctrine  till  you  have  some  new  doctrine  to 
preach.  In  other  words,  do  not  publish  your  doubts, —  wait  till  they  become 
certainties.  There  is  no  foe  to  truth  so  dangerous  as  haste,  for  haste  has 
self-will  and  presumption  for  fellow-laborers.  The  Holy  Spirit  was  promised 
to  guide  the  apostles  into  all  the  truth,  but  we  know  that  he  did  not  do  this 
by  some  sudden  flash  of  lightning,  but  rather  by  a  continuous  enlightenment 
as  to  doctrine  and  polity,  which  was  not  completed  until  the  last  apostle  died. 
And  so  the  Holy  Spirit  will  guide  us  into  all  the  truth  —  but  not  necessarily 
in  three  months.  Preach  no  tentative  sermons,  then,  to  see  how  a  certain 
new  conception  of  yours  will  work, — you  have  no  business  to  try  the  materia 
medica  of  the  gospel  upon  your  patients  in  any  such  fashion.  Keep  your 
doubts  to  yourself,  until  you  have  solved  them  and  do  not  need  to  preach 
them,  or  until  you  have  found  truth  and  verified  it  by  long  thought  and 
observation,  and  can  preach  it  as  the  very  truth  of  God. 

Fifthly,  and  finally,  work  and  pray  the  more,  the  more  you  doubt.  You 
cannot  reach  truth  in  this  universe  of  God  without  the  help  of  Christ,  who 
is  the  truth.  And  he  will  give  you  his  help  in  finding  the  truth,  only  as  you 
obey  him.  Shall  a  man  who  doubts,  shut  himself  out  from  preaching  and 
from  visiting  the  sick,  on  the  plea  that  he  must  be  wholly  independent,  and 
must  give  all  his  time  to  investigation  ?  Remember  that  religious  truth  is  a 
matter  of  the  heart,  as  much  as  it  is  a  matter  of  the  intellect ;  that  the  cold 
heart  cannot  judge  of  it ;  that  only  sympathy  for  sinning  and  suffering  men 
can  prove  that  we  love  God ;  that  without  love  to  God  we  cannot  know  God, 
or  know  the  truth  of  God.  The  more  you  doubt,  then,  throw  yourselves 
the  more  vigorously  and  devoutly  into  all  manner  of  Christian  service.  He 
who  does  Christ's  will  shall  know  of  his  teaching,  whether  it  be  from  God. 
The  more  you  doubt,  pray  the  more.  For  doubts  will  disappear  when  the 
obedient  servant  lays  them  at  the  Master's  feet ;  even  on  earth  his  presence 
will  give  us  the  best  light  for  our  darkness  ;  and,  when  at  last  the  day  dawns 
and  the  shadows  flee  away,  it  will  be  heaven  itself  to  hear  his  word  :  "  O  thou 
of  little  faith,  wherefore  didst  thou  doubt  ?  " 

You  are  stewards  of  the  mysteries  of  God,  sent  upon  a  great  commission, 
entrusted  with  the  truth  that  is  to  save  mankind.  You  go  out  into  an  unbe- 


580  ADDRESSES   TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

lieving  age  —  an  age  that  is  weary  and  hopeless  in  its  unbelief,  and  that  longs 
for  nothing  so  much  as  the  man  that  can  bring  positive  truth  from  God, 
answers  to  the  great  problems  of  existence,  practical  salvation  from  its  sor- 
row and  sin.  You  can  win,  you  can  stand,  in  this  age,  only  by  believing. 
In  more  senses  than  one,  the  just  nowadays  shall  live  by  his  faith.  That 
faith  will  be  assailed,  assailed  more  subtly  and  more  powerfully  than  in  any 
age  before.  Doubts  will  come  to  you  —  doubts  that  will  shake  you.  You 
may  treat  them  in  two  ways.  You  may  treat  them,  on  the  one  hand,  as 
Othello  treated  his  doubts  of  Desdemona.  You  may  listen  only  to  lago  ; 
you  may  cast  away  all  you  have  known  in  the  past  of  Desdemona's  truth  and 
faithfulness,  as  so  much  credulity  and  superstition  ;  you  may  condemn  her 
on  the  unsupported  testimony  of  her  worst  enemy ;  you  may  ruthlessly  slay 
her  you  love  best.  So  you  may  condemn  Christ  and  his  gospel  on  the  word 
of  his  foes  ;  you  may  turn  doubt  into  apostasy  ;  you  may  crucify  the  Son  of 
God  afresh,  and  put  him  to  an  open  shame.  But  there  is  another  way  to 
treat  doubts.  It  is  the  way  of  doubting  Thomas.  He  stayed  away  for  a  little 
from  the  assembly  of  Christ's  disciples,  but  he  came  back ;  he  said  he  would 
not  be  convinced  unless  he  put  his  hand  in  the  prints  of  the  nails,  but  when 
Christ  appeared  to  him  he  needed  no  such  proof ;  he  loved  the  Savior  after 
all,  and  no  disciple  of  them  all  left  us  so  majestic  a  confession  of  faith  as  did 
this  same  doubting  Thomas,  when  he  bowed  at  Christ's  feet  and  cried :  "  My 
Lord  and  my  God." 

My  brethren,  I  do  not  pray  for  you  that  God  will  keep  you  from  all  doubt, 
but  I  do  pray  that  through  all  doubt  he  may  lead  you  into  his  truth.  It  is 
not  doubt,  but  faith,  that  constitutes  God's  measure  of  a  man.  Romaine, 
in  his  diary,  speaks  of  " a  year  famous  for  believing."  I  pray  not  that  one 
year  of  your  lives,  but  that  every  year  of  your  lives  may  be  a  year  famous 
for  believing;  for  be  sure  that  "this  is  the  victory  that  overcometh  the 
world,  even  our  faith." 

1886: 
HIGH-MINDEDNESS. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS: — You  have  now  accomplished 
your  course  of  preparatory  study.  Full  of  hope  and  vigor,  you  are  antici- 
pating the  public  duties  of  the  ministry.  I  trust  that  the  Seminary  has  done 
something  to  fit  you  for  them.  You  have  learned  to  work  here  —  to  work 
from  an  inner  impulse,  and  not  because  you  were  driven.  You  have  gained 
some  new  knowledge  of  the  great  system  of  truth  which  you  are  to  commend 
to  your  fellow-men.  Above  all,  you  have  become  more  manly  and  more 
sympathetic, —  you  are  broader  and  truer  men  than  when  you  came  to  us 
three  years  ago.  Your  instructors  have  seen  growth  in  you,  and  it  is  with 
hope  and  cheer  that  we  look  forward  to  your  service  for  Christ.  Much  of 
this  hope  is  based  upon  our  conviction  that  you  are  high-minded  men,  and 
and  that  this  high-mindedness  is  of  a  Christian  sort.  .  It  is  with  regard  to 
this  that  I  would  speak  to  you.  There  is  a  high-mindedness  that  is  good  ; 
there  is  a  high-mindedness  that  is  evil.  I  would  have  you  cultivate  the  one  ; 
I  would  have  you  abhor  and  renounce  the  other. 


1886:    HIGH-MINDEDNESS.  581 

Let  me  give  you  something  in  the  way  of  definition.  A  proper  high- 
mindedness  is  that  which  sets  the  human  mind  above  things  naturally  infe- 
rior to  it,  and  which  at  the  same  time  bids  this  human  mind  look  upward  to 
a  higher  mind  and  strengthen  itself  by  the  reception  of  what  is  freely  offered 
us  by  God.  A  false  and  unworthy  high-mindedness  is  that  which  disregards 
the  mind's  appointed  and  secondary  place,  and  seeks  to  set  itself  above  con- 
fession of  sin,  above  dependence  upon  Christ,  above  faith  in  his  word,  above 
obedience  to  his  law.  We  love  a  truly  high-minded  man  —  a  man  who  regards 
the  soul  as  of  greater  importance  than  the  body,  and  who,  therefore,  can 
sacrifice  physical  comfort  and  endure  hardness  for  the  sake  of  intellectual 
or  moral  or  religious  good  ;  a  man  who  regards  the  great  things  of  the  soul 
as  of  more  value  than  the  little  things,  and  who,  therefore,  can  care  less 
about  petty  slights,  and  personal  ambitions,  and  intellectual  achievements, 
than  he  does  about  the  state  of  his  heart  before  God  and  the  eternal  welfare 
of  his  fellow-men  ;  a  man  who  regards  God's  mind  as  greater  than  his  own 
mind,  and  therefore  accepts  trustfully  every  word  of  God,  whether  he  fully 
understands  it  or  not ;  a  man  who  regards  God's  will  as  the  supreme  will, 
and  who,  therefore,  submits  himself  unreservedly  to  the  allotments  of  God's 
Providence  ;  a  man  who  regards  God's  strength  as  the  only  strength,  and 
who,  therefore,  claims  no  righteousness  and  hopes  for  no  salvation  except 
those  which  come  to  him  through  the  atonement  of  Christ  and  the  sanctify- 
ing influences  of  his  Spirit. 

Here  is  a  high-mindedness  that  is  worthy  of  praise,  for  it  seeks  the  things 
that  are  above,  where  Christ  is,  seated  at  God's  right  hand.  Such  high- 
mindedness  as  this  is  humble,  believing,  submissive,  while  yet  it  stands  for 
God,  and  defies  an  embattled  world.  This  was  the  high-mindedness  of  the 
Keformers,  who  feared  God  so  much  that  they  had  no  other  fear ;  this  is  the 
high-mindedness  of  every  minister  of  Christ  who,  in  the  strength  of  Christ, 
preaches  his  gospel  as  the  only  salvation  of  the  world. 

But  there  is  another  sort  of  high-mindedness  which  makes  self  the  centre 
and  standard,  rather  than  God,  and  that  self  not  the  true  self,  but  the  lower 
and  false  self.  Such  high-mindedness  esteems  one's  own  physical  comfort 
as  more  worthy  of  consideration  than  intellectual  or  moral  progress,  either 
in  one's  self  or  in  others,  and  the  men  who  carry  this  spirit  into  the  ministry 
feed  themselves,  rather  than  the  flock  of  God.  He  would  be  a  poor  soldier 
who  should  refuse  to  obey  the  order  of  his  superior,  because  obedience  might 
endanger  his  life.  The  chief  value  of  life  to  a  Christian  soldier  is  that  he 
may  hazard  it  for  Christ.  A  false  high-mindedness  overvalues  the  merely 
intellectual  in  comparison  with  the  moral  and  spiritual,— in  other  words,  it 
sets  mind  above  heart.  Petty  errors  of  pronunciation,  or  spelling,  or  gram- 
mar, are  more  regarded  than  weight  of  argument,  beauty  of  character,  or  the 
services  of  a  life-time,  and  for  the  unity  of  a  specious  scheme  of  thought  men 
sacrifice  both  history  and  ethics.  This  sort  of  high-mindedness  constantly 
tends  to  over-esteem,  of  one's  own  opinion.  Toleration  and  love  for  oppo- 
nents, reverence  for  the  great  thinkers  of  the  church,  consciousness  of 
dependence  upon  the  Bible  and  upon  God  —  these  fade  out  from  the  mind, 
and  the  soul  is  left  bare  and  desolate  as  a  garden  when  the  autumn  frosts 
have  come.  High-mindedness  of  this  sort  is  rationalistic  in  spirit,  but  it  is 
also  a  denial  of  the  doctrines  of  grace.  The  man  who  does  not  feel  the  need 


582  ADDRESSES   TO   GRADUATING    CLASSES. 

of  God  and  God's  revelation  in  his  intellectual  life,  will  not  long  feel  his 
need  of  God  and  God's  revelation  in  his  moral  life.  He  will  come  to  believe 
in  his  own  merits,  and  will  deny  the  atonement  of  Christ,  the  regeneration 
of  the  Spirit,  and  the  justification  of  the  Father.  Well  for  him  if  he  does 
not  go  further,  and  set  his  own  will  above  God's  will,  utterly  breaking  away 
from  the  restraints  of  God's  law,  as  well  as  from  the  grace  of  his  gospel. 

The  minister  of  Christ  is  peculiarly  exposed  to  these  dangers,  and  for  this 
reason  perhaps,  among  others,  the  word  "high-minded"  is  never  used  in 
the  New  Testament  in  a  favorable,  but  always  in  an  unfavorable,  sense.  ' '  Be 
not  high-minded,  but  fear, "  says  the  apostle.  I  do  not  know  any  exhortation 
more  needful  to  a  class  of  young  men  just  entering  upon  the  work  of  the 
preacher  and  pastor.  You  are  to  be  looked  up  to  as  persons  of  a  higher 
education  than  the  mass  of  your  hearers ;  you  are  to  be  esteemed  as  better 
men  than  the  mass,  by  reason  of  the  very  sacredness  of  your  calling.  If  you 
have  any  tendency  to  be  puffed  up  in  your  own  esteem,  the  comparative  iso- 
lation of  your  position  will  give  abundant  opportunity  for  increasing  this 
tendency,  and  we  unfortunately  see  in  the  ministry  an  occasional  instance 
of  an  opinionated  and  self-willed  man,  who  is  very  contemptuous  of  others, 
and  whose  whole  aim  seems  to  be  to  lord  it  over  God's  heritage.  There  are 
some  natural  checks  upon  this  disposition,  such  ar  the  total  absence  of  ranks 
in  the  ministry,  the  fact  that  many  a  plain  church-member  knows  more  of 
his  Bible  and  has  more  common  sense  in  practical  matters  than  his  minister 
does,  and  the  certainty  that  the  proud  spirit  will  meet  with  a  fall.  God 
usually  takes  care  that  the  supercilious  young  minister  is  in  various  ways 
knocked  on  the  head  until  the  superciliousness  is  knocked  out'  of  him. 

But  how  can  we  save  ourselves  this  heroic  treatment  ?  God  prefers  to 
treat  us  more  mildly,  and  will  do  so  if  we  will  permit  him.  I  know  of  no 
way  to  escape,  but  by  cultivating  humility  from  the  very  start.  And  this  we 
can  do,  to  some  degree,  by  considering  its  fundamental  place  among  the  Chris- 
tian virtues.  "  What  is  the  first  grace  of  the  Christian  character  ?  "  was  the 
question  put  to  Augustine.  And  the  answer  was  :  "Humility. "  "And  what 
the  second?"  He  answered  as  before:  "Humility."  "And  what  is  the 
third  ?  "  Still  Augustine  replied  :  ' '  Humility. "  And  he  was  right.  Humil- 
ity is  the  first,  second,  and  third,  of  the  virtues,  because  without  it  we  cannot 
receive  any  other  grace  whatever  from  God.  Humility  is  docile  and  receptive. 
But  high-mindedness  is  arrogant,  exclusive,  unteachable,  and  shuts  the  door 
both  to  truth  and  to  duty. 

But  we  have  a  better  incentive  than  any  which  the  mere  consideration  of 
consequences  could  supply.  It  is  found  in  the  example  of  our  blessed  Lord. 
He  who  was  highest  took  the  lowest  place.  Divine  Wisdom  at  the  beginning 
of  his  earthly  life  consented  to  be  taught  of  man,  and  divine  Power  at  the 
end  of  his  earthly  life  limited  itself  until  it  could  endure  the  sufferings  of 
the  cross.  Have  we  ever  really  considered  what  was  the  meaning  of  that 
cross  ?  There  in  a  few  brief  hours,  and  in  a  little  spot  of  earth,  were  revealed 
the  self -affirming  purity  of  God,  and  yet  the  self-sacrificing  love  of  God  — 
a  purity  and  a  love  which  in  themselves  transcend  all  space  and  all  time. 
Imagine  for  a  moment  that  a  cross  could  be  erected  that  stretched  from  this 
earth  to  the  most  distant  of  the  stars  of  space.  Imagine  a  Being  stretched 
upon  that  cross  whose  greatness  surpassed  that  of  all  the  visible  universe. 


1887:   ZEAL  FOR  CHRIST.  583 

Imagine  an  agony  that  lasted  for  longer  periods  than  our  minds  can  grasp 
—  sighs  of  immeasurable  duration,  and  drops  of  blood  that  took  ages  upon 
ages  to  fall.  To  some  minds  this  would  more  fitly  represent  a  divine  suf- 
fering, than  does  the  transaction  on  Calvary.  But  remember  that  such  an 
atonement  as  this,  though  objectively  it  might  be  of  infinite  value,  would 
yet  be  subjectively  valueless  for  beings  so  limited  as  ourselves.  We  could 
not  take  it  in, —  we  should  be  only  stupefied  and  bewildered  at  the  contem- 
plation. Therefore  divinity  has  contracted  itself  into  the  limits  of  our 
humanity.  God  has  brought  himself  within  the  narrow  bounds  of  a  human 
body  and  a  human  life.  The  atonement  has  been  wrought  in  such  a  way 
that  we  can  grasp  it  and  be  affected  by  it.  Yet  it  is  just  as  great  in  essence, 
us  if  the  whole  material  universe  were  a  cross,  and  all  time  were  the  duration 
of  the  Savior's  suffering.  For  Christ  is  "the  Lamb  slain  before  the  founda- 
tion of  the  world,"  and  the  cross  is  a  revelation  in  time  of  eternal  facts  in 
the  nature  of  God  —  God's  hatred  of  sin,  and  yet  God's  compassion  for  the 
sinner. 

Denunciations  of  pride  will  never  help  us  to  humility, — but  the  contem- 
plation of  the  cross  will.  There  we  see  the  dreadfulness  of  sin, —  for  it 
brought  death  to  the  Son  of  God.  But  there  also  we  see  our  sin  judged  and 
condemned  forever,  so  that  now  there  is  "  no  condemnation  to  them  that  are 
in  Christ  Jesus,  who  walk  not  after  the  flesh,  but  after  the  Spirit." 

"  When  I  survey  the  wondrous  cross 

On  which  the  Prince  of  Glory  died, 
My  richest  gain  I  count  but  loss, 
And  pour  contempt  on  all  my  pride." 

In  view  of  what  He  did,  who  "being rich,  for  our  sakes  became  poor,  that  we 
through  his  poverty  might  be  made  rich,"  we  can  give  up  all  for  his  sake, 
can  take  the  lowest  place,  can  do  the  humblest  work,  to  fullfil  the  purpose  of 
his  sacrifice,  and  to  save  the  souls  for  whom  he  died.  As  you  go  out  then 
into  the  active  work  of  the  ministry,  my  brethren,  my  last  counsel  to  you  is 
simply  that  of  the  Apostle  Paul :  "  Have  this  mind  in  you,  which  was  also 
in  Christ  Jesus,  who,  being  in  the  form  of  God,  counted  it  not  a  prize  to  be 
on  an  equality  with  God,  but  emptied  himself,  taking  the  form  of  a  servant, 
being  made  in  the  likeness  of  men  ;  and  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man, 
he  humbled  himself,  becoming  obedient  even  unto  death,  yea,  the  death  of 
the  cross." 


1887: 
ZEAL  FOE  CHRIST. 


BRETHREN  OF  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS  : —  You  have  spent  three  years  with 
us  in  preparation  for  the  ministry.  Your  instructors  testify  that  you  have 
been  faithful  in  your  work.  We  send  you  out  with  our  blessing.  We  cher- 
ish high  hopes  for  you.  May  he  who  has  counted  you  worthy,  putting  you 
into  the  ministry,  grant  you  a  long,  and  happy,  and  successful  career,  in 
preaching  the  gospel  and  in  winning  men  to  Christ. 

When  I  pray  that  your  lives  may  be  long,  neither  you  nor  I  can  forgefc 


584  ADDRESSES  TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

that  one  who  began  work  with  you  is  not  here  to-night.  Neville  graduated 
before  you.  He  knows  more  theology  now  than  we  all.  Somewhere,  I  doubt 
not,  he  is  performing  nobler  service  than  he  could  have  rendered  here.  His 
love  of  truth,  his  decision  of  character,  his  sweetness  of  spirit  —  these  remain 
in  our  memory.  Though  dead,  he  yet  speaks  to  us  —  urges  us  not  to  mourn, 
not  to  idle,  but  to  close  up  the  ranks  and  march  on. 

The  one  word  which  I  would  give  you  as  your  watchword  to-night  is  the 
word  "  zeal."  It  is  a  lofty  word,  and  our  Lord  consecrated  it  when  he  said 
that  the  zeal  of  God's  house  had  consumed  him.  And  yet  the  word  to  many 
minds,  in  this  age  of  easy-going  indifferentism,  has  an  ill  sound.  Let  me 
clear  it  from  misconception,  by  saying  that  zeal  is  not  necessarily  fanaticism. 
It  is  zeal  for  Christ,  to  which  I  entreat  you.  That  zeal  has  none  of  the 
attributes  of  fanaticism :  it  is  neither  narrow,  nor  overwrought,  nor  hard. 
Fanaticism  is  narrow  ;  it  sees  only  a  small  portion  of  the  field  ;  it  makes  only 
a  partial  induction  of  facts.  Zeal  for  Christ  cannot  make  this  mistake,  for 
it  has  for  its  object  Him  who  is  not  only  the  truth,  but  the  whole  truth  of 
God.  Fanaticism  is  overwrought ;  it  is  an  exaggerated  and  extravagant 
enthusiasm  ;  it  throws  into  a  single  line  the  mental  power  and  emotion  that 
were  meant  to  be  expended  upon  the  whole  realm  of  duty.  Zeal  for  Christ, 
on  the  other  hand,  can  never  be  overwrought;  for  love  can  never  love  too 
much  when  it  loves  him  ;  all  human  effort  is  too  weak  when  matched  with 
his  infinite  claims ;  strive  as  we  may,  we  never  can  do  enough  to  secure  this 
highest  of  all  ends  — the  triumph  of  Christ  and  his  truth  in  the  world. 
Fanaticism  is  hard ;  the  sensibility  and  devotion  which  it  pours  out  upon 
one  limited  part  of  God's  creation  it  withdraws  from  all  the  rest ;  the  Span- 
ish Inquisition  and  the  French  Kevolution  show  that  an  uninstructed  consci- 
ence may  become  merciless,  and  may  clothe  the  executioners  of  justice  in 
hell-fire.  Zeal  for  Christ,  on  the  contrary,  as  it  proclaims,  so  it  is  bound  to 
manifest,  the  sympathy  and  love  of  God  ;  is  bound  to  distinguish  between 
the  sinner  and  his  sin ;  is  bound  to  have  compassion  upon  all  that  are  in 
error,  that  it  may  enlighten  them  and  save  them. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  any  zeal  among  men  is  absolutely  pure, — that 
would  be  to  claim  that  sinless  perfection  has  been  reached  ;  and,  alas,  the 
imperfection  of  our  views  and  the  fact  that  our  motives  are  mixed  show  that 
no  such  perfect  state  is  ours.  But  we  know  that  there  was  once  an  example 
of  fiery,  and  yet  sinless,  zeal.  We  know  that  the  pure  flame  of  Christ's  zeal 
has  been  to  some  degree  enkindled  in  us.  What  I  urge  is,  that  our  zeal  for 
Christ  may  reflect  and  emulate  Christ's  zeal  for  God.  Think  what  its  char- 
acteristics were.  First,  there  was  an  absolute  faith.  One  word  of  God  was 
of  more  account  to  Jesus,  than  all  the  words  of  angels  or  demons  or  men. 
My  brethren,  I  would  have  you  trust  Christ  and  his  truth,  more  than  you 
trust  all  the  world  beside.  Whatever  philosophy  may  say,  whatever  oppo- 
sitions of  science  falsely  so-called  may  arise,  whatever  habit  of  skepticism 
may  have  become  part  of  the  mental  structure  of  our  generation,  let  us  admit 
no  doubts,  listen  to  no  parleyings,  but  rather  set  to  our  seal  that  God  is  true, 
though  every  man  be  thereby  made  a  liar. 

And  then,  secondly,  Christ's  zeal  was  distinguished,  not  only  by  an  absolute 
faith,  but  by  a  passionate  devotion.  I  urge  you  to  give  yourselves  to  the 
service  of  Christ,  with  the  singleness  of  purpose  and  the  total  self -abandon- 


1887:   ZEAL  FOR  CHRIST.  585 

ment  with  which  Christ  gave  himself  to  God.  I  do  not  need  to  tell  you  that 
Christ  is  God.  You  believe  this.  I  would  have  you  act  upon  it.  Shall  I 
give  you  a  motto  ?  Take  this  :  Christo  Deo  Omnipotenti.  Mean  by  it  that 
to  Christ,  the  omnipotent  God,  you  consecrate  yourself  utterly,  making  no 
reserve,  but  giving  to  him  all  your  powers  in  the  utmost  intensity  of  their 
exercise.  O,  it  is  no  more  than  Paul  has  said  before  me  !  I  might  have 
taken  this  motto  instead  of  mine  :  Mihi  Vivere  Christus — "  for  me  to  live 
is  Christ." 

I  have  urged  you  to  imitate  and  reflect  Christ's  zeal  —  that  pure  flame  of 
absolute  faith  and  passionate  devotion.  A  vast  and  impossible  achievement, 
do  you  say  ?  An  ideal  never  to  be  reduced  to  practice  by  any  mortal  man  ? 
True,  if  it  came  to  us  merely  as  law,  and  not  as  gospel ;  merely  as  command, 
and  not  as  promise.  I  thank  God  that  there  is  an  easier  way  to  fullfil  the 
injunction  and  secure  the  blessing  —  an  easier  way  than  the  hopeless  way  of 
self-moved  and  self -sustained  obedience.  It  is  by  taking  Christ  himself  into 
our  hearts.  His  zeal  can  become  ours,  only  when  he  himself  becomes  ours. 
But  then,  he  can  become  ours,  and  like  Paul,  "  we  can  do  all  things  through 
Christ  who  strengtheneth  us."  Way  of  the  simple  !  Wisdom  of  the  meek  ! 
We  have  learned  something  of  it  in  the  past.  May  we  resolve  anew  to-night 
that  we  will  have  no  other  wisdom  and  know  no  other  way,  but  will  ' '  count 
all  things  but  loss  for  the  excellency  of  the  knowledge  of  Christ !  " 

My  dear  brethren,  it  is  with  a  heart  of  love  and  hope  that  I  look  into  your 
faces  for  the  last  moments  of  our  relation  as  teacher  and  pupils.  What  I 
have  said  to  you  is  the  greatest  thing  and  the  best  thing  I  could  possibly 
say.  No  archangel  could  give  you  a  message  whose  substance  should  be 
grander,  more  momentous,  more  stirring  than  this ;  for  this  Christ  in  whom 
I  have  urged  you  to  put  absolute  faith,  and  to  whom  I  have  urged  you  to 
show  passionate  devotion  —  this  Christ  is  all  and  in  all.  There  are  two 
problems  which  lie  before  you  for  solution  —  the  internal  and  the  external, 

—  and  only  Christ  can  help  you  to  solve  them.     There  is  the  problem  of 
your  own  heart,  your  own  personal  sin,  your  own  advancement  in  holiness, 
in  short,  your  own  spiritual  life.     Unless  you  can  overcome  sin  within  you, 
you  can  never  overcome  sin  in  the  world  without.     But  you  can  overcome 
sin  within  you,  if  you  have  Christ  and  his  zeal.     Why  does  not  the  ocean 
come  up  into  the  river  channel  and  flood  the  river  banks  ?    Because  the 
steady  outward  current  drives  the  ocean  waves  before  it,  and  takes  its  tides  of 
fresh  water  far  out  to  sea.     How  shall  you  prevent  sin  from  overwhelming 
you  and  destroying  you  ?    By  having  so  much  of  Christ's  life  within,  that 
you  are  ever  making  aggressive  movement  against  the  evil,  and  so  thrusting 
its  forces  from  you.     Zeal  for  Christ  will  leave  no  room  or  chance  for  the 
inflowing  of  temptation. 

And  then  there  is  the  external  problem, — we  must  conquer  the  world  with- 
out. There  is  sin  to  be  convicted,  and  sorrow  to  be  assuaged,  the  church  to 
be  comforted,  the  earth  to  be  subdued,  the  kingdom  to  be  given  to  Christ 

—  a  task  as  mighty,  for  hands  as  feeble,  as  ever  the  hands  of  Christ's  disciples 
were  in  the  first  days  of  the  church.     And  yet  they  "overcame  through  the 
blood  of  the  Lamb,"  and  so  may  we.     Christ  made  them  partakers  of  his 
zeal,  and  so  made  them  "more  than  conquerors." 

May  his  Holy  Spirit  communicate  to  you  this  zeal,  and  keep  the  fire  of 


586  ADDRESSES   TO   GRADUATING   CLASSES. 

love  and  loyalty  ever  burning  within  you.  Lay  yourselves  out  for  Christ ; 
bury  yourselves  in  his  work  ;  merge  your  interests  in  his  ;  speak,  live,  only 
for  him.  Before  you,  the  mountain  shall  become  a  plain.  At  your  word, 
dead  souls  shall  live.  Millennial  light  shall  begin  to  dawn  about  you.  The 
kingdom  of  God  shall  come.  It  will  make  little  difference  whether  your  eyes 
see  it  or  not,  if  only  with  your  dying  breath  you  can  say  :  "  The  zeal  of  thine 
house  hath  consumed  me."  For  there  is  another  zeal  than  yours  —  a  zeal 
that  can  accomplish  what  you  cannot.  Of  all  the  other  work  that  is  needed 
to  supplement  our  own  and  to  make  it  effective,  we  can  confidingly  and  exult- 
ingly  declare  that  "the  zeal  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts  will  perform  this."  For 
all  our  zeal,  like  the  zeal  of  our  Savior,  is  but  an  effect  and  manifestation  of 
that  infinite  zeal  of  the  divine  nature,  which  is  fulfilling  in  human  history 
the  eternal  decree  that  Christ  must  reign  until  all  enemies  are  put  beneath 
his  feet. 


INDEX 


INDEX. 


Abgarus,  on  the  picture  of  Christ  said 

to  have  been  presented  to, 203 

Ability,  present,  not  ground  of  sinner's 

accountability, 102 

Ability,  gracious,  consequences  of  re- 
garding  it  as  ground   of  sinner's 

guilt 102 

"  Absolute,"  Mr.  Spencer's  idea  of  chi- 
merical,      61 

in  what  sense  God  is, 51,74 

Accountability,  not  measured  by  pres- 
ent ability, 102 

Accumulation  of  property,  robbery  ac- 
cording to  Socialism, 452 

dangers  of,  according  to  some, 462 

Socialistic  proposals  of  its  limitation,  453 
the  intellectual  and  moral  prerequi- 
site of, 462 

Mill's  suggested  legal  limitations,....  462 

has  its  economical  limitations, 462,  463 

has  its  Christian  limitations, 463,  464 

must  be  subservient  to  the  principles 

of  religion  and  benevolence, 463,  464 

Achromatic  lenses,  illustration  from  the 

construction  of, 446 

Adam,  how  did  he  sin  though  possessed 

of  a  holy  disposition  ? 108 

difficulty  of  explaining  his  fall,..  108, 109 
had  the  power  of  contrary  choice, ...  108 

chose  according  to  motive, 109 

whence  the  motive  of  his  choice? 109 

his  being  deceived  presupposes  unbe- 
lief,  109 

the  theory  that  he  received  assisting 

not  supernatural  grace,  - 109 

his  apostasy  first  internal, 110 

his  apostasy  changed  the  nature, 110 

his  first  differed  from  his  subsequent 

sins, 110 

his  fall  cannot  be  explained  on  any 

present  theory  of  will, 108,110 

his  sin,  why  imputed  to  us, 224 

Adams,  Charles  F.,  his  educational  re- 
forms,  426 

ADAPTATION, 569-572 

Adaptation,  ministerial,  its  nature, 570 

its  sources, 570,  571 

its  results 571,572 

ADDRESSES  TO  SUCCESSIVE  GRADUAT- 
ING CLASSES, 544-586 

"Adequate"  cause  distinguished  from 
"efficient,"..  .    92 


Adultery,  its  punishment  under  Mosaic 

law, 437 

annuls  as  effectively  as  death  the  mar- 
riage relation, 488 

opinions  of  Roman  church  regard- 
ing,   438 

sole  valid  ground  of  divorce, 438 

its  theocratic  penalty  among   Jews 

during  Roman  domination, 438 

the  action  of  Christ  in  relation  to,  438.  439 
ought  to  be  subject  of  severe  legisla- 
tion,  439 

JSsop,  one  of  his  fables  referred  to, 466 

Africa,  progress  of  discovery  in,  illus- 
trative of  researches  into  man's  na- 
ture,   96,97 

Afrite,  and  king's  daughter,  illustra- 
tion from, 243 

Age,  present,  one  of  dogmatism, 557 

itsskeptical  aspect, 558,559 

Aiat  of  Koran, 146 

Albans,  Saint,  fable  of , 146 

Alchemy,  its  punishment  according  to 

Dante, 512 

Alexander,  Dr.  J.  W.,  on  Union  with 

Christ, 220 

Alfred,  King,  on  man's  goodness, 115 

Allegheny    and    Monongahela,    their 

junction  a  type  of  man's  nature,...  190 
Alps,  melting  of  snow  on,  an  illustra- 
tion from, 5 

Al-raschid,  see  Raschid, 

Alumni,  of  Rochester  Theological  Sem- 

inary,>ddress  to, 1-18 

meeting  of,  sentiments  suitable  to,..  1,  2 

Amphion,  the  preacher  an, 276 

Amsterdam,  its  pile-foundations  al- 
luded to, 3 

Anagogical  interpretation,  what? 505 

Anaxiinander,  his  one  postulate, 40 

Ancestral  experiences,  their  fundamen- 
tal value  according  to  Spencer, ...49,  50 
according  to  Spencer,  the  origin  of 

moral  obligation, 53 

Andaman    Islanders,    their    supposed 

atheism  considered, 78 

Angelo,  Michael,  his  fresco  of  last  judg- 
ment,  208 

his  universal  genius,-.. 550 

Anselm,  on  development  in  Genesis, ...    45 
"Antecedence,"    not    equivalent     to 
"causation,"...  .    33 


590 


INDEX. 


Anthropological,  or  moral,  argument 

for  the  existence  of  God, 83 

its  three  parts, 83,84 

itsdefects, 84 

its  value, 84 

holds  chief  place  among  related  argu- 
ments,    84 

Apollo,  proposed  interpretation  of 
double  legend  upon  his  temple  at 

Delphi,   4 

Apologia  Pro  Vita  SIM,  contains  a  con- 
fession of  Idealism, 7 

A  posteriori  arguments  for  the  exist- 
ence of  God,  their  value, 84,  85 

Apostles,  their  qualifications  included 
both  teaching  of  Christ  and  prin- 
cipally the  induement  of  the 

Spirit, 550 

A  priori  argument  for  divine  exist- 
ence, see  Ontological 

A  priori  reasoning,  Tait  on, 40,  41 

A  priori  principles  assumed  in  all  sys- 
tems of  knowledge, 41 

A  priori  reasoning,  its  vicious  use  by 
Spencer  and  the  Cosmic  philoso- 
phers,    41 

A  priori  truths,  at  the  foundation  of 

knowledge, 48 

part  of  the  original  furniture  of  rea- 
son,    48 

sense,  the  occasion  of  their  cognition,    48 

according  to  Plato, 48 

presupposed  in  all   experience  and 

reasoning, 48 

their  denial  destroys  all  philosophy 
and  opens  way  for  universal  skepti- 
cism,  48,49 

denied  by  extreme  Positivists, 49 

Spencer's  explanation  of  their  gen- 
esis,    49 

Spencer  assumes  their  existence  to 

destroy  their  validity 49 

Spencer's  treatment  of  them  unsatis- 
factory,   49,50 

Dr.  Carpenter  on,  50 

A  priori  judgments,  Kant  on, 60,  61 

Aquosity,  a  property  of  water, 34 

Arab  horse,  his  characteristics, 475 

Arabian    Nights,    illustrations    from, 

mountain  of  loadstone, 10 

Af rite  and  king's  daughter, 243 

enfranchised  genie, 463 

Architecture,  mediaeval,  its  origin, 600 

Aristotle,  his  influence  on  theology,. ..      4 

Luther's  opinion  of, 4 

the  parent  of  scholasticism, 4 

a  theistic  philosopher, 15 

on  an  evil  law  in  our  members, 101 

Arminian  view  of  original  depravity 

arises  from  false  view  of  will..  .101, 102 
Arthur,  Chester  A.,  varied  feelings  on 
his  attainment  of  the  Presidency, 
355,356 


Arthur,  Chester  A.,  an  excellent  oppor- 
tunity for  reform  afforded  him,  356,  35 

Artisans,  despised  by  ancient  philoso- 
phers,   447,448 

Arve  and  Rhone,  their  junction  a  sym- 
bol of  man's  moral  nature,.... 190 

Assassination  of  two  Presidents,  sum- 
mons the  nation  to  a  considerate 
standing-still, 347 

Association,  the  force  of  law  of,  illus- 
trated in  Crusades,... 484 

Associationalism,  as  an  explanation  of 
the  existence  of  moral  obligation, 
considered, 54 

ASSUMPTIONS,  UNCONSCIOUS,  or  COM- 
MUNION POLEMICS, 245-249 

Assumption,  that  the  practice  of  the 
church  may  modify  law  of  New 

Testament,  considered, 245,  246 

that  there  is  no  complete  and  binding 
system  of  church  organization  in 
the  New  Testament,  considered,  246,  247 
that  the  ordinances  are  purely  formal 

and  external,  considered, 247,  248 

that  the  principle  of  laissez  faire  will 
remove  error  and  secure  peace  and 
prosperity,  considered , 248 

Astronomy,  why  its  birth-place  in  the 
East, 473 

Atheism,  sporadic  cases  of,  not  incon- 
sistent with  a  universal  germinal 
knowledge  of  the  existence  of  God,  78 

Atom  of  matter,  what,  according  to 
Humist, 59 

Atomic  weights,  an  inference  from,...      ft 

Atoms,  "manufactured  articles", 44 

ATONEMENT,  NECESSITY  OF, 213-219 

Atonement,  sufferings  of,  demanded  by 

righteousness  of  God, 213 

demanded    by   the    relations   which 

Christ  assumed  to  our  race, 213-218 

required  by  Christ's  race-responsibil- 
ity to  the  law  of  God, 213-215 

willingly  rendered  by  Christ  because 
of  his  regard  to  the  vindication  of 

divine  righteousness, 215-216 

inevitable  because  of  Christ's  com- 
plete identification  '.with  a  sinful 

race, 216,217 

only  to  be  satisfactorily  explained  by 
the  doctrine  of  Christ's  actual  union 

with  our  race, 218,  219 

the  first  desire  of  the  awakened  con- 
science,    219 

Attila,  Kaulbach's  picture  of  his  battle 
with  the  Romans, 17 

Attributes,  divine,  their  relation  to  the 

essence  of  God, 189 

have  an  objective  existence, 189* 

defined, - 189 

have  an  active  and  passive  side, 189 

Auerbach,  his  stories  tinged  with  mate- 
rialism,  - 31 


INDEX. 


591 


Augustine  and  Calvin,  their  respective 
methods  of  treating1  divine  truths,.  4 

Augustine,  a  Platonist, 4 

perceived  the  principle  of  develop- 
ment in  the  Mosaic  account  of  cre- 
ation,..   46 

his  view  of  human  liberty, 114 

on  adding  to  Original  Sin  through 

Free  Will,... 121 

opposes  pilgrimages, 485 

on  humility, I 

Aurora  Borealis,  bad  light  to  grow  po- 
tatoes by,  570 

Australian  savages,  condition  of  women 

among, 411 

Automatic  theory  of  universe, 27 

Goldwin  Smith  on, 27,28 

its  conclusion  of  despair  in  the  words 

of  Tennyson, 

Avatar,  a  temporary  incarnation, 209 

Averages,  statistical,  Buckle's  and  Dra- 
per's inferences  from, 23 

the  legitimate  inference  from, 24 

James  Martineau  on, 2! 

Bacon,  Roger,  not  Francis,  author  of 

the  Baconian  philosophy, 40 

Baconian  philosophy,  its  origin, 40 

its  method, 40 

a  recoil  from  Greek  and  Scholastic 

philosophies, 40 

its  fundamental  organon  violated  by 

philosophy  of  evolution, 40 

Bagehot,  on  a  statue  to  the  first  sower,.  462 

Bain,  Alexander,  a  Positivist, 8 

his  materialism, 31 

on  thinking  co-existing  with  unbrok- 
en physical  sequences, 46 

aHumist, 59 

Bancroft  on  the  practical  influence  of 
the  speculations  of  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards,   5 

Baptism,  a  usual  metaphor  to  express 
the  rush  of  successive  troubles, ....  229 

a  significant  symbol, 239 

imports  purification  through  death,..  239 
a  picture  of  the  substance  of  Christi- 
anity,   240 

associated  with  Lord's  Supper,... 240,  241 
anything  which  affects  its  form  as  a 

symbol  affects  truth  symbolized,..  240 
and  Supper  are  as  the  twins  of  Hip- 
pocrates,  240 

BAPTISM  OF  JESUS, 226-237 

Baptism  of  Jesus,  throws  light  on  that 

of  the  believer, 226 

its  place  in  his  life, 226,  227 

a  self -consecration, 227 

a  symbol  of  his  death, 227 

a  proof  of  his  identification  with  hu- 
manity,   230 

foreshadowed  his  resurrection, 231 

the  occasion  of  a  manifestation  of  the 
Trinity, ..232 


Baptism  of  Jesus,  the  descent  of  the 

Spirit  at,  what  it  implied 232 

exhibited  the  desert  of  sin,.. 232,  233 

exhibited  a  picture  of  deliverance,...  233 
exhibited  the  method  of  personal  sal- 
vation,   234 

is  an  example  of  public  confession,..  235 
Baptists,  have  truth  of  Baptism  com- 
mitted to  their  custody, 241 

are  bound  to  be  faithful  to  their  trust,  242 
believe  that  an  adequate  model  of 
church   organization    is   found    in 

New  Testament, 246 

why  they  hold  to  Baptism, 247 

why  they  contend  for  the  order  of  the 

ordinances, 247 

have  increased  because  of  faithful- 
ness to  convictions, 248 

how  they  may  expect  future  growth,  248 
purity  their  primary  concern,  not 

peace, 249 

theirs,  the  only  regularly  constituted 

church, 249 

Baptists,  German,  their  origin  and  pro- 
gress  243 

their  need  of  theological  schools,....  300 
Barrett,    Elizabeth,   her    marriage  to 

Browning, 526 

her  death, 526 

Bastian,  his  theory  of  spontaneous  gen- 
eration,      48 

Bastiat,  his  contribution  to  Political  Sci- 
ence,   448 

on  relation  of  Political  Economy  and 

Morals, 458 

Bestiality,  sin  of,  according  to  Dante, 

511,512 

Beatitudes,  absence  of  warlike  virtues 

from. 415 

Beatrice,  Portinari,  her  influence  upon 

Dante, 502,503 

her  early  death, 502 

the  Divine  Comedy,  her  monument,.  503 
Dante's  guide  through  Paradise,. 505,  519 
what  she  represents  in  the  Divine 

Comedy, 607 

the  culmination  of  her  lovelinessand  of 

Dante's  love  for,  in  highest  heaven.  520 
Beauty,  knowledge  and  feeling  com- 
bined in  its  cognition, 124 

Bedouin  robbers, 477 

skirmish  with, 480 

Bee,  its  unconscious  intelligence, 26 

Beecher,  H.W.,  on  Eternal  Punishment,  196 
Being,    Great,"    title    under    which 
Comte  proposed  to  worship  "Col- 
lective Humanity", 13 

Belief  in  God,  necessary  to  morals, 56 

aremarkable  fact, 76 

Beliefs,  primitive,  an  original  endow- 
ment of  mind, 9, 10 

come  into  activity  on  occasion  of  ex- 
ternal phenomena, 10 


592 


INDEX. 


Beliefs,  primitive,  are  objects  of  knowl- 
edge,    10 

have  validity  equal  to  facts  of  sense,    10 
Beliefs,   may  be    held  though  unex- 
pressed, unf ormulated,  or  even  for- 
mally denied, 76 

may  be  undeveloped, 77 

Berkeley,  Bishop,  sought  to  correct  the 
materialistic  tendencies  of  the  Lock- 
ian  philosophy, 58 

asserted  the  only  evidence  of  matter 
to  be  idea, 58 

asserted  that  sensations  were  the  di- 
rect objects  of  knowledge, 58 

declared  God  to  be  the  direct  cause  of 
sensations, 58 

his  theory  consistent  with  belief  in 
special  di  vine  revelation 59 

his  fundamental  principle  only  fur- 
ther applied  by  Hume, 59 

held  to  spirit  because  directly  known 
by  ourselves, 59 

his  occasional  approaches  to  Humism,    59 

his  definition  of  soul, 59 

his  definition  of  mind, 59 

responsible  for  our  present  Materia- 
listic Idealism, 59 

Sydney  Smith's  witticism  upon, 59 

declares  things  are  thoughts, 61 

a  non-egoistical  idealist, 62 

his  early  confusion  concerning  idea  as 
objectand  act, 63 

his  later  conception  of  idea  as  object, 
an  archetype  in  the  divine  mind,..  63 

the  outer  world  was  to  him  real  and 
permanent  because  an  expression  of 
the  divine  mind, 63 

to  him,  the  non-ego  is  God, 63 

his  theory  has  a  radical  affinity  with 
Realism, 63 

his  theory  according  to  Sir  William 
Hamilton, 63,  64 

did  not  regard  divine  archetypes  as 
"things  in  themselves,"- 72 

his  method  of  securing  unity  in  ex- 
ternal world, 166 

influenced  Jonathan  Edwards, 168 

Berkeleian  Idealism,  its  influence  on 

John  H.  Newman 7 

Bethlehem  visited, 481 

Bethune  on  Political  Economy  as  next 

to  the  Gospel, 443 

Beivusstsein— a  "  be-knowing  ", 80 

Beyrout.  description  of, 474 

Bible,  "word  made  flesh," 153 

to  be  interpreted  as  an  organic  whole,  154 

its  frequent  presentations  of  mercy 
and  justice  combined, 391 

some  of  its  requirements  temporary,  402 

its  principles  still  applicable  to  these 

days, 408 

Bicarbonate  of  soda,  a  child's  questions 
concerning, 425,  426 


Biology,  a  branch  of  physiology  accord- 
ing to  Positivism, 13 

"  Blameless,"  as  applied  to  New  Testa- 
ment bishop,  its  meaning, 440,  441 

Blasphemy,  its  future  punishment  ac- 
cording to  Dante, f)12 

"  Body,"  as  apprehended  by  the  intelli- 
gence of  the  common  people, 67 

Boscovitch,  his  conception  of  matter,.    43 

Bowne,  a  Hegelian, 61 

Bramante,  architect  of   St.  Peter's  at 

Rome, 242 

Brassey ,  advocates  the  cooperative  sys- 
tem of  employment, 457 

Braun,  the  two  principal  books  studied 

in  his  Gymnasium, 423 

Brethren,    Plymouth,    their    view   of 

church-organizations, 246 

Briggs's  Colliery,  on  the   cooperative 

plan, 455 

Brown,  Tom,  his  return  to  Rugby  re- 
ferred to, 1 

Brown,  Sir  Thomas,  on  futility  of  seek- 
ing preservation  beneath  the  moon,  473 
Browning,  Robert,  "subtlest  assertor 

of  the  soul  in  song," 36 

his  statement,  "mind  is  not  matter, 

nor  from  matter,  but  above, ". 36 

"POETRY  AND"... 525-543 

his  portrait  by  Watts, 526 

a  sketch  of  his  life, 526 

his  acquaintance  with  Italy, 526 

marries  Elizabeth  Barrett, 526 

loses  his  wife, 526 

a  prolific  writer, 526 

Pauline,  his  first  printed  poem, 526 

Paracelsus,  his  first  tragedy, 526 

the  tragedy  of  Strafford  a  failure  on 

the  stage, 526 

never  popular, 526 

severely  criticized, 526 

is  he  a  great  poet? 526 

hides  his  own  personality, 527 

deals  with  the  non-ego, 527 

apoetof  man, 528 

contrasted  with  Wordsworth, 528 

treats  of  life,.. 528 

poet  of  thoughts  and  not  events, 528 

his  little  tinge  of  the  objective  or 

epic. 528 

teaches  that  "  as  a  man  thinketh  so  he 

is," 528 

his  poetry  is  not  lyric,  but  dramatic, 

528,  529 

his  dramatic  power  seen  in  the  poems 

Spanish  Cloister  and  Confessions, 529 

he  assists  his  reader  to  self-revelation,  529 

is  a  creative  genius,.-. 529 

The  Ring  and  the  Book  his  greatest 

work, 529,531 

its  plot  narrated, 530 

the  impression  it  leaves  on  the  mind 
of  the  student, ...  ...  530,  531 


INDEX. 


593 


Browning,  Robert,  to  what  extent  does 
he  possess  the  faculty  of  idealiza- 
tion, discussed, .531-536 

to  him  all  men  are  ideal  things, 532 

recognizes  human  conscience,  and 
will,. 533 

in  his  Lcinn  the  victim  triumphs  over 
Jove --- 533 

in  his  l'ij>i>n  /'<(»•<>•  the  peasant  girl's 
song  awakens  conscience, 533 

a  believer  in  a  righteous  and  loving 
Personal  God, 534 

opposes  anthropomorphism, 534 

in  his  Cnlihan  <>n  Setebos  denounces 
superstition,  534 

in  the  Vinlnijw  dechin-s  his  faith  in 
an  immanent  Deity,.. 534 

in  Saul  declares  "all's  Love  yet  all's 
Law." 534 

ma  ki  -s  I  ncarnat  ion  the  highest  revela- 
tion,  534 

the  religious  topics  of  which  he  treats 
in  "7'Yn*-/ifif//'x/-'.f)M-»Y.sfI 534 

has  a  true  idea  of  inspiration, 534,  535 

his  poem  of  Saul  the  best  for  those 
who  are  beginning  to  study  him, ...  534 

the  poem  Saul,  its  subject, 535 

his  teaching  in  his  Death  in  tin-  Des- 
ert,    535 

he,  rather  than  Tennyson,  is  the  relig- 
ious poet  of  the  century, 535 

the  religious  philosopher  .of  our 
times, 535 

Limdor's  .-stimate  of, 535,  636 

indulges  at  times  in  apparent  lev- 
ity,  536 

sometimes  apparently  irreverent, 536 

the  motto  he  adopts  for  Fcrixlitah'* 
/•Vi/mY.s  536 

treats  freely  of  man's  physical  in- 
stincts,  536 

is  never  ascetic, 536 

nt-vcr  deifies  body, 536 

has  not  a  tinge  of  sentimentality,  536,  537 

has  a  protecting  sense  of  the  ludi- 
crous,   537 

in  />/.-.•  AIH IT  \'i*inn  teaches  that  true 
love  is  subject  to  judgment  and  con- 
science,   537 

his  books  exercise  a  healthful,  bra- 
cing inlluence  537 

least  great  as  a  literary  artist, 537 

is  often  obscure,.. 538 

the  arrangement  of  his  material  often 
perplexing, 538 

Sordi-lln  often  regarded  as  a  mediaeval 
literary  morass, 538 

his  defense  of  his  fragmentary  meth- 
od of  communicating  his  facts, 538 

he  makes  his  reader  a  judge,  poet, 
creator, 539 

his  method  of  telling  his  story  illus- 
trated in  The  Ring  and  the  Book,...  539 
38 


Browning,  Robert,  his   obscurity   be- 
comes less  troublesome  and  more 

attractive  on  familiarity, 539 

there  are  passages  which  perhaps  the 

poet  cannot  understand, 539 

his  translation  of  Agamemnon  face- 
tiously said  to  be  comprehensible  by 

reference  to  the  original, .539,  540 

exhibits  occasional  lack  of  judgment 
as  to  what  is  valuable   and  what 

merely  curious, 540 

influence  of  criticism  of  Caroline  Fox 

upon, 540 

is  often   defective    in    constructive 

power  to  make  most  of  his  matter,  540 
examples  of  his  obscure  and  of  his 

easily  intelligible  verse, 540 

fails  in  rhythmical  and  musical  ex- 
pression,   541 

Mrs.   Browning   superior   to  him  in 

melodious  composition 541 

aims  not  to  be  an  emotional  poet, 541 

his  brusque  style  accounted  for, 541 

a  pomi  illustrating  hisabrupt  turns,.  511 
plays  a  sort  of  literary  "Snap  the 

Whip"  with  his  readers,.... 51,  542 

in  him  the  philosopher  overtops  the 

poet, 542 

his  material  too  much  for  him, 542 

gives  us  sometimes  too  little  ortolan,  542 
cannot  treat  him  with  supercilious- 
ness,   542 

his  defects  should  not  blind  to   his 

virtues, 543 

the  fullest  of  learning  and  insight  of 

the  poets  of  the  century, 543 

Btichner,  a  mechanical  philosopher, 31 

a  modern  Lucretius, 39 

Buckland,  Rabbi  Joseph  Wales,  his  par- 
entage and  early  life,  337,338 

his  name  "  Rabbi,"  why  given  and  its 

influence, 338 

his  mother, 338 

his  conversion, 338 

enters  Union  College,  New  York, 338 

his  taste  for  natural  science, 338,  339 

Dr.  W.  R.  Williams'8  influence  upon 

him, 339 

becomes  pastor  at  Sing  Sing, 339 

becomes  member  of  Historical  Soci- 
ety of  New  York, 339 

becomes    Professor    of    History    at 

Rochester, 339 

his  prof essioual  life, 339-342 

hisdeath,... 342 

his  work  not  yet  done, 342,  343 

Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  his  statistical 

averages, 23 

the  materialistic  spirit  of  his  histor- 
ical researches,  31 

Buddhism,  its  missionary  character  ac- 
counted for, 388 

the  nature  of  its  morality, 388 


594 


INDEX. 


Bunker  Hill,  Battle  of,  referred  to, 26J 

Bunyan,  his  "man  with  the  muck-rake" 

alluded  to, £ 

Burning  of  one's  hand,  facts  physical 

and  metaphysical  involved  in, 21 

Burke,  his  oratory  characterized  by 


Fox, 


vii 

Bushnell,  Horace,  a  progenitor  of  the 

New  Theology, ...  165 

identifies   divine    righteousness   and 

benevolence, 165 

his  theory  of  atonement  contains  a 

truth, 165 

Business,  daily,  a  trusteeship  for  Christ,  463 
Butler,  Bishop  Joseph,  how  he  has  con- 
tributed to  our  conception  of  the 

ethical  nature  of  God, 5, 195 

did  not  sufficiently  recognize  divine 

immanence, 167 

Byron,  Lord,  a  quotation  from  applied 

to  Positivist's  universe, 13 

his  genius, 527 

Caesarea,  its  ruins, 477 

Caird,  a  Hegelian, 61 

Cairo,... 470,  471 

night  entrance  into, 474 

Calderwood,  denies  the  possibility  of 

an  act  of  pure  will, 92,122 

Call  to  ministry,  its  dignity, 270 

not  universal, 270,  271 

commoner  than  supposed, 271 

its  nature, 271,272 

Calling,  a  useful,  always  respectable...  449 
Calvin  and  Augustine,  their  works  com- 
pared,        4 

Calvin,  his  assertion  of  free-will, 91 

his  theory  of   human    liberty  com- 
pared with  that  of  Edwards, 114 

on  Adam's  free-will, 121 

asserted  divine  immanence, 167 

CALVINISM,  MODIFIED, .114-128 

Campaniles,  their  erection  and  uses,  ...  499 

Campbell's  theory  of  Atonement, 216 

"  Cannot "  often  equal  to  "  will  not," . . .  124 
Capital,  moneyed,  of  America,  its  ratio 

to  the  annual  production, 447 

Capital,  dreaded  by  laborer, 452 

may  secure  a  tyrannical  monopoly  of 

production, 452 

wrong    thinking    about   it    even   in 

America,. 452 

what  it  is, 453 

deserves  compensation, 453 

its  compulsory  distribution  a  foolish 


Capital,  a  fund  that  employs  labor, 4f,^ 

a  friend  of  labor, 462,  464 

to  exist  must  be  in  constant  circula- 
tion,   462 

without  it  barbarism  would   super- 
vene.       4f,2 

Capital  and  labor,  relations  between, 
should  be  intelligently  discussed,..  452 

are  interdependent,.. 452 

should  be  no  hostility  between, 455 

both  have  duties, 455 

cooperation  of  both,  illustrations  of,  455 
their  relations  will  yet  be  settled  on  a 

lasting  basis,... 457 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  on  Dante, 523 

his  portrait  by  Watts, 525 

Carpenter,  Dr.,  on  one's  existence  be- 
ing a  matter  of  consciousness, 50 

Cataclysms  in  geologic  history, 141 

Cataract,  parable  of  man  afflicted  with,    89 
Cato  of  Utica,  his  place  in  future  world 

according  to  Dante,. 515 

Causal  judgment,  into  what  resolved  by 

Comte, 1] 

Causality,  Hickok's  illustration  of, 10 

Causation ,  necessary  to  la w, 11 

if  its  intuition  is  disproved  all  other 

intuitions  also  perish, .    11 

origin  of  the  idea  of, 22 

not  given  by  mere  succession  of 

events, 22 

Cause,  according  to  Cornte, 10 

denned, 33 

more  than  antecedence, 33 

an  a  priori  truth, 48 

of  the  universe,  every  religion  de- 
mands personality  in, 53 

Causes  final,  secure  confidence  in  the 

stability  of  nature, 141 

account  for  needed  deviations  from 

usual  order, 141 

Causes,  the  various  philosophical, u2 

efficient  rest  on  final, 141 

Cecil,  on    how  to    preach    the  whole 

truth, 115 

Ceremonial  privilege  requires  ceremon- 
ial qualification, 247 

Certainty  of  human  actions  determined 

by  character, 100 

Chalmers,  Thomas,  his  scientific  interest 

in  Theology  deepened  into  practical,      2 
on  Political  Economy  as  related   to 

Moral  Philosophy  and  Theology, ....  443 
his  experience  as  a  minister, 550,551 


scheme, 453  i  Character,  determines  motive, 


must  be  consumed  in  paying  wages, . .  453 

must  be  renewed  by  labor, 454 

not  the  natural  end  of  labor, 454 

has  duties, 455 

its  increase  should  not  be  dreaded,...  456 

acquires  dignity  from  its  origin, 462 

acquires  dignity  from  use, 462 


the  ground  of  divine  foreknowledge, 

100,101 

permanence  of,  depends  on  will, 106 

and  individual  choices  not  necessarily 

connected, 120 

does  not  absolutely  bind, 121 

defined, 157 


is  a  large  set  of  tools, 462  I  Charlemagne,  his  aim,. 


-497,  498 


IXDEX. 


595 


Chastisement  in  anger,"  why  depre- 
cated by  Psalmist? 195 

Chastisement,  not  penalty,  the  experi- 
ence of  the  Christian, 518 

Chemistry,   present  elements  of,  sup- 
posed  to   be  modifications  of  one 

common  ultimate  substance, 6 

Cheops,  pyramid  of, 472 

CHERUBIM,  NATURE  AND  PURPOSE,  391-399 
Cherubim,  Edenic,  a  symbol  of  mercy,    :i'.r: 

various  meanings  assigned  to, 391 

Milton's  view  of, 392 

common  impression  regarding, 392 

etymology  of  title  obscure, 393 

references  to  in  Scripture, 393 

occur  in  Ezekiel, 393 

occur  in  Revelation, 893 

are  symbols  of  redeemed  humanity,..  394 

are  not  personal  existences, 394 

emblems  of  human  nature  possessed 

of  its  original  perfections, 395 

not  symbols  of  nature, 395 

emblems  of  human  nature  spiritual- 

i/ed  and  sanctified, 396 

represent  a  humanity  abounding  in 

spiritual  life, ....396,397 

emblems  of  human    nature    as    the 

dwelling-place  of  (iod, 397 

the  Kdenic,  an  assurance  to  the  early 
races  that  1 'a  radise  was  still  held  for 

man, 898 

the  Edenie,  an  assurance-  that  Para- 
dise was  i.nly  recoverable  by  a 
return  to  holiness  and  divine  com- 
munion,    398 

the  Edenic,  a  promise  that  Paradise 
regained  should  be  more  glorious 

than  I 'a  radise  lost, 398 

their  varying  relations,  lessons  from, 


not  illustrations  of  our  future  bodies,  399 
a  revelation  of  spiritual  qualities  yet 

to  be  the  possession  of  the  redeemed,  399 
Chicago,  a  scene  in,  at  opening  of  civil 

war, 199,200 

Chivalry,  a  fruit  of  the  Crusades, 498 

"Choice,  power  of  contrary,"  phrase  ex- 
amined,....  97,98 

between  motives,  not  without  mo- 
tives,  122 

Choices  and   fundamental  disposition 

not  necessarily  connected, 120 

Christ,  not  admitted  into  Comte's  pan- 
theon,   14 

his  existence  inexplicable  on  the  ev- 
olution theory 46 

the  restorer  of  our  prospects  of  end- 
less development, 162 

the  extra- temporal,  of  New  Theology, 

172-174 

the  supra-historic,  his  influence  on 

heathen, 176 

im  plicit  faith  in,  its  possibility, 177 


Christ,  implicit  rejection  of,  its  possi- 
bility,   177 

may  be  accepted  or  rejected  without 
a  knowledge  of  his  historical  man- 
ifestation,   177 

union  with, 178 

CHRIST,  THE  Two  NATURES  OF,...  201-212 
Christ,  study  of  his  person  a  science,. ..  201 

Son  of  man,... 201 

Son  of  God, 201 

a  true  man, 201 

docetic  view  unscriptural, 201 

had  a  human  body, 201 

had  a  human  mind, 201 

was  subject  to  laws  of  human  devel- 
opment,   201 

tempted  because  of  self-assumed  lim- 
itations,   201 

ignorant  of  the  day  of  the  end, 201 

in  his  twelfth  year  became  conscious 

of  his  mission, 202,226 

the  ideal  man, 202 

his  physical  form, x'n:.',  2(« 

possessed  orator's  mien, 203 

usually  plain,  but  sometimes  trans- 
figured,   203 

his  temperament, 203 

Chaucer's  description  of, 203 

combined  excellences  of  both  sexes,. .  204 
possessed  excellences  of  greatest  and 

best  men 204 

•A  life--riviiur  man, 204 

not  explicable  by  natural  antecedent  s,  j.'(if> 

no  invent  ion  of  men, 205 

his  humanity  came  from  God, 205 

his  humanity  germinal, 205 

conscious  of  divine  Sonship, 206 

testimonies  to  his  divinity, 206 

Christian  consciousness  attests  his  di- 
vinity,   206 

history  attests  his  divinity, 206 

his  death  has  revolutionized  history,.  207 

the  centre  of  history, 207 

modern  world  outgrowth  of  princi- 
ples introduced  by  him, 207 

we  need  his  divinity, 208 

John  of  Damascus  on  his  sufferings  as 

related  to  his  divinity, 209 

because  divine,  suffered  infinitely, . . .  209 
his  humanity  and  deity  forever  unit- 
ed,   209 

all  that  took  place  in  him  shall  take 

place  in  us, 209 

has  our  whole  humanity  in  heaven,.  209- 
should   be  recognized   in    both    na- 
tures,  210 

immediate  recognition  of  him,  its  im- 
portance,   211 

the  comforter  in  death, 212 

his  human  nature  purged  of  deprav- 
ity in  womb  of  Virgin, 214 

his  relation  to  race  more  than  fed- 
eral headship, 215 


596 


INDEX. 


Christ,  not   merely  constructive,  but 

natural  heir  of  race, 215 

the  great  Penitent, 216 

may  be  banished  to  remotest  room  of 
believer's  heart  but  cannot  be  ex- 
pelled,   222 

the  first  thirty  years  of  his  life, . . .  .226,  227 
understood,  from  beginning:   of    his 
public  ministry,  its  meaning   and 

end, 229 

the  agent  of  the  out-going  activity  of 

the  Godhead, 2bl 

geographical  area  of  his  personal  min- 
istry  475 

advantages  of  our  present  doubt  as 
to  the  places  of  the  great  events  of 

his  life, -- 479 

to  secure  union  with  a  living,  per- 
sonal, the  aim  of  the  Christian  min- 
istry,   545 

presence  of,  in  a  minister,  the  source 

of  healthful  attraction, 545 

the  perfect  flower  and  embodiment  of 

humanity, 549,551 

resurrection  of,  type  of  regeneration,  553 
for  three  years  a  theological  teacher,  553 
CHRISTIAN  TRUTH  AND  ITS  KEEPERS, 

238-244 

Christianity  threatened  by  Positivism,.      8 

the  evidence  that  it  is  from  God, 129 

its  internal  characteristics  as  evi- 
dence,   129 

its  external  accompaniments  as  evi- 
dence,  -. 129 

present  tendency  to  lay  special  stress 

on  internal  evidence,.- 129 

its  internal  evidence  supplementary,  129 
what  its  internal  evidence  must  cover,  129 
disadvantages  of  the  method  of  indi- 
vidual internal  certification  of  it,..  130 
its  internal  and  external  evidences  in- 
terwoven,   131 

supernatural  facts  its  very  core, 131 

miracles  not  its  burden  but  support,.  132 

divinely  radical, 374 

works  from  below  upwards, 374 

estimates  "  service  "  by  sacrifice, 374 

missions  a  great  argument  for, 388 

a  great  argument  for  missions, 388,  389 

missions  its  distinctive  mark, 388 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  POLITICAL  ECON- 
OMY,  * 443-460 

Christianity,  concrete  as  well  as   ab- 
stract,  445 

is  salvation  tor  the  body  and  society,  445 

accords  with  natural  law, 445 

isareligion  of  nature, 445 

its  accordance  with  laws  of  nature  a 

proof  of  its  divinity,... 445 

the  great  assistant  of  the  Political 

Economist, 445 

has  anticipated  the  discoveries  of  Po- 
litical Economy, ..445 


Christianity,  asserts  a  natural  inequal- 
ity  of    gifts   and  stations   among 

men,  446 

rejected  by  many  working  men  be- 
cause it  opposes  a  false  Social 

Science, 446 

hope  of  mankind, 459 

and  its  resulting  ameliorative  sci- 
ences, connected  as  parent  stem  of 
banyan-tree  with  succeeding  stem*, 

-- -- 459,460 

its  social  side, 461 

recognizes  wealth, 461 

not  passivity, 550 

Christliebon  reason, 419 

Christo  Deo  OmnipotenU,  as  a  motto, 585 

"  Christology  "  a  modern  coinage, 201 

Church,  an  organism, 178 

its  organization  not  founded  on  hu- 
man wisdom, 246 

is  notgerminal, 246 

does  not  rest  on  expediency, 246 

is  of  permanent  obligation, 246 

its  system  of  organization  laid  down 

in  New  Testament, 247 

its  various  parts  alluded  to  in  New 

Testament, 247 

polity,  democratic  form  of,  good  for 

good  people, 564 

Cicero  on  )u»iexiiim  and  utilc, 55 

Cities,  tendency  of  population  to,. 461 

"City  which  hath  foundations"  alone 

can  satisfy, 483 

Classification,    fundamental    idea    of, 
found  in  unity  of  self-conscious- 


Coal,  presence  of  coniferce  in,  illustra- 
tion from, 451 

Cognition,  according  to  Spencer,  recog- 
nition,  49 

Cognitions,  primitive,  are  verities, 21 

testified  to  by  unintentional  acknowl- 
edgments of  their  deniers, 22 

Coleridge,  influence  of  his  writings, 5 

College  and  Seminary,  how  differen- 
tiated,  284 

College,  Christian,  what ? 320 

should  have  actively  Christian  lead- 
ers,  320 

should  give  Christian  Instruction, 320 

its  discipline  should  be  Christian,. ...  321 
its   instruction  should  be  pervaded 

with  a  Christian  spirit, 321 

should  possess  high  moral  standards,  321 
should  aim  to  make  its  students  Chris- 
tians,.  321 

COLLEGES,  OUR,   ARE    THEY    CHRIS- 
TIAN?   319-323 

Colleges,  the  true  denominational,  were 

intended  to  be  Christian, 320 

many  have  ceased  to  be  Christian,  —  322 

Collocation,  useful,  present  in  universe,    82 

its  existence  assumed  by  Science, 82 


INDEX. 


59? 


Comedy,  The  Divine, 501-524 

some  of  its  translators  and  interpret- 
ers,  - ---  501 

internal  evidence  of  its  date, 504 

its  introduction, - 504,  515 

lias,  according-   to   its   author,  four 

meaninsrs, 505 

its  personal  element, - 505,  506 

a  mediaeval  Pilgrim's  Progress, 506 

unfolds  the  author's  idea  of  God's  re- 
lations to  humanity, 506 

its  interpretation  according  to  Miss 

Rossetti, 506 

has  a  political  meaning, 506,  507 

its  spiritual  meaning  its  most  impor- 
tant,  507 

its    influence    on    Italian    religious 

thought, 507 

its  spiritual  meaning  unfolded, 507,  508 

Tin-  first  and  greatest  Christian  poem,  508 

its  cosmology, 508,  509 

title  "Comedy"  why  given? 509 

has  influenced  the  Italian  language, 

509,510 

its  verse, 510 

its  (icsct -iption  of  the  Ante-Hell, 510 

its  description  ot  Hell  proper, .'iin  :>|:; 

its  description  of  Limbo 510,  511 

it>  description  of  the  various  punish- 
ments assigned  to  delinquents,. .M  I.  ">i:{ 

its  description  of  his, 512 

its  description  of  the  .Hidecca, 512 

its  description  of  Satan. 

the  poem  ot  ••.  nscfenoe,      513 

contains  apt  lessons  for  the  present 

times, 514 

its  description  of  Purgatory, ."d.">  ~>I* 

its  Ante-Purgatory, ...615,  ">1f> 

Purgatory  proper, 516,  518 

Mount  of  Penitence.. 516,  517 

is  the  Christian  doctrine  of  sanctiflca- 

tioniu  verse, 517 

its  Paradise,      519-521 

Heat  i  ice  acts  as  guide,.. 517,519 

tiie  series  of  the  Heavens, 519,  520 

its  I'rh mini  .\Tnhil>; 520 

its  "Hose  of  the  Blessed," 520 

describes  the  poet's  celestial  love  for 

the  beatified  Beatrice, 520 

each  of  its  three  divisions  ends  with 

the  same  word, 521 

its  intense  realism,... 523 

why  an  imperishable  work  of  gen- 
ius,   524 

Common-sense,  Berkeley  appeals  to  it 

for  proof  of  existence  of  ego, 59 

Berkeley  appeals  to  it  against  sub- 
stance,   59,  63 

Communion,     Poado-baptist     deprives 
Baptist  of  privilege  of  enjoying  it 

with  him, 249 

Communists  of  Paris,  their  theory  as  to 
rent  and  interest, ...  . .  452 


Comte,  Auguste,  coryphaeus  of  Nes- 
cience,  9 

his  principal  errors, 9 

his  postulate  that  we  know  nothing 

but  matter,  examined, 9 

his  scythe  cuts  off  his  own  legs, 9 

brief  review  of  his  system, 9- 

his  classification  masterly, 9 

his  fundamental  principles  opposed  to 

sound  psychology, 9 

his  position  on  causation, .10,11 

has  no  place  for  Inductive  Logic, 11 

hisanalysisof  causal  judgment, 11 

confounds  necessary  with  customary,    11 
in    admitting    tendency    of     things 
toward   a  true  philosophy,  admits 

design, 12 

his  view  of  Theology  and  Metaphysics,    13 

his  new  religion 13,14,77 

he  denies  law,  in  denying  cause, 16 

his  inconsistency  as  to  consciousness,    22 
'Conceive,'  of  God,  impossible  accord- 
ing to  Spencer, 50- 

the  sense  in  which  it  is  essential  to 

knowledge, 50- 

the  sense  in  which  it  is  an  accident  of 

knowledge, 50 

Concupiscence,  why  excluded  by  Rom- 
anists from  list  of  sins, 102 

Condillae,  influence  of  his  writings, 7 

Epicurean, 33 

owes  his  sensational   philosophy  to 

Locke, 7,  58- 

Congratulations  to  various  graduating 
classes  on  finishing  their  theological 

« •<  1  ucation  at  Seminary*  -  - 

:. 1 1,  51-i.  :•  i*,  f  :>:,',  554,  557, 

560,  562,  563,  567,  5»i'.»,  572,  575,  578,  580,  585 
Conscience,  its  supremacy  demonstra- 
ted by  Butler, & 

what,  according  to  Spencer, 55 

its  true  nature, 55 

no  tribe  found  destitute  of, 78- 

an  evidence  for  God, 84 

Consciousness,  involves  in  one  duality 

two  different  things, 6 

equally  a  source  of  knowledge  with 

observation, 20 

Comte's  appeal  to, 22 

is  it  a  mode  of  force? 24 

never  transformed  into  physical  or 

nervous  force,. 46 

Spencer  upon, 50- 

of  God,  the  idealistic  formula  criti- 
cized,.  70- 

in  psychology,  what? 171 

in  theology,  what  ? 171 

the  "  ethico-religious," 171 

Christian,  the  doctrine  of,  defined  and 

discussed, 170-172 

Consciousness,  self-,  its  witness  to  a  per- 
manent something  underneath  and 
presupposed  by  all  ideas, -  »W> 


598 


INDEX. 


Conservation  of  force,  not  highest  law 

of  science, 26 

Constantine    builds    church    of   Holy 

Sepulchre, 485 

Constantinople,    repulse    of    Moslems 

from, 485 

its  influence  on  Crusaders 500 

Consumers,  all  are, 464 

Consumption,  its  present  rate, 464 

of  luxuries,  not  wrong, 464 

Conversion,  a  new  choice  of  motive,...  121 

God's  work  and  man's  work  in, 128 

Convicted  sinner,  only  finds  peace  when 
he  sees  reparation  for  sin  in   the 

atonement, - 219 

Cook,  Professor,  on  original  constitu- 
tion of  chemical  elements, 43 

Cooperation  of  divine  and  human  in  act 

of  man, - 150 

Cooperation,  an  important  factor  in  re- 
sistance to  capital, 45B 

Cooperative  establishments,  in  Paris,..  455 

in  England, . . - 455 

their  strength  and  weakness, 455 

best  form  of, 455,  456 

Corinthians,  Second,  3 :  6, 250 

5:  23  explained,... 218 

Corinthian  women,  the  perpetuity  of 

the  commands  to, 402 

Cosmological  argument  for  existence  of 

God,  its  exact  scope, 81 

its  difficulty  in  minor  premise, 81 

Hume's  objection  to, 81 

its  difficulty  as  to  character  of  cause,    81 

its  value  stated, 81 

Cosmos,  an  idea  impossible  to  Positiv- 

ist, - 71 

COUNCILS    OF    ORDINATION  :    THEIR 

POWERS  AND  DUTIES, 259-268 

Councils  of  ordination,  see  Ordination. 

COURAGE,  PASSIVE  AND  ACTIVE, 554-557 

Courage,  its  passive  aspect,  viroufvri, 555 

its  active  aspect,  Trapprjo-t'a, 555 

Covenanter,  the  Scotch,  of  seventeenth 
century  compared  with  Anglican  of 

same  time, 117 

Cranmer,  an  example, 279 

Creatianism,  nominalistic, 165 

Creation,  theory  of,  more  credible  than 

that  of  chance  development, 44 

absolute,  idea  of,  found  among  He- 
brews only, 45,  81 

what,  according  to  Idealism , 72 

imperfect,  because  anticipative  of  the 

fall, Ill 

nota  miracle, 132 

according  to  Jewish  proverb, 395 

Creations,    have   taken   place   on  our 

earth 141,142 

44  Creative  first  cause,"  man  not, 123 

Cross,  the,  its  meaning, 582,  583 

Crossley  adopts  cooperative  plan, 455 

Crozer,  his  generosity  referred  to, 301 


Crusaders,  their  /«-r.s/>/i;icl, 488 

two  classes  of, 492 

CRUSADES,  THE, 484-500 

Crusades,  the,  their  moving  principle,.  484 

their  story  in  brief, 487-489 

great  leaders  in, 488 

their  social  causes, 489-491 

demonstrate  power  of  an  idea, 489 

Guizot's  classification  of  their  causes,  489 

their  moral  causes 491,  492 

not  owing  to  papal  influence, 491 

not  prompted  solely  by  hatred  of  a 

false  faith, 491 

not  to  be  explained  by  mere  hatred  of 

the  Turk,.. 491,  492 

arose  from  an  awakening  of  religious 

feeling, 49J 

not  owing  to  the  grant  of  Papal  in- 
dulgences,   _. 492 

accompanied  by  an  anticipation   of 

Christ's  coming, 493 

animated    by   idea   of   a  world-wide 

church, 493 

Lecky  's  opinion  of, 493 

Michaud's  opinion  of, 493 

—effects  of, 493 

secured  a  transient  influence  in  the 

East, 494 

gave  foreign  outlet  to  the  brutal  for- 
ces still  inherent  in  feudalism,.. 494,  49o 

Gibbon's  opinion  of, 494 

strengthened  barriers  against  Turkish 

encroachments, 494 

Freeman's  opinion  of, 494 

consolidated  states  of  Europe, 494 

Hume's  opinion  of, 494 

Michaud's  division  of  the  period  of,..  495 
what  advantage  they  brought  to  the 

Roman  church, 495 

developed  the  spirit  of  religious  per- 
secution,   495 

were   disadvantageous   in  some   re- 
spects to  Roman  church, 496 

taught  those  who  engaged  in  them  in- 
dependence,   496 

gave  occasion  for  complaints  against 

the  popes, 496 

disseminated  a  knowledge  of  the  eter- 
nal city,. 497 

were  the  initial  period  of  the  down- 
fall of  the  papal  power, 497 

their  effects  upon  the  state, 497-500 

their  influence  on  feudalism, 498 

compacted  the  state, 497 

favored  the  absorption  of  small  fiefs 

into  large, 498 

their  influence  best  seen  in  France,..  498 
diffused  the  loyal  and  courteous  char- 
acteristics of  chivalry, 498,  499 

opened  up  intercourse  among  peoples 

of  Europe, 499 

their  influence  on  Mediterranean  cap- 
itals,  499 


INDEX. 


599 


Crusades,  the,  gave  an  impulse  to  intel- 
lect  500 

stimulated  the  spirit  of  travel, ...    . .  500 
prepared  the  way  for  the  introduction 

of  Greek  literature, 500 

Curse,  the  original,  its  alleviations, 391 

Curses,  divine,  prophetic  not  arbitra- 
ry,  402 

D'Alembert,  an  Epicurean,. ;J2 

Damascus,  described,    483 

Damascus,  John  of,  an  early  theologian,      4 
his  view  of  the  relut  ion  of  the  natures 

in  Christ's  person, 209 

DANTE  AND  THL;  DIVINK  < OMKDV,. 501-524 

Dante,  Alighieri,  his  birth, 501 

the  times  of  his  early  life, 501,  502 

his  meeting  with  Meat  rice. 502 

her  influence  upon  him, 502,  503 

his  temporary  fall, 502 

method  of  his  restoration, 

his  VUa  ,\imr<t, 503 

his  thorough  preparation  for  writing 

the  Comedy, 503 

his  remarkable  natural  and  acquired 

endowments, 503 

becomes  a  chief  magistrate  of    Flor- 
ence.   503 

banishes  the  factious  nobles, 503 

is  in  turn  fined  and  banished, 503,  504 

his  wanderings, 504 

perhaps  visited  Oxford.  Knirland, 504 

an  amnesty  offered  him  and  declined,  r,oi 
his  bearing  und'-r  his  adversities.  "    ; 

becomes  a   (Jhibelline, 504,  506 

his  death. 504 

his  idea  of  humanity  and  its  twofold 

rule, 506 

his  De  MiHHtn-liid, 506 

first  great  advocate  of  Italian  unity. 

506,507 

tirst  great  advocate-  ot  independence 

of  church  and  State, 506,  507 

distinguishes  between  the  popes  and 

the  pal  nicy, 507 

a  loyal  Uoman  Catholic, 507 

abhorred  the  papal  temporal  power,.  507 
denounces  rulers  of  the  church  as  An- 
tichrist,   507 

an  independent  interpreter  of  Scrip- 
ture.  507 

held  the  Ptolemaic  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse,   508 

his  ideas  of  the  earth, 508 

his  ideas  of  Hell, 508 

his  ideas  of  Purgatory, 508  j 

his  nine  Heavens, ...508,  509 

his  Empyrean, 509 

did  not  call  his  poem  'Divine,' 509 

why  lie  called  it  "  Comedy  "? 509 

his  remarkable  mastery  of  versifica- 
tion,   509,  510  i 

his  three  great  classes  of  sins, 511,  •")]-.' 

his  theory  of  progress  in  evil,     .        .    512  1 


Dante,  the  philosophy  underlying  his 
classification    and    punishment   of 

sins,.. 511-515 

why    he    assigns   grotesque    punish- 
ments to  sin, 513 

his  description  of  Satan,  contrasted 

with  that  of  Milton, 513 

teaches  that  sin  is  a  self-perversion  of 

the  will, 513,  514 

a  lover  of  God  and  holiness, 514 

does  not  regard  the  essence  of  penalty 

as  external  to  the  sinner, 514 

his  material  imagery  symbolical 514 

he  makes  sin  to  be  its  own  detecter, 

judge,  and  tormentor, 514 

the  two  sins  of  which  he  deems  him- 
self in  need  of  purgation, 517 

regarded  Purgatory  as  a  process,. 517,  518 
his  mistaken  views  regarding  Purga- 
tory,  518 

ignorant  of  justification  by  faith,...  518 
his  examination  before  entering  7'n 

nntin  M»l>ih\  .   520 

no  rough,  grotesque  poet, 521 

most  sensitive  to  changeful  aspects  of 

nature, 521 

had  an  enthusiasm  for  justice, 521 

how  nicknamed  by  boys  in  street, 521 

the  most  ethical  of  poets, 521 

his  delight  in  light,  as  symbol  of  pu- 
rity,   522 

his  abundant  vocabulary  to  set  forth 

various  characteristics  of  light, 522 

his  vividness  of   description   comes 

from  experience, ">23 

Darwin,  obliged  to  speak  of  '  design,'...     12 
saw  no  reason  why  the  series  of  life 
on  the  earth  should  be  toward  high- 
er rather  than  lower  forms, ~'8 

his   researches  conducted  in  a  ma- 
terialistic spirit, 31 

David,  an  illustration  of  divine  lead- 
ing,   560 

Davis,  Noah,  virtual  founder  of  Amer- 
ican Baptist  Publication  Society,...  238 

Dead  Sea,  description  of, 430 

Death,  lessons  learned  in  its  immediate 

presence, 188 

Degeneration,   its    occurrence    apart 
from  effort,  the  law  of  this  sinful 

world, 248 

Delphi,  double,  legend  upon  the  temple 

there  interpreted, 4 

Democritus,  a  materialist, 32 

Denis,  St.,  entry  in  the  Chronicle  of,...  500 
Der  Einziye,  an  epithet  applicable  to 

every  man, 156 

Design,  marks  of,  according  to  Positiv- 
ism, only  coincidences, 11 

implied  unintentionally  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Comtists, 12 

the  statement  that  it  implies  imper- 
fection in  God,  examined, 12 


600 


INDEX. 


Design,  imperfections  of,  do  not  prove 

absence  of  purpose  in  universe,  —    12 
actual  imperfections  in,  can  be  ac- 
counted for  on  grounds  of  moral 

government, 12 

seeming  imperfections  in,  may  arise 

from  present  ignorance, 12 

a  voluntary  self-limitation  on  the  part 

of  God, 

Maudsley  on, 

Spinoza's  view  of, 

its  perception,  an  a  priori  cognition,.    48 
marks  of,  everywhere  in  universe,.  - .  181 
Determinism,  the    theory  of   will    so 

called, 118 

opposed  by  fact  that  man  can  choose 

a  less  degree  of  sin, 118, 119 

opposed  by  fact  that  man  can  refuse 

to  yield  to  certain  temptations, 119 

opposed   by  fact  that  unconverted 
man  can  give  attention  to  divine 

truth, 119 

would  remove  guilt,  remorse  and  pun- 
ishment,   ---- 120 

advocated  by  Jonathan  Edwards,.. ..  120 
Deus  vult,  the  watchword  of  the  first 

Crusade, 487 

Development,  implied  in  Mosaic  ac- 
count of  creation, 45 

prospects  of  an  endless,  restored  in 

Christ..:..- - --  162 

atruekind  of, --  559 

De  Wette,  with  him  scientific  interest 

in  religion  became  practical, 2 

D'Holbach,  eighteenth  century  Epicu- 
rean,   32 

;  a  French  Sensationalist, 58 

Diaphane,  an  illustration  from, 161 

Dictation-theory  of  Inspiration,  see  In- 
spiration  

Diderot,  a  Sensationalist  and  Epicu- 
rean,   32 

Dilemma,  one  suggested  by  Spencer's 

theory  of  primitive  cognitions, 49 

Diman,    on   combinations    of  law    as 

agencies  of  ceaseless  change, 25 

Dis,  the  city  of,  Dante's  description  of,  512 
Disposition,    included    in    the    larger 

view  of  will, 94,95 

involves  moral  judgments, 94 

one  may  be  imperfectly  conscious  of,    95 

consistent  with  formal  freedom, 95 

Dissecting-room,  a  juxtaposition  of  its 
dejecta  membra  does  not  make  men, 
nor  a  mere  accumulation  of  facts 

science, 10 

Divorce,  why  permitted  to  Hebrews, ...  437 

Hebrew  wife  had  no  right  of, 43"3 

Mosaic  restraint  upon, 437 

in  pagan  Rome, 410,411,437 

Docetic  views  of  Christ's  person,  un- 

scriptural, 20] 

Docetic  views  of  Inspiration,...  ..  153 


DOGMATISM,  TRUE, 557-560 

Dore  Gustave,  his  picture  of  the  Del- 
uge,  232 

Dorner,  on  man  not  being  a  mere  tan- 
gent to  God, 150 

on  docetic  view  of  Inspiration, 153 

his  Eschatology  unsatisfactory, 176 

Doth   he  not    leave   the  ninety  and 

nine  ?  '  its  interpretation, 368 

Doubt,  theological,  see  Minister, 

Dragoman,  his  office  and  importance,. .  476 
Draper,  his  antagonism  to  metaphysics,      8 

his  statistical  averages, 23 

Dualism  of  consciousness,  as  inexplica- 
ble as  that  of  substance, 70 

Duns  Scotus,  an  early  Nominalist, 164 

Dupont,  shares   profits  with   his   em-    . 

ployees, 456 

Dwight,  Timothy,  his  views  of  the  na- 
ture of  sin  and  virtue, 106 

Eagle,  a  symbol  of  character, 396 

its  symbolism  in  Divine  Comedy, 520 

Earth,  perhaps  segregated  from  rest  of 

universe  because  of  sin, 364 

EAST,  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  THE, 468-483 

Easter-torches,  a  lesson  from  method 

of  lighting  them  at  Jerusalem, 257 

Economic  Science,  see  Political  Econ- 
omy  

Education,    like    water    rather    than 

vapor, 318 

EDUCATION  OF  A  WOMAN, ..418-430 

Education,  some  results  visible,  others 

not, 418 

its  chief  problem,  a  double  one, 418 

what  etymologically, 418 

more  than  discipline, 418,419 

imparts  love  and  faculty  for  knowl- 
edge,  419 

is    principally    the    impartation     of 

truth, 419 

the  test  of  its  success, 419 

"the    higher,"  a    new  signification 

given  to  epithet, 420 

requires  close  study,  within  a  limited 

sphere, 420 

an  improved,  requires  a  reformation 
commencing  with  elementary  train- 
ing,  --- -  425 

of  John  Stuart  Mill,... ...  425 

ofNiebuhr, ..  425 

at  Quincy,  Massachusetts, 426 

when  active,  begins  with  a  boy, 427 

not  scholarship, 

should  elicit  individuality, 430 

Education,  female,  usually  not  exact,  420 

may  it  embrace  Greek  and  Latin  ? 421 

should  be  broad, 421 

should  embrace  all  that  enters  into 

men's, - 421 

bon  mot  regarding,  by  English  bish- 
op,  422 

should  include  physical  training, 422. 


INDEX. 


601 


Education,  female,  should  include  do- 
mestic economy, 432 

should    develop    symmetrically    the 

whole  being,.. 422 

effected  largely  by  example,- 422 

should  impart  a  good  manner, 422 

should  not  ignore  Bible, 423 

not  essential  ly  different  from  a  man's,  424 
emphasi/es  studies  specially  appro- 
priate to  the  student,. . 424 

should  not  be  on  principle  of  co-edu- 
cation,   424 

time  given  to,  at  present  too  limited, 

427,428 

arrested  by  undue  attention  to  trifles, 

428,429 

proceeds  best  in  quiet, 429 

Educators,  their  work,. 418 

Edwards,  Jonathan,    Bancroft   on    his 

services  to  philosophy  and  religion,     5 
his  estimate  of  philosophical  studies,    14 

a  Berkeleian, 59 

based  identify  on  decree  of  God, 72 

his  theory  of  will  neglects  some  facts 

of  the  case,... 1H,  120 

on  philosophical  neees-it.\ 120 

through  his  iden tit y- system  Idealism 

has  affected  theology, 167 

how  he  became  an  Idealist,. J68 

no  tradueian, Iti 

his  explanation  of   our   union   with 

Adam, 168 

denied  substance, 168 

his  theory  of  imputation, 168 

was  he  a  I'laeean? 1H8 

taught  continuous  creation, 168 

located  responsibility  not  in  sin  as  a 

nature  but  as  an  activity, 168 

on  Justification, 824 

did  not  wish  statements  of  a  material 
Hell  and  its  physical  torments  to  be 

understood  literally, 514 

Ellieient  cause,  what? 92 

/•>'!/•»,  alone  puts  forth  and  is  conscious 

of  force, 42 

Egypt,  Recollections  of, 468-474 

Egypt,  spring  morning  in, 468 

its  welcome  to  travelers, 468 

the  landscape  in, 470,471 

sunset  and  night  in, 474 

donkey-boys  of,.. 470,473,474 

ignorance  of,  in  middle  ages, 500 

Election,  God's,  founded  on  reasons  ex- 
isting in  himself, 108 

Elements,  chemical,  their  adaptation  to 

each  other, 43 

Eliot,  George,  her  writings  generally 

materialistic, 31 

on  the  reward  of  duty, 161 

her  moral  indifferentism, 531 

her  exaggeration  of  heredity, 533 

Emerson,  on  man  as  here,  not  to  work, 
but  be  worked  upon, .    24 


Emerson,  his  idea  of  the  poet, 525 

is  better  than  his  philosophy,  when  he 
teaches   the   response   '  I   can '   to 

duty's  'Thou  must,' 53* 

Emerson,  Dr.  G.  H.,  his  statement  as  to 
foundation  of  doctrine  of  proba- 
tion after  death,. 127 

Emmons,  on  moral  character  of  an  ac- 
tion inhering  not  in  its  cause  but  in 

its  nature, 117 

on     impossibility     of     independent 

agency, 169- 

Empiricism,  its  influence  on  Priestley,      7 

on  other  philosophers, 7,  & 

Empyrean  in  Dante's  Paradise, 509 

ee<5, 553 

Encyclopaedists,  their  philosophy, ......  7, 32 

End  in  nature  controls  choice  of  means,    2£ 
Endosmosis,  a  certain,  of  Christian  in- 
fluence,      56 

Enthusiasm,  defined, 553 

Epic  poetry  always  individual  in  its 

subjects, 506 

Epicureanism,  a  materialistic  develop- 
ment in  era  of  great  deterioration,    32 
Epicurus,  his  philosophy  antagonized 

by  that  of  Aristotle  and  Plato, 15- 

Erasmus,  his  policy, 

Errors,  how  serviceable, 16 

Eternity  of  matter,  if  accepted,  leads 

toward  atheistic  evolution,.-. 57 

Kthics.  what,  according  to  Spencer?...    55 

Eugenie,  Empress,  anecdote  of, 465 

Europe  in  thirteenth  century, 501,  502 

Evangelization  of  heathen  must  begin 

in  the  family  life. 416- 

Evolution,  if  proved,  merely  a  mode  of 

divine  action 

EVOLUTION,  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF,... 39-57 
Evolution,   the    present   philosophical 

fashion, -    39 

succeeds  Positivism,.. 39 

avails  itself  of  spoils  of  preceding 

systems, 40 

is  powerfully  advocated, 40 

violates  the  spirit  of  the  Baconian 

philosophy, 40- 

rests  physical  truth  on  a  priori  reason- 
ing,  -    41 

assumes  as  postulate  an  imperfect 

definition  of  force, 41 

excludes  will, 42 

teaches  that  matter,  mind  and  motion 

come  from  force, 43,44 

fails  in  its  explanation  of  life, 45,  46 

to  some  extent  recognized  by  believ- 
ers in  revelation, 45 

fails  to  account  for  mind. 4'. 

fails  to  account  for  soul, 46- 

fails  to  account  for  Christ, 46 

fails  to  explain  a  priori  knowledges, 

48-50- 

shuts  out  knowledge  of  God, 50-53- 


602 


INDEX. 


Evolution,  its  exp  anation  of  f  eeling  of 

moral  obligation, 53 

teaches  that  action  is  right  because 

useful, 54 

teaches  that  conscience  is  the  mind's 

power  of  comparing  utilities, 55 

a  fascinating  system  of  monism, 55 

is  destructive  of  morality, 56 

its  influence  already  felt  in  art  and 

literature, 56 

Evolution  in  the  history  of  a  redeemed 

soul, 161,  162 

Vr  nihilo oiiiiiiajiiint,  asuggested axiom 

for  Comte, 10 

Exchange,  a  central  doctrine  of  Polit- 
ical Economy, 450 

admits  the  principle  of  mutual  ad- 
vantage,   -  -  450 

Exodus,  15:  11 - 188 

Exegesis,  New   Testament,   should  be 

thorough, 325 

should  be  broad, 325,  326 

English,  its  stages, 326 

should  be  bold, 326,327,  328 

should  be  reverent, 328,  329 

Exercise-system,  originates  in  teaching 

of  Edwards, 168 

its  nature  explained, 169 

tends  to  Pantheism, 169 

makes  supernatural  religion  impos- 
sible,    169 

destroys  sense  of  sin, 169 

impugns  the  divine  character, 169 

Existence  of  God,  see  God 

Experience,  requires   a   prior  mental 

potency, 9 

is  but  "  the  stern-lights  of  a  ship," ...  140 

warrants  merely  an  expectation, 140 

according  to  Huxley  never  warrants 

'must,' 140 

of  the  truth,  not  the   limit   of   the 

preacher's  proclamation, 172 

Faith,  fundamental  to  philosophy, 21 

in  our  mental  powers,  a  part  of  our 

nature, 21 

all  science  in  its  last  analysis  rests 

on,  ..  21 

a  higher,  may  be  dormant  in  the  soul 

awaiting  divine  vi vifl cation, 21 

denned, 88 

a  kind  of  knowledge, 99 

FAITH,  THE  MEASURE  OF  SUCCESS, .572-575 

Fall,  see  Adam 

Falsehood,  every,  has  a  grain  of  verity,    32 

Fanaticism,  its  nature, 584 

Fatalism,  refuted  by  knock-down  argu- 
ment,     21 

its  rejection  does  not  require  accept- 
ance of  caprice-theory  of  will , 99 

a  false  Calvinism  merges  in, 118 

Fatimite    Caliphs,   their    cruelties    to 

Christian  pilgrims, 486 

Faucet,  an  unturned,  illustration  from,  257 


Fechner,  his  "psychology  without  a 
soul," 69 

4  Fetish,  Great,'  suggested  title  for  earth 

in  the  Comtian  cult, 13 

Feudalism,  its  nature, 490 

influence  of  Crusades  on, 498 

Feuerbach,  his  mechanical  philosophy,    J31 

his  maxim,  '  man  is  what  he  eats.' 37 

Fichte,  his  '  we  are  all  born  in  faith,' ...    21 
reduces  all  knowledge  to  knowledge 

of  self,.... 60 

merges  the  Absolute  in  the  Ego, 60 

his  illustration  of  the  unchangeable- 
ness  of  natural  sequences, i:>4,  135 

Fi jians,  matricide  among, 411 

Final  cause,  its  principle  — work  to- 
ward ends  —  in  ourselves, 26 

science  dependent  on  principle  of, ...    26 

H.  B.  Smith's  illustration  of, 92 

Final  causes  merged  by  Positivists  in 
totality  of  secondary  or  efficient 

causes, 11,  12,  26 

Finality,  immanent,  or  unconscious  in- 

intelligence 26 

has    secured    acceptance    by    many 

scientists, 26 

illustrated  by  instinct  of  bee, -    26 

illustrated  by  unconscious  formation 

of  language, 26 

illustrated  by  spontaneity  of  genius,    26 

a  theory  which  loses  sight  of  man,.. .    27 

Finney,  Charles  G.,  in  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  387 

Foraminifera,  illustration  from, 244 

Force,  an  alleged  ultimate,  of  which 
perceived  forces  are  modifica- 
tions,   6 

its  idea  from  our  consciousness  of 
power  present  in  every  act  of  will, .  25 

not  a  property  of  matter, 33 

as  observed  in  arrangements  of  uni- 
verse must  be  mental, 33 

must  be  postulated  as  behind  and  pre- 
vious to  all  things, 41 

an  inseparable  correlate  of  effort  and 

will, 41-43 

conviction  of  its  existence  "deep  as 

very  nature  of  mind," 41 

put  forth  by  the  ego  or  mind, 42 

the  process  by  which,  according  to 
Spencer,  it  becomes  '  forces ',  unex- 
plained,  42,43 

alone  cannot  explain  motion, 44 

according  to  old  and  new  materialism,    59 
Fox,  C.  J.,  on  Burke's  style  of  oratory,  vii 
France,  the  greatest  problem  of  recon- 
struction there, 452 

Francesca  da  Rimini,  how  Dante  treats 

the  story, - 513 

Franchise,  not  necessary  appendage  of 

mere  humanity, 407 

Fraud,  its  future  punishment  according 

to  Dante,. 512 

Free  agency,  defined, ..  221 


INDEX. 


603 


iFreedom,  human,  irreconcilable  with 

divine  sovereignty, 6 

according1  to  determinism,.. 90,  118 

according  to  caprice-theory, 90 

best  method  of  investigating, 90,  91 

I.'KMAI.NDKKS   OF,  IN   MAN,. 114-128 

theories  of  Augustine,   Calvin,   and 

I0d wards  regarding, 114 

normal,  what? '  114 

and  divine  sovereignty,  how  treated 

by  Robertson  and  Cecil,. 115,  116 

and  divine  sovereignty,  Paul's  sub- 
lime acceptance  of  both, 115,  116 

must  not  be  exclusive  datum  of  a  sys- 
tem of  doctrine, 116 

according  to  Fatalism,  — 118 

Freedom  in  unregenerate,  to  choose  a 
less  degree  of  sin   rather   than   a 

greater,  119 

to  r.'ln-e  to  \ield  to  certain  tempta- 
tions,    119 

to  do  outwardly  good  acts, 119 

to  seek  God  from  self-interest, 119 

to  give  attention   to  abstract  truth 

from  love  of  it, 119 

to  give  attention  to  God's  claims, 119 

involves  responsibility, 120 

Free  will,  what  ? 55 

destroyed  by  Spencer's  philosophy, ..    55 

can  add  to  original  sin,.. 121 

French,  excel  in  literary  style, 538 

Frescoes  at  Pompeii,    56 

Fundamental  disposition  of  character 

cannot  be  Sflf-ehanged,      119 

Furies,  Greek,  puni-h  offenses  though 

unwittingly  committed, 130 

Gallus,  Caius  Sulpicius,  his  divorce  of 

his  wife, 410 

Garbett,  Hampton  lecturer,  on  contend- 
ing for  the  faith, 

Gardner  on  mind  giving  matter  its  chief 

meaning,. 

GAKFIKI.I).         PKKSIDKNT,         SKKMON 

IMJKAC  HKI>  ON  ins  DI:ATM. 
Garth-Id,   President,  should  remember 

his  character, 347^  348 

an  example  of  the  American  type  of 

man,. 348 

his  varied  career, 348,  349 

drifts  into  preaching, 348 

advocates  sound  currency, 348 

his  public  and  private  virtues,. -'M9 

his  undue  concessions  to  the  pressure 

of  party, 354 

•Garfield's  death,  attended  by  alleviating 

circumstances, 349 

a  permissive  providence, 349 

an  answer  to  prayer, 349,  350 

a  source  of  blessing  to  the  nation. ...  350 

an  education  in  patriotism, 350 

a   quickening    of   world-wide    sym- 
pathy,...    a50 

not  a  fruit  of  conspiracy, 351 


Garfield's  death,  should  lead  to  more 

prayer  for  our  governors, 351 

should  secure  a   penitent   consider- 
ation of  the  national  sin  which  was 

its  indirect  cause, 351,  352 

a  time  for  public  utterances, 354 

its  lesson  to  each  citizen, 357 

'  Gender,  soul  has  none,'  the  statement 

examined, 404 

Genesis,2:  18;  3:24, 400 

Geology,  as  earth' s  autobiography,  con- 
tains no  account  of  its  birth, 45 

Gerbert,  an  early  preacher  of  Crusades,  486 

Ceri/.im,  ascent  of , 482 

Germany,  progress  of  Baptist  princi- 

ciplesin, 243 

Giants,  the  primeval,  their  punishment 

in  Hell  according  to  Dante, 512 

Gladiatorial  shows  at  Rome,  outcome 

of  a  false  philosophy, 56 

God,  interpreted  by  mind, 3 

according  to  Mandsley,  a  mere  Brah- 
ma,      12 

limited  by  nothing  outside  of  himself,    12 

self-limited, 12,51,75,76 

we  have  an  intuitive  knowledge  of 

his  existence, 16 

intuitive  knowledge  of,  blunted  by 

sin, 16 

intuition  of,  brightened  by  the  coin- 
ing of  Christ. 17 

his  presence  in  nature,  a  source  of 

comfort, 29 

is  master  of  nature,     29 

can  all  that  he  will,  but  wills  not  all 

thathe  can, 43 

immanent  in  universe  yet  transcend- 
ent,..     46 

usually  wol%s  by  natural  laws, 46 

may  work  by  direct  exercise  of  will,.    46 

his  existence  an  «  priori  truth, 48 

in  what  sense   cognized  by  human 

mind, 50 

can  know  him  without  a  mental  im- 

ageof him, 51 

in  what  sense  infinite, 51,  76 

in  what  sense  absolute, 51,  75 

we  know  him  in  relation, 52 

Spencer   practically   confesses   to   a 

knowledge  of,  52 

according  to  Berkeley  may  directly 

cause  sensations, 58 

his  existence  not  defensible  by  Ideal- 
ist,     69 

according  to  Idealism,  is  a  series  of 

ideas, 70 

can  do  more  than  create  ideas, 71 

may  give  relative  independency  to 

portions  of  physical  force, 71 

knowledge  of,  its  conditions, 71,  89 

theterm  defined,.. 75 

duty  of  those  destitute  of  affectional 
conditions  for  knowledge  of, 89 


604 


INDEX. 


God,  the  direct  author  of  sin  in  the 
heart,  according  to  scheme  of  Hop- 
kins and  Emmons, 117 

influence  of  Nominalism  on  concep- 
tions of  his  nature  and  attributes,. .  164 
as  "the simply  One,"  unknowable,...  165 
idea  of,  lost  with  that  of  substance,..  166 
immanence  of,  unduly  prominent  in 

New  Theology, 167 

as  described    in    one    hundred    and 

fourth  Psalm, 181 

his  relation  to  Cosmos  as  set  forth  by 

Paul. 181 

not   an    unintelligent,    unconscious 

principle, -  181 

as  the  author  of  man,  must  himself 

think  and  will,.. 181 

a  personal  Being  in  the  highest  sense,  182 
possesses  a  will  of  infinite  freedom 

and  power, 182 

is  sufficient  to  himself, 182, 183 

his  eternal  independence  and  self-suf- 
ficiency rest  on  the  Trinity  in  his  na- 
ture,   183,191 

not  compelled  to  create, 183 

present  in  all  "  laws  of  nature," 184 

above  all  "laws  of  nature," 385 

nature  to  him  as  "  a  loose  mantle," . . .  185 

offended  as  a  living  person  by  sin, 185 

reconciled  himself  by  Atonement, ...  186 
personally    interested    in    Creation, 

Providence  and  Redemption, 186 

his  will  and  heart  seen  in  Incarnation 

and  Atonement, 187 

his  attributes,  their  nature, 189 

self-preserving, 191 

his  working  in  a  soul  in  no  sense  sus- 
pends its  activities,. 550 

God,  existence  of,  not  demonstrable  by 

argument, 80 

proposed  arguments  for,  four, 81-85 

Cosmologieal  argument  for, 81 

Teleological  argument  for, 82,  83 

Moral  or  Anthropological  argument 

for, 83,84 

Ontological  argument  for, 84 

defects  in  all  arguments  for, 84,  85 

presupposed  in  all  logical  processes,.    85 

an  intuitive  knowledge, 86 

his  leadings  in  Providence, 560,  561 

his  leadings  by  the  Spirit, 561,  562 

God,  Holiness  of,  its  first  mention  in 

Bible, 188 

perfect, 190 

proceeds  from  his  very  being, 190 

is  sublimely  energetic, 190 

asserts  itself,... ...190,  191 

is  a  positive  thing, 191 

not  a  mere  antithesis  to  evil, 191 

its  relation  to  his  justice, 191 

its  relation  to  law, 192 

finds  expression  in  his  anger, 192 

its  relation  to  benevolence, 193 


God,  holiness  of,  not  utilitarian, 194 

is  not  love  to  universe,  194 

is  not  a  means  to  an  end, 194 

co-existent  with  his  love, 195 

his  primary  and  fundamental  attri- 
bute..,.... 195,  196 

light  thrown  upon  its  place  in  divine 
character  by  man's  moral  constitu- 
tion,  195, 196 

is  reason  for  punishment  of  persistent- 
ly sinful, 197 

and  his  love,  reconciled  in  Atonement,  197 
its  majesty  set  forth  in  life  and  death 

of  Christ, 198 

enhances  his  love  to  sinners, 198 

sight  of,  preliminary  often  to  a  sight 

of  the  divine  love, 199 

the  practical  effects  of  the  study  of, . .  199 
God,  idea  of,  may  be  described  as  char- 
acterizing human  nature, 76 

its  prevalence  among  mankind, 76-79- 

present  when  not  formally  asserted,.    77 

present  though  rudimentary, 77 

men  in  mass  have  entertained, 77 

testimonies  to  the  generality  of, 78 

implicit  existence  of,  how  attested,..     78 
developed  on  suitable  occasion  being 

given, 78,  79 

how  accounted  for, 79-87 

not  from  external  revelation, 79 

presupposed  in  either  true  or  false  i  .•- 

ligions, 79 

not  from  sense-perception  or  reflec- 
tion,  79,  80 

not  from  consciousness, 80- 

not  from  conscious  process  of  reason- 
ing,.   80 

intuitive,. 86 

God,  intuitive  knowledge  of,  dimim-il 

by  sin, 86 

influence  of  argument  on, 87 

helped  by  revelation, 87 

assumed  by  Scripture, 87 

Spencer  denies  that  it  is  adequate  to 

purposes  of  science, 87 

not  an  accretion  of  past  experiences,    87 

not  present  with  brutes 87 

infinite,  and  cannot  therefore  arise 

from  any  combination  of  finites,.-.    87 
as  valid  as  any  belief  in  the  Unknow- 
able or  in  the  Persistence  of  Force,    87 
is  a  faith,  and  yet  is  foundation  of  a 

science, 88 

God,  justice  of,  is  transitive  holiness,..  191 
requires  creation  for  its  existence, . . .  192 
the  publication  and  enforcement  of 

his  nature, - 192 

reveals  law, 192 

is  legislative  holiness, —  192 

is  executive  holiness, 192 

the  detecter  and  punisher  of  moral 

evil, --  192 

consistent  with  com  passion,  — 193- 


INDEX. 


605 


-God,  justice  of,  is  not  capricious, 193 

invariable. 195,196 

Ood.love  of,  what  it  is, 193 

cannot  be  resolved  into  holiness,  .193,  194 

chooses  its  objects, 195 

the  ground  of  his  chastisements, 195 

not  the  ground  of  punishment, 195 

co-<  >xists  with  holiness, 195 

is  optional,. 196 

conditioned  by  holiness,. 196 

absent  from  the  inflictions  of  the  f  u- 

tun-,... 197 

and  his  holiness,  reconciled  in  Atone- 
ment,..  197 

best  understood  in  light  of  his  holi- 
ness,  198 

(ion.  THK  LIVING, 180-187 

^God,  the  living,'  a  common  designa- 
tion in  Scripture, 180 

the  promulgation  of  its  idea,  the  duty 

of  the  Hi-brews, 180 

implies  an  all-originating  and  all-sus- 
taining life  in  God, 180 

implies  that  God  has  a  life  of  the 
Spirit,    conscious,    intelligent    and 

>•  • !  f -i  I  e  1 1  •  n  n  i  ning, 180 

a  conception  of,  delivers   from  the 

tyranny  of  the  modern  idea  of  law,  183 
a  conception  of,  gives  new  vividness 
and  reality  to  God's  dealings  with 

our  individual  souls, -• 185 

brightest  revi-lation  of,  in  the  incar- 
nation,  187 

Miod's  1'rovidenct-  our  Inheritance,'..  561 
Oood  deeds,  after  doer's  death  rise  to 

heaven,  330 

live  on  earth, 330 

<l<>tti:*ln-ll'U**l*i'ill. 80 

Graduation,  feelings  suitable  to  the  oc- 
casion of,. 544 

(iiavitation,  its  nature  unknown, 33 

a  uniform  and  conscious  expression 

of  mind  and  will, 42 

<;I;I,I:K    K\  i:<,  i-:>is,  A   (.  UI.AT  TEACHER 

OF, - 330-336 

Greek  literature,  its  introduction  into 

Europe, 500 

Green,  a  Hegelian, 61 

Gregory  of  Nyssa,  opposes  pilgrimages,  485 
Growth  into  moral  goodness  impossible 

in  fallen  man, 112 

Guibert,  Abbot,  on  the  Crusades, 492 

Guizot,  on  Providence... 390 

on  causes  of  Crusades, 489,  490 

Gunsaulus,  Transfiguration  of  Christ, 

quoted, 74 

Gustavus  Adolphus,  his  public  vow,...  228 

Guy  of  Lusignan,  his  career, 490 

Gymnasium  a  useful  appendage  to  a 

Theological  Seminary, 307 

Gymnasia,  German,  have  an  elementary 

theological  course, 321 

Bible  closely  studied  in, . .  423 


Habit,  what? 575 

how  cultivated, 577 

HABITS  IN  THE  MINISTRY,.. 575-578 

HACKETT,  PROFESSOR  HORATIO  B.,  AD- 
DRESS AT  HIS  FUNERAL, 330-336 

Hackett,  Professor  Horatio  B.,  on  in- 
crease of  educated  ministers  about 

Boston, 301 

caught    his    exegetical    enthusiasm 

from  Stuart  of  Ando ver, 331 

became  a  Baptist, 331 

the  Nestor  of  Greek  exegesis  in  Bap- 
tist denomination, 331 

his  influence  not  confined  to  Baptists,  332 
his  characteristics  as  a  teacher,... 332-335 

revisits  Germany, 335 

his  sudden  death, 335 

wide-spread  regret  at, 336 

his  death  alluded  to, 554 

Hadrian,  his  demolition  of  Jerusalem,.  484 
Hale,  Sir  Matthew,  his  belief  in  witches,  147 
Hall,  Robert,  loses  his  materialistic 

views  at  the  grave  of  his  father, 37 

Hamilton,  Sir  William,  on  no  difficulty 
emerging  in  theology  which  has  not 

emerged  in  philosophy, 14 

the  injurious  consequences  of  his  doc- 

t  line  of  the  relativity  of  knowledge,    16 
relegates  idea  of  divine  existence  to 

realm  of  faith, 16,88 

his  teachings  opened  up  way  to  Ideal- 
ism,     16 

sought  to  remedy  defects  of  Reid,...    61 
showed  absurdity  of  representative 

perception, 62 

admitted   a  vitiating   ideal   element 
into  our  knowledge  of  an  external 

object, 63 

failed  to  explain  why  non-ego  must 

be  extended, 62 

the  limits  of  his  Natural  Realism, 62 

his  concessions  to  Idealism, 62 

his  classification  of  Idealists, 62,  63 

his  treatment  of  Objective  Idealism,.    63 

his  reply  to  T.  Collyns  Simon, 64 

grants  too  much  to  Berkeley, 64 

on  logical  absurdity  of  demonstrating 

the  absolute  from  the  relative, 84,  85 

his  view  of  will... 123 

Haroun  al  Raschid,  his  generosity, 485 

Harris,  a  Hegelian, 61 

Hartley,  his  theory  of  vibrations,. 7 

Hartmann,  a  contributor  to  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  facts  of  man's  nature, . .    97 
Harvard,  feelings  in  its  Memorial  Hall,  277 

its  legend, 285 

Hazard  on  foreknowledge  not  essential 
to   supreme  governing   power   of 

universe, 100 

Heathen,  our  impression  of  their  guilt 

weakened  by  New  Theology, 176 

can  claim  nothing  from  God, 176 

are  guilty,...'. 176 


606 


INDEX. 


Heathen,  have  a  manifestation  of  Christ 

in  this  life...... 176 

have  a  universal  sense  of  sin,... 176 

Christ  is  doing  supra-historic  work 

among:  them, 176 

may  have  an  implicit  faith  in  Christ,  177 

may  implicitly  reject  him, 177 

Heathen  lands,  Christ  yearns  over,  more 

than  over  Christian, 369 

Heaven,  its  rewards, - 160, 161 

a  realm  of  crowned  heads, 162 

a  place  of  historic  retrospect, 365 

Heavens,  the  nine  of  Dante, 508,  509 

Hebrews,  their  purpose  in  history, 180 

Hebrews 2:  11,  ("of  one"),  explained,..  209 
Hegel  developed  the   subjective  ten- 
dencies of  Kant's  philosophy, 8 

the  influence  of  his  transcendental 

Idealism, -    31 

his  explanation  of  the  development 

of  the  One  into  the  Many,.. 60 

makes  the  rational  the  real, 60 

his  system  opposed  by  the  fact  that 
personal  wills  war  against  the  ra- 
tional,  60 

with  him  "thinking  thinks,".. .61,  70, 166 
his  teachings,  a  counter- weight  to  ag- 
nostic materialism, 61 

has  found  able  advocates, 61 

his  teachings  end  by  opposing  facts 

of  history  and  morality,. 61 

regards  God  as  universal,  impersonal 

intelligence  and  will, 167 

his  view  of  the  soul, 167 

on  Christianity  'seeking  the  living 

among  the  dead,' 484 

Hegelian  revival,  these  are  days  of, 533 

Helena,  and  the  Holy  Places  of  the  East,  455 

Hell,  according  to  Dante, 508 

inscription  over  its  gate, 510 

sign  of  G od's  estimate  of  sin, 514 

its  fire  and  brimstone,  of  what  symbol- 
ical,   - 514 

many  men  already  there  in  this  life,.  514 
ascent  from,  to  Purgatory,  how  ac- 
complished,   515 

Hell-gate  rock,  illustration  from  its  re- 
moval,   380 

"  Help-meet "  explained, 400 

Henry  Fourth  at  Canossa, 487 

Heredity,   confirmatory   of    Scripture 

doctrine  of  unity  of  race, 165 

Hickok's  illustration  of  the  principle  of 

causality, 10 

Higginson's  question,  "Ought  women 
to  learn  the  alphabet," 421 

HlGH-MlNDEDNESS, 580-583 

Hildebrand,  his  character, 486 

his  failure  to  originate  a  Crusade,..  486 

History,  on  Spencer's  principles,  a  fa- 
talistic development,.. 55 

HISTORY,   CHURCH.    AND    ONE    WHO 
TAUGHT  IT 337-343 


History,  mediaeval,  its  cardinal  point,..  497 
History,  and  natural  history,  related, . .  339' 

Hohenstaufen,  house  of,  its  efforts, 497 

Holbach,  D',  J.  Baron,  a  French  sensa- 
tionalist ph  ilosopher, 58 

HOLINESS  OF  GOD,  THE, 188-200 

Holiness,  a  reward  of  heaven, 161 

what? 189 

only  approximate  among  men, 189, 190 

binding  on  men  apart  from  results,.-  194 
its  supremacy  will  be  acknowledged 

by  an  assembled  universe, 200- 

Holland,  its  pile-supported  cities,  illus- 
tration from, & 

Holmes  on  man,.. 1& 

Holy-places,  their  true  place  in  religion,  484 
Holyoake's  description  of  the  results  of 

Positivism,.. 1& 

Homiletics,  a  part  of  Theological  Semi- 

narjr  training, 304 

Honestum,  Cicero  on, 55 

Hooker,  on  Inspiration, 148 

Hopkins,  on  the  moral  quality  of  an 

action  being  only  in  its  nature, 117 

on  God  as  the  cause  of  every  event,.  169 

Horse-back  riding  in  Palestine, 47& 

Hotchkiss,  Rev'd  V.  R.,  D.  D.,  a  teacher 
of  Bible  in  the  original  languages  at 
Liochester  Theological  Seminary,..  344 
an  ardent  lover  and  student  of  the 

Bible --  344 

his  gene  ral  information , 346- 

pecu  liarities  of  his  instruction, 346 

love  of  Bible-lands, 346 

Howe,  John,  on  inscription  on  Temple 

at  Delphi, 4 

Hughes,  Archbishop,  on  the  impressi- 
bility of  early  life,  ..  -  416 
'Humanity   collective,'   an    object   of 

worship  in  Comte's  new  religion, ...    13 
Hume,  David,  makes  a  further  applica- 
tion of  Berkeley's  principle, 59,  166 

Sydney  Smith's  witticism  upon 59 

his  exclamation  to  Ferguson, 78 

urges  that   he   never   saw   a  world 

made, 81 

stigmatizes  miracle  as  a  violation  or 

suspension  of  natural  law, 133 

his  argument  against  miracles  a  peti- 

titio  prtn cipii, -  - 143,  144 

Humility,  Augustine  on, .  -  582 

Humists,  what  the  soul   is  to   them,    50 

some  modern, 59 

Hunt  on  matricide  among  Fijians,  .411,  412 
Hunt,  Holman,  his   "Shadow   of   the 

Cross  "  referred  to, - - 

"  Husband  of  one  wife,"  its  meaning,  .  441 
Husbandmen,   excluded   from  Plato's 

ideal  government, 447 

Huxley,  Thomas,  the  subservience  of 

some  divines  to  him, 9 

his  researches  conducted  in  a  mate- 
rialistic spirit,  31 


INDEX. 


GOT 


Huxley,  Thomas,  declares  spontaneous 

action  an  absurdity, 36,  37 

his  definition  of  matter, -  59 

on  the  absurdity  of  wasting  time  on 

"  lunar  politics," - 75 

on  substituting-  the  "  must "  of  neces- 
sity for  the  "will  "  of  law, 140 

Hypocrisy,  its  future  punishment  ac- 
cording to  Dante, 512 

Ice-floe,  illustration  from  an  incident 

upon, -  256 

Idea,  in  nature,  what? - 34 

as  regarded  by  absolute  I  dealist, 62 

in  non-egoistical  Idealism, 62 

does  not  guarantee  actual  exist- 
ence,    84 

according  to  Hegel,- 97 

Ideal,  an,  its  advantage  to  the  young, . .  19 
Ideas,   in    nature,   solely   product  of 

mind, 33 

according  to  Berkeley, 63 

according  to  modern  Idealism, 65 

distinct  from  cognition  of  them, 65 

and  thinus,  distinct   from  each  other 

according  to  common-sense, 66 

Idealism,  declares  matter  spirit, 6 

its  consummation,  pantheism, 8 

IliKAMSM,    M  01  IK  UN, 58-74 

Idealism,  its  teaching, 58 

originates  with  Locke, - 58 

as  taught  by  Hume, 59 

MS  tauirht  by  llnmi.-ts, 59 

its  mischievous  effects,. 59 

Kant's  rcuction  ayainst,. 59,  CO 

Fichte's  modification  of, 60 

of  Hegel,  extreme, 60,61 

of  Hegel,  its  influence, 61 

Hamilton's   concessions  to, 62-64 

Hamilton's  classification  of, 62 

Idealism,  modern,  how  held  by  Lotze,  .    63 

Berkeley's  varying  views  of, 63 

reasons  Tor  its  prevalence, 64,65 

the  objective  form  of,  freest  from  ob- 
jection,   -'''•">.  tit; 

objective   form   of,   compared   with 

natural  realism, 66 

assumes  that  mind  can    know  only 

ideas, 66 

inconsistent  with  itself, 66 

must  grant  existence  of  self  before 

cognition  of  ideas, 66,  67 

cannot  consistently  maintain  that  the 
object  perceived  is  different  from 

the  act  of  perception, 67 

Professor  Knight  on, 67 

ignores  difference  between  body  and 

idea  of  body, 67 

confounds  outness  with  distance,.. .67,  68 
finds  in  self  the  ground  of  unity  for 

mental  phenomena, 68 

should  find  in  material  substance 
ground  of  unity  for  material  phe- 
nomena,    68 


Idealism,  modern,  confounds  conditions 
of  external  knowledge  with  objects 

of  knowledge, .68,  69- 

each  advocate  of,  must  consistently 
deny  existence  of  any  other  save 

himself, 69- 

takes  refuge  in  consciousness  of  God, 

69,  70 

view  of  God,  according  to, 70 

is  monistic, 701 

denies  that  mind  can  know  matter,. 70,  71 

its  influence  on  Christian  faith, 71-74 

destroys  distinction  between  possible 

and  actual, 71,  72 

destroys   distinction   between   truth 

and  error, 72" 

should  logically  declare  that  God  is 
the  only  cause  in  the  realm  of  spirit, 

72,  7£ 

strikes  at  the  roots  of  morality, 73 

leads  to  solipsism, 73- 

as  injurious  as  materialism, 73,  74 

why  opposed  by  Hamilton, 73 

medy  for, _.    74 

its  advocates, 166 

its  nature, 16ft 

teaches  an  exaggerated  individualism,  106 
commencing  in  particulars  ends  by 

giving  up  individuality, 167 

adopted    by   many   modern   theolo- 
gians,    167 

Identity,  absolute,  the  system  of,  de- 
clares matter  and  spirit  forms  of  one 

underlying  substance, 6- 

Identity,  based  by  Jonathan  Edwards 

on  the  absolute  decree  of  God, 71 

system  of  Edwards  and  the  New  The- 
ology,    167 

Idolatry,  what? 484 

Image,  mental,  not  necessary  to  knowl- 
edge,      50 

Imagination,  what? 527 

alone,  will  not  make  a  poet, 531 

shares  in  man's  eternal  progress, 543- 

Impressions,  mental,  require  thing  im- 
pressed and  thing  which  impresses,    43 
Incontinence,    sins   of,    according    to 

Dante,. 511 

Inconceivability,  to  make  it  a  test  of 

knowledge,  erroneous, 51 

Indestructibility  of  matter,  a  relative 

not  an  absolute  truth, 44 

INDIVIDUALISM,  CHRISTIAN, 156-16$ 

Individuality,  typified  by  nature, 156 

in  men's  bodies  and  souls, 156 

illustrates  God's  freedom, 156 

men's,  inferences  from, 157-163 

implies  that  each  is  guilty  of  peculiar 

sins, 157 

of  sin,  renders  it  a  peculiar  insult  to 

God  and  influence  for  evil, 15T 

of  sin,  requires  a  peculiar  account  to 
God, 1ST 


608 


INDEX. 


Individuality,  of  sin,  renders  each  "  the 

sinner"  and  "chief  of  sinners," 158 

of  man,  requires  the  adaptation  of 
peculiar  wisdom  and  grace  to  save 

him, - 158 

requires  a  personal  election  and  call, .  158 
requires  an  intercession  on  behalf  of 

each, - 158 

requires  personal  leadings  of  Provi- 
dence,  - 159 

requires  special  discipline, 159 

involves  a  special  experience, 159 

implies  a  peculiar  work  to  do  for  God, 

159,  160 

involves  a  peculiar  reward; 160 

raised    in    heaven    to    its    intensest 

power, -- 161 

should  be  characteristic  of  minister,.  555 

Induction,  Dr.  Porter  on, 85 

Dr.  Peabody  on,. - 85 

warrants  only  an  expectation, 140 

rests  ultimately  on  fact  of  universal 

design,.. 140,141 

Inertia,  a  property  of  matter, 33 

means  that  matter  is  not  self-moving,    44 
Infinite,  because  undefined,  said  to  be 

unknowable,- -    51 

God  is,  as  being  the  ground  of  the 

finite, 51,  76 

INSPIRATION,  ITS  METHOD, 148-155 

Inspiration,  differences  of  opinion  as  to 

method  of, 148 

the  dictation  theory  of,  according  to 

Hooker, 148 

involves  instances  of  direct  dictation,  148 

a  manifestly  human  element  in, 148 

Quenstedt's  view  of , 148 

dictation-theory   of,  will   not  cover 

all  the  facts, 149 

dictation-theory,  passage  alleged  in 

its  favor,  examined,- 149 

dictation-theory  of,  contradicts  the 
usual  method  of  God's  working  in 

the  soul, 149 

is  a  union  of  the  human  and  the  di- 
vine,  150,  153 

is  more  than  mere  "  general  instruc- 
tions,"  -. 150,  151 

the  help  of  God  granted  in, 161 

something   like  the    afflatus   exper- 
ienced by  divinely  helped  preacher, 

151,152 

theorists  upon,  affected  by  their  views 

of  the  miraculous, 152 

in,  God  speaks  through  not  to  man,...  153 

more  than  illumination, 153 

God  in,  can  transcend  the  powers  of 

man's  mental  and  moral  nature, 153 

docetic  view  of  inspiration, 153 

its   products   attract    by    their    hu- 

manness, 153 

permits  every  imperfection  in  its  pro- 
ducts not  inconsistent  with  truth,..  153 


Inspiration,  how  knowledge  is  com- 
municated therein, 153 

defined, 153 

does  not  require  the  communication 

of  words,. -. - 154 

in  what  sense  it  extends  to  all  Scrip- 
ture,...   155 

are  there  degrees  of? 155 

Browning's  teachings  on, 535 

'Instruments  in  the  hands  of  God, 'the 

statement  guarded, 550 

Intelletual  nature,  man's,  disproves  ma- 
terialism,   35 

Intellectual  Philosophy,  its  results  as 

real  as  those  of  physical  observation,  30 
Intellectual  pursuits,  their  advantages,  563 
Intelligence,  theory  of  an  unconscious, 

in  nature,  stated  and  refuted,. .26,  27,  83 
Intelligences,  myriads  engaged  in  di- 
vine messages  to  this  earth, 364 

INTERPRETATION,    NEW    TESTAMENT, 

..324-329 

Interpretation,  Biblical,  its  status  at 
end  of  second  quarter  of  the  cen- 
tury,   331 

fourfold,  according  to  Dante 505 

Intuition,  Schelling's  theory  of  direct,    60 

its  relation  to  truth, 171 

Intuitions,  primitive,  called  into  con- 
sciousness by  out  ward  infl  uences, . .  21 

cannot  be  got  rid  of, 22 

what  according  to  Spencer, 50 

Kant's  view  of, 60 

more  than  regulative, 60 

Irving,  Edward,  his  error, 215 

Isaiah's  vision,  its  bearing  on  missions,.  389 
Isocrates'  encomium  on  Heraclitus  ap- 
plied to  Browning, 542 

Italian  cities  in  the  middle  ages,... 499 

Jackals  in  Palestine, 477 

Jaffa  visited, 477 

James,  Henry,  his  novels  character- 
ized,  561 

Janet,  on  will  setting  in  motion  a  series 
of  events  which  could  not  have  oc- 
curred without  its  interposition, ...  24 

Jeremiah,  10:  10, 180 

Jericho,  its  ruins, 477 

Jerome  opposes  pilgrimages, 485 

Jerusalem,  its  appearance,. 478 

Jesus,  Society  of,  as  an  example, 367 

Jevons,  on  author  of  Baconian  philos- 
ophy,  40 

Jocularity  not  incompatible  with  se- 
riousness,   536 

John  of  Damascus,  an  early  theologian,     4 

John,  21:  21,22, 156 

John  the  Baptist,  his  mission,. 227 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  of  Yale,  his  in- 
fluence on  Jonathan  Edwards, 168 

Jones,  Sir  William,  on  "What  consti- 
tutes a  State?" 447 

Joppa  visited, 477 


INDEX. 


609 


Jordan,    the  varied    character   of   its 

course, - 476 

Josephus,  description  of  Christ  in  his 

works  interpolated, . .  - -  -  203 

Joy,  a  reward  of  Heaven, 161 

Jude,  3,  expounded, 558 

Judea.  Wilderness  of,  its  description,..  479 
Judccca,  the  lowest  Hell  according  to" 

Dante, - 512,  513 

Judgment,    the    final,    John    Nelson's 

dream  of,. 529 

Kallirs,  Koussa,  state  of  women  among1,  411 

Knur,  outcome  of  his  philosophy,. 8 

his  idea  of  our  eoneepiion  of  God,...     16 
his  revolt   against  idealistic  skepti- 
cism,  59,61 

showed    that  sense   perceptions   in- 
volve a  firinri  conceptions, 60 

failed  to  see  that  the  testimony  to  the 
nou menu  is  as  valid  as  that  to  the 

phenomena, 60 

only  claimed  for  intuitions  a  subjec- 

tivi-  or  regulative  existence, 60 

his  refutation  of  the  ontological  ar- 
gument for  the  existence  of  God...    84 
maintained   that  things  conform  to 

cognition  not  cognition  to  things,.      84 
on    women's   carrying   learning  for 

show  as  tlu-y  carry  useless  watches,  422 
Kaulhach's  picture  in   the  Royal   .Mu- 
seum, Merlin,  referred  to, 17 

Kemble,  .Mrs.,  her  impulse  when  before 

an  audience, 429 

Kentucky,     underground     rivers     of, 
types    ol'    human    impulses    below. 

consciousness, 96 

'Kept,'  its  double  meaning  in  Genesis 

3  :  24, 393 

Khayyam,  Dinar,  his  fatalistic  teach- 
ing,  '. 533 

Kindergarten,  its  success, 425 

KINGDOM  OF  GOD  AND  ITS  COMING,  358-367 

Kingdom  of  God,  Christ  its  King, 358 

world-kingdoms  imperfect  types  of,.  358 
the  only  truly  universal  monarchy,..  359 

how  prophesied,. 359 

set.  up  in  soul,. 360 

its  pledge  of  naturalization,  the  Holy 

Spirit, 360 

typified  by  divine  rule  in  nature, 360 

is  of  grace  and  not  of  force, 361 

an  actual  union  with  the  life  of  God 

in  Christ,.. 362 

is  one, 362 

its  erection  the  great  end  of  God's 

economy  of  redemption, 363 

is  not  of  this  earth  alone, 363 

once  established  is  never  destroyed, ..  364 

its  almost  incredible  greatness, 365 

it  shall  come, 365 

agencies  through  which  it  comes, 365 

demands  the  best  energies  of  every 

young  man, 366 

39 


Kingdom  of  God,  its  majesty  furnishes 

an  incitement  to  labor, 366 

it  shall  be  a  blessed  place  to  the  true 

laborer, 367 

to  foes  a  falling  stone  grinding  to 

powder, -. 367 

King's  Chamber  in  Great  Pyramid, 473 

Kingsley,  Charles,  on  ancient  tragedy,.  533 
Kinship  with  the  sinning  a  ground  of 

sympathetic  suffering, 217 

'  Know '  explained  as  '  limit '  or  'define,'    51 
Knowledge  rests  on  more  than  facts, . .    10 

Spencer's  theory  of, 47 

according    to  Spencer,  transformed 

sensations, 50 

its  sources  according  to  Locke, 58 

involves  more  than  is  conveyed  by 

sensation, 68 

does   not   require  identity   between 

knowerand  thing  known, 70 

how  much  a  man  may  lawfully  ao- 

quire, 463 

Knowledge,  relativity  of, 47 

term    borrowed    from    Mansel    and 

Hamilton, 47 

a  watchword  of  Spencer's   philoso- 
phy. -  - 47 

puts  into  our  knowledge  a  vitiating 

subjective  element, 47 

a  reprehensible  mystification  of  truth,    48 

Knox,  encomium  upon, 557,  280 

Krauth  on  Idealism, 71 

Krupp,  adopted  co-operative  system  at 

Essen, 456 

Labor,  its  advantages  to  a  sinful  race,.  391 

its  place  in  Political  Economy, 446 

chief  origin  of  wealth, 446 

Hobbes  on, 440 

Adam  Smith  on, 446 

division  of,  its  advantages,. 448 

productive  and  unproductive, 449 

its  value  rests  on  mental  and  moral 

qualities  entering  into, 449 

its  value  ascertained  by  regarding  it 

as  "service,".. 449 

is  likely  to  have  a  larger  share  of 

profits  than  previously, 455 

Landor,  Walter  Savage,  on  Browning,.  535 
Language,  formation  of,  an  instance  of 

unconscious  intelligence, 26 

Laplace,  his  scheme  of  universe, 44 

Law,  lixed  and  not  phenomenal, 10 

prod  uces  phenomena, 10 

involves  causation, 11 

essential  to  logic, 11 

natural,  God's  ordinary  channel  of 

working, 46 

imperceptible  to  the  senses, 48 

new  conception  of,  confirmatory  of 

Scripture-realism, 165 

perfection  of  divine, 176 

as  related  to  God, 184 

tyranny  of  modern  idea  of,...  ..184 


610   . 


INDEX. 


Law,  not  an  exhaustive  expression  of 

divine  will, 185 

God's,  a  transcript  of  his  being, 192 

holiness  in  requirement, 192 

divine  and  human,  not  co-ordinate, 

245,246 

Laws  of  nature,  what?.. 184 

how  man  uses  them, 184, 185 

Laying-on  of  hands  in  Ordination,  con- 
veys no  new  grace, 265 

symbolic  of  public  side  of  ordination,  265 

conveys  authority, 265 

LEADERSHIP,  TRAINING  FOR, 314-318 

Leaders,  church  must  have, 314 

Leadership  desirable  in  the  church, 314 

training- for  needed, 315 

requires  confldence.in  the  truth, 317 

LEADINGS,  GOD'S, ._ 560-562 

Learning1,  according1  to  I$>rd  Bacon, 463 

LEAVING  THE  NINETY  AND  NINE,... 368-377 

Lecky's  philosophy,  its  results, 58 

Leclaire,  his  conduct  as  employer, 455 

Leibnitz,  his  nM  Intellectus, 58 

Leighton,  Archbishop,  on  the  ministry,  299 
Lessing,  on  a  revelation  revealing-  noth- 
ing-,   129 

Lewes,  his  antag-onism  to  metaphysics,      8 

his  idea  of  philosophy, 49 

Leyden  jar,  brain  resembles, 552 

Licensure,  what? 260 

Life,  superior  to  mechanical  and  chem- 
ical forces,. 34 

its  relation  to  protoplasm, 34 

reveals  idea  both  in  animal  and  plant,    34 

originates  from  preceding-  life 35 

not  the  result  but  cause  of  organiza- 

tion, 35 

its  origin  from  inorg-anic  elements,  an 

unscientific  assumption, 35 

comes  from  an  immaterial  source,...    35 

a  reward  of  heaven, 161 

present,  finality  of  its  decisions, 177 

human,  modern  idea  of  its  sacredness,  207 
'  Like  people,  like  priest,'  good  sense  of 

adage, 557 

Limitation,  self-,  divine,  involved   in 

God's  perfection,. 75 

greatest  proof  of  will  and  power, 186 

shown  in  person  of  Christ, 186 

Lion-like  features  of  character,  what?  396 
Lives,  human,  according-  to  Pantheism,  8 
4  Living-  creatures, '  term  applied  to 

cherubim, 396 

'Living  Temple,'  Howe's, alluded  to,...      4 

Locke,  his  influence, 5,  7 

derives  our  knowledge  from  sensa- 
tion,  58 

his  notion  of  reflection, 58 

not  always  consistent, 58 

his  dictum,.. 58 

opened  the  way  to  French  sensation- 
alism,   58 

influence  of  his  teaching-  on  morals, . .    58 


Locke,  influence  of  his  teaching  on  re- 
ligion, ... 58 

influence  on  Berkeley, 58- 

Kant's  criticism  on  his  system, 60 

on  Inspiration, 155 

influence  on  modern  Idealism, 166 

Logic,  an  overweening,  at  war  with  the 

'existing  qualities  of  nature, 6 

requires  recognition  of  law, 11 

Lombards  and  Pope  Alexander  III, 499 

Lotze,  his  Idealism, 62 

Love  defined, 193 

"  Love  and  Death,"  a  painting  by  Watts,  525 
"Love  and  Life,"  a  painting  by  Watts,  5^5 
Lucretius  revived  in  modern  material- 
ists,     39 

the  influence  of  his  teachings, 56 

Luke  24:  26, 213 

Luther,  his  mistake  in  not  founding 

Theological  Seminaries, 300 

Luxuries,  required  by  high  mental  de- 
velopment,    464 

consumption  of,  how  far  right  for 

Christian, ....464,467 

Luxury,  must  not  waste  money  in, 465 

a  temperate,  what? 465 

must  be  consistent  with  love  of  God 

and  man, 465 

must  not   be   permitted   to    harden 

heart, 466 

must  not  make  this  life  the  chief  ob- 
ject,   466 

must  be  means  to  a  higher  end, 466 

must  not  interfere  with  claims  of  re- 
ligion,   46ft 

indulgence  in,  a  question  of  personal 

conscience, 466,  467 

Lyall,  William,  on  will, 123 

Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  on  geology  as  earth's 

autobiography, 4& 

M.  C.  B.,  the  legend  on  the  Maccabean 

standard, 367 

Madonna  della  Seggiola  of  Raphael,  de- 
scribed,  413 

Maker,  in  what  sense  man  is, 527 

Malice,  its  punishment   according   to 

Dante, 512 

M<in  i.s/  f/vfxr/-/.x,2/, 37 

Man,  a  drop  of  water  which  can  reflect 

heaven  and  earth, 8 

each,  born  an  Aristotelian  or  Platon- 

ist,.. 23 

a  microcosm, 24 

conquers  nature, 24 

is  what  he  eats,  says  Feuerbach, 37 

cannot  be  evolved  from  mere  brute,.    46> 
a  drop  of  water  which  chooses  wheth- 
er it  will  fall  into    the    Rhine  or 

Rhone, 123 

the  power  which  gave  him  being  must 

think  and  will, 181 

never  absolutely  holy  in  this  world, 

....189,190 


INDEX. 


611 


Man,  his  duty  to  himself, 190,191 

the  intelligence  and  voice  of  nature,.  395 
before  Fall,  perhaps  the  climax  of 

creaturely  perfection, 395 

ennobled  by  the  possession  of  the  qual- 
ities typified  by  the  cherubim,. .  .395, 396 
how  related  to  Pope  and  Emperor  ac- 
cording to  Dante, 506 

Mandeville,  Sir  John,  his  travels, 500 

Manhood,  dignity  of,  taught  by  Chris- 
tianity,..   447 

tauyht  by  Political  Economy, 447 

not  an  intuitive  idea, 447 

denied  by  greatest  masters  of  ancient 

thought, 447 

its  development  the  aim  of  social  sci- 

enee, 448 

prohibits  that  man  be  lived, 448 

MANHOOD  IN  THK  MINISTRY, 548-557 

Mansel,  his  treatment  of  religious  faith 
unsatisfactory, 16 

his  suggested  practical  answer  to 
Fichte's  illustration  of  the  un- 
chan<jeableness  of  natural  se- 
quences,    135 

Maorics,  fate  of  a  wise  man  among, 318 

Mar  Saba,  aseent  to, 480 

Marheineeke.  (,n  the  improbability  of 

women  I  leeoming  too  learned, 430 

Marriage,  covenant  of,  in  Eden, 400 

what   it  is 406 

age  for,  discussed, 428 

unlawful  in  one  State  may  be  lawful 
in  another. 434 

valid  though  both  parties  go  into  an- 
other State  to  evade  laws  of  their 
<>wii, 436 

by  a  person  divorced  in  N.  Y.  State, 
valid  in  that  State,  if  legally  con- 
summated in  another 434 

to  deceased  wife's  sister,  though  le- 
gally consummated  in  Denmark, 
held  invalid  in  England, 434 

law  of  domicile  applies  to,  according 
to  Lord  Chancellor  Campbell, 434 

Judges  Westbrook  and  Story  would 
apply  law  of  domicile  to, 434 

of  a  person  in  N.  Y.  State  not  dissolved 
by  a  divorce  issued  in  Ohio, 435 

should  be  equally  with  divorce  under 
law  of  domicile, 435 

Bishop  denies  that  law  of  domicile  ap- 
plies to, 436 

"  wretched  condition  of  law  regard- 
ing,"   437 

law  of  Scripture  regarding, 437-440 

sanctity  of,  among  Hebrews, 437 

formalities  prescribed  by  Mosaic  law 
before  its  dissolution,  their  benefi- 
cent intent, 437 

Christ's  exposition  of  its  original  law,  438 

some  modification  of  Christ's  teaching 
by  St.  Paul,  asserted  and  denied, 438 


Marriage,  not  a  mere  civil  contract, 442 

an  ordinance  of  God, 443 

is  the  mutual  merging  in  one  another 
of  the  personal  liberties  of  the  con- 
tractors,   442 

not  a  mere  partnership,. 442 

not  a  sacrament, 442 

yet  it  is  sacred, 442 

law  regulating,  a  part  of  international 

law, 433 

has  legal  ubiquity  of  operation, 433 

its  validity  to  be  decided  by  law  of 

place  where  celebrated, 433 

may  be  declared  null  and  void  in  cer- 
tain cases,  wherever  celebrated,  by 

express  declaration  of  statute, 433 

though  illegal  if  contracted  within  N. 
Y.  state,  yet  if  contracted  without 
the  State  is  not  illegal,  because  of 
absence  from  Statutes  of  express 
clause  declaring  such  marriage  null 

and  void, 433 

the  state  of  law  in  U.  S.  A.  concerning,  434 

Brook  vs.  Brook. 434 

Cropsey  vs.  Ogden, 435 

F.rkeubrach  vs.  Erkenbrach, 487 

Kerrison  vs.  Kerrison, 434 

Marshall  vs.  Marshall,. 432,433,434 

O'Deavs.O'Dea, 437 

People  vs.  Baker, 435 

People  vs.  Hovey, 436 

Ponsford  vs.  Johnson, 434 

Thorp  vs.  Thorp, 436 

Van  Voorhis  vs.  Brintnall, 436 

Martineau,    James,    on     philosophers 

braining  themselves, 9 

on  statistical  averages, i    24 

on  '  the  ought  to  be  other  than  what 

is,' 3 

Martyr,  Justin,  on  the  youth  of  Christ,  202 
Massey,    Gerald,   the    poet    of    labor, 

quoted  on  its  anticipations, 457 

Mastery  of  self,  its  nature,  advantages 

and  conditions 563-566 

Material  cause,  what? 92 

Materialism,  its   vicious   efforts  after 

monism, 6,  7 

the  driftof  unbelief  in  the  present  day,    31 
colors  science,  literature,  education, 
philanthropy  and  theology  of  the 

time, 31 

must  be  met  and  neutralized  by  Chris- 
tianity,   31 

what? 31,32 

propounded  by  Demooritus  and  Epi- 
curus,   32 

rises  in  periods  of  national  and  social 

declension, 32 

contains  a  small  amount  of  truth, 32 

a  protest  against  Idealism, 32 

ignores  anything  above  or  behind  the 
existence  and  working  of  material 
elements, .  32 


612 


INDEX. 


Materialism,  its  refutation  from  three 

different  sources, 32-38 

furnishes  no  proper  cause  for  the  uni- 
verse,     33 

its  doctrine  that  force  is  a  property  of 

matter  untenable, 33 

cannot  explain  the  force  subjected  to 

idea  present  in  the  universe, 33,  34 

cannot  explain  the  phenomena  of  life,    34 

disproved  by  facts  of  our  being, 35 

cannot  educe  intellect  from  matter, . .    35 
cannot  reduce  to  physical  measure- 
ments thought  or  feeling, 35 

regards  mind  as  a  tablet  on  which  sen- 
sations make  their  mark, 35 

cannot  make  thought  a  link  in  any 

series  of  material  phenomena, 35 

in  its  suggested  explanation  of  mind 
contradicts  facts  of  consciousness,.  36 

destroys  free  will, 36 

its  determinism, 36 

its  outcome  rigidly  necessitarian — 36,  37 

annihilates  conscience, 37 

how  Martineau  came  to  revolt  against 

it, -..- --    37 

gives  up  immortality  of  soul, 37 

logically,  it  is  Atheism,. ._ 37,  38 

disproved  by  facts  of  our  religious  na- 
ture,..   38 

in  what  it  originates, 38 

refuted  by  a  sense  of  sin  in  the  soul,.    38 
cannot  explain  the  person  of  Christ, . .    38 

impossible  to  the  Berkeleian, 58 

monistic  in  its  scheme  of  the  uni- 
verse, .... 70 

an  argumentum  ad  ignorau tiam, 70 

MATERIALISTIC  SKEPTICISM, 31-38 

Mathematical  truth,  merely  phenome- 
nal, according  to  Positivism, 11 

Matter,  interpreted  by  mind, 3 

and  spirit,  neither  can  be  ignored,...      6 
in  the  act  of  knowing  it,  what  other 

acts  involved, 9 

what,  according  to  Positivism, 11 

not  a  sufficient  cause  for  universe, ...    33 

in  its  last  analysis,  what? 43 

Boscovitch's  idea  of, 43 

if  force,  purely  subjective 43 

known  with  the  same  certainty  we 

know  our  existence, 43 

not  developed  from  loose  forces  in  an 

'empty  void, 44 

indestructibility  of,  no  a  prioH  truth,    44 

its  inertia, 44 

its  motion  inexplicable  without  ad- 
justment,   44 

external,  Berkeley  declined  to  postu- 
late as  cause  of  sensations, 58 

definition  of ,  by  Mill, 59 

definition  of,  by  Huxley, 59 

supposition  of  its  existence,  contrary 
to  common-sense  according  to 
Berkeley, .59 


Matter,  according  to  prevailing  philos- 
ophy, 'only  definable  in  terms  of 

sensation,' 64 

only  has  meaning  in  connection  with 

mind, 65 

its  eternity  held  by  most  ante-Chris- 
tian and  many  modern  philosophers,    81 
Maudsley,  on  design  implying  imper- 
fection in  God, 12 

Maxwell,  Professor  Clerk,  on  atoms  as 

'manufactured  articles,' 44 

McCosh,  James,  his  scheme  of  philos- 
ophy midway  between  Nescient  and 

Omniscient  schemes, 16 

Medicine,  students  of,  in  danger  of  pass- 
ing over  spiritual  facts, 19 

Mechanical    philosophy,    the    present 

vogue, 31 

employment  destructive  of  virtue  ac- 
cording to  Aristotle, 447 

Memphis  visited, 470,475 

Mental  energy,  not  a  physical  force,...    35 

not  measured  by  physical  tests, 35 

Mental  facts,  demonstrable, 20 

Mercantile  theory,  of  Political  Econ- 
omy, its  teachings  and  effects, 449 

Metaphysical  inquiry  equally  valid  with 

physical, 20 

Metaphysics,  denied  by  philosophy  of 

Nescience, 8 

and  theology,  both  declared  by  Comte 
a  relic  of  the  infancy  of  the  race,. . .    13 

a  science  of, 20 

at  basis  of  all  other  science, .20,  21 

many  terms  of  science   have  their 

meaning  from, 21,  22 

unconsciously  admitted  by  deniers, ..    22 
Metellus,  Censor,  his  opinion  of  women, 

410,411 

Middle  Ages,  great  idea  of, 492 

Mihi  Vivere  Christus,  a  motto, 585 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  his  erudition  and  acu- 
men,   8 

his   inconsistency    in    use    of    word 

'  cause,' 22 

his  opinion  of  validity  of  mathemati- 
cal axioms, 49 

a  Humist, 59 

his  definition  of  matter, 59 

his  definition  of  mind, 59 

his  object  of  worship, 77 

his  argument  from  seeming  imperfec- 
tions in  nature, 83 

on  '  Subjection  of  Women,' 403 

on  marriage, 407 

his  portrait, 525 

his  idea  of  God  in  relation  to  uni- 
verse,    542 

Milton,  John,  his  influence  on  English 

religious  thought, 507 

Mind,  not  a  modification  effected  in 
brain  of  a  common  ultimate  physi- 
cal force,...  6 


INDEX. 


013 


Mind,  what,  according  to  philosophy  of 
Xfscience, 8 

as  open  to  investigation  as  matter,...      9 

w  1  nit,  according-  to  Positivism, 11 

in  nature,  as  plain  to  observer  as  in- 
telligence in  other  men  is  plain  to 

him, 27 

presents  the  truest  image  of  God, 28 

active  in  its  knowing, ,35 

connected  with  but  not  identical  with 

matter, 35 

its  testimony  to  its  own  nature, 36 

cannot  begot  from  matter, 46 

not  a  t'.tlniln  ru*<\  at  start,   48 

its  a  priori  cognitions, 48 

.ietined  by  Mill, 59 

(1. 'tilled  by  Herk.'ley. 59 

notan  idea, 66 

not  a  succession  of  feelings. 66 

Minister,  its  meaning, 250,449 

Christian,  regard  bestowed  on  his  per- 
son in  early  New  Kngland  days, 285 

his  oflic«>  now  too  generally  regarded 

as  a  mere  pn>rc->i..n 286 

should  have  a  conviction  that  he  Is 

called  of  (5«,(1,. 286 

characteristics      prominent      in      his 

youth, 545 

his  true  in tluence  arises  from  presence 

of  Christ  within, 

tlie  advantages  which  tlow  from  his 
possession    of    the    self-sucriflcing 

spirit  of  Christ, 548 

hn  two  »Tcat  principles, 548 

must   be  a  true  man, 

his  manhood  to  be  sought  in  Christ,..  549 

what  lie  is  not, 549 

should   seek  at'ier  a   s"lf-di-termined 

activity  of  all  his  powers, ."..".u 

should  he  a  man  of  one  purpose, 551 

his   pulpit   should  be  the  focus  of  a 

world-wide  whispering-gallery, ;">1 

should  preach  as  possessing  ' one  only 

life/ .Vd.  :,:# 

dependent  on  God  for  power, 552 

obtains  spiritual  intluenc*'  by  submis-    ' 
sion  to  the  laws  of  its  communica- 
tion,     553 

should  be  an  agent  rather  than  an  in- 

stru  ment, 553 

not  a  h^and-,  but  a  power-machin 
an    arrow   in    the   hand   of  the   Al- 
mighty,   553 

should  have  enthusiasm, 553 

should  be  a  man  of  much  prayer, 553 

needs  passive  courage, 555 

needs  especially  active  courage, 555 

should  possess  intelligent  independ- 
ence,   555 

should  be  fearlessly  frank  of  speech,.  555 

influenced  by  the  national  spirit, 555 

should  impress  by  earnestness  of  phys- 
ical  energy, 556 


Minister,  should  not  be  impeded  by  tra- 
ditional rules, 556 

should  cultivate  practical  force,. .555,  556 
should  have  a  better  motto  than  '  hold 

the  fort,' 556 

should  seek  to  fulfill  in  a  sense  'like 

people  like  priest,' 557 

his  prerogative,  great  boldness, 557 

his  courage  should  come  from  Christ 

as  the  heart  of  his  life, 557 

must  oppose  to  the  skeptical  dogma- 
tism of  the  times  the  dogmatism  of 

faith, 557 

should  have  a  definite  body  of  truth 

by  which  he  can  stand, 558 

should  have  confidence  and  zeal  in 

the  propagation  of  the  truth,... 558,  559 
in  what  sense  should  preach  develop- 
ment,  559 

how  he  should  preach  the  gospel, 559 

enjoys  the  leadings  of  God, 560 

the  subject  of  God's  Providential  lead- 
ings,  561 

the  subject  of  the  Spirit's  leadings, 

561,  582 

must  master  himself  if  he  would  mas- 
ter others, 5C3 

must  master  his  besetting  sins, 563 

must  master  his  intellectual  powers,.  563 
must  submit  to  actual  circumstances,  563 

mu>t  avoid  denunciation, 564 

must  not  despair, 564 

must  bide  his  time. 564 

is    weakened    by    consciousness    of 

secret  sins 564,  565 

should  exemplify  the  divine  law, 565 

should  manifest    the   presence  with 

him  of  a  personal  Christ, 505 

his  true  self  must  put  down  his  false,  565 

isashepherd, 567 

should  be  open-minded  to  receive  and 

to  communicate  truth, 567 

should  avoid  subterfuge, 567 

should  be  hopeful  and  trustful,... 567,  56S 

should  be  sympathetic, 568 

should  not  regard  audience  'as  rows 

of  cabbage,' 570 

should  recognize  his  hearers'  needs, ..  570 
should     adapt     himself     as    Christ 
adapted  himself  to  circumstances, 

570,  571 

should  be  master  of  spiritual  diagi 

nosis, 571 

advantages  which  become  his  from 

adaptation  in  his  preaching, 571,  572 

should  regard  Bible  as  final  standard 

of  appeal, 572 

his  vocation  sublime, 574 

should  study  daily  original  Scriptures,  ">7r> 
should  cultivate  the  homiletic  habit, .  576 
should  cultivate  the  demonstrative 

habit, --.  57(> 

should  maintain  a  believing  habit,  57'>,  577 


614 


INDEX. 


Minister,  how  he  may  cultivate  right 

habits, 577 

himself,  more  than  his  preaching-,  an 

influence,  ...... 577 

will  have  doubts, 578 

his  doubts  do  not  affect  the  truth  of 

the  general  Christian  scheme, 578 

must  not  put  too  much  stress  on  his 

doubts, 579 

must  not  preach  his  doubts, 579 

though  doubting,must  work  and  pray,  579 
must  cherish  a  proper  high-minded- 
ness,. 581 

must  avoid  an  improper  high-minded- 
ness, 581,  582 

should  seek  humility  by  contemplat- 
ing the  cross,  583 

should  have  zeal, 584 

should  avoid  fanaticism, 584 

his  zeal  should  possess  passionate  de- 
votion,   584,  585 

acquires  zeal  by  taking  Christ  into 

heart, 585 

should  receive   Christ  for  personal 

holiness  and  external  influence, 585 

Ministers,    Christian,  present  demand 

for, 299,  300 

trustees  of  "the  faith  once  delivered 

to  the  saints," 558 

MINISTRY,  CLAIMS  or  CHRISTIAN,  ON 
YOUNG  MEN  IN  COURSES  OF  PRE- 
PARATORY STUDY, 269-280 

Ministry,  Christian,  falling  off  of  stu- 
dents for, ...179 

oneness  of  race,  an  argument  for  en- 
tering,   179 

importance  of  guarding  entrance  to,  259 

set  up  by  God, 270 

the  highest  human  vocation, 270,  574 

call  to  enter  it,  more  common  than 

generally  supposed,. 271 

the  nature  of  the  call  to,- 271 

duty  of  seeking  out  candidates  for, . .  272 
thorough  preparation  for,  requisite,-  272 

has  its  infelicities, 272,  273 

compares  favorably  with  other  pro- 
fessions,  273 

has  an  attractive  start, 273 

has  an  assured  social  position, 273 

helps  to  a  symmetrical  manhood,  273-275 
the  agency  of  greatest  usefulness  to 

mankind, 275,  276 

requi  res  self -sacrifice, 276 

its  claim  for  service  rests  on  sin  and 

sorrow  of  world, 277 

proffers  immortal  honors, 278 

MINISTRY,  SOURCES  OF  SUPPLY  FOR,  281-288 
Ministry,  decrease  of  trained  men  en- 
tering it, 281-287 

statistics  showing  fact, 281,  282 

not  counterbalanced  by  increase  of 
ability  among  the  diminished  candi- 
dates,.. 9 


Ministry,  decrease  of  trained  men  en- 
tering, occurs  in  spite  of  a  wide- 
spread demand  for  able  men, 283 

may  be  explained  by  the  prevailing 
philosophy  of  the  time, 283 

may  be  explained  by  the  rush  for  ma- 
terial riches,  .- 283,  285 

may  be  explained  by  the  secularizing 
of  our  colleges, 284,  285 

may  arise  from  a  change  of  view  as 
to  the  divine  nature  of  the  ministry,  285 

may  be  remedied  by  ministers  mak- 
ing their  calling  attractive, 286 

may  be  remedied  by  ministers  walk- 
ing worthy  of  their  vocation, 287 

may  be  remedied  by  laymen  inducing 
suitable  young  men  to  enter  it,. 287,  288 

may  be  remedied  by  a  provision  for 
proper  training  for  the  work, 288 

may  be  remedied  by  affording  student 
suitable  help  during  his  time  of 
study, 288 

should  be  made  a  matter  of  prayer,..  288 
MINISTRY,  LACK  OF  STUDENTS  FOR,  289-293 

statistics  showing  number  of  men 
in,  to  churches, 289 

statistics  showing-  number  of  un- 
trained men  in, 289 

statistics  showing  falling  off  in  stu- 
dents for,  289 

men  of  culture  and  promise  ceasing 
to  enter, 289,  290 

strong  churches  ought  to  furnish  men 
for, 290 

Christians  have  been  indifferent  to  its 
supply, 29J 

parents  are  not  anxious  that  their 
children  should  enter, 291 

should  draw  its  men  from  the  best 
families, 292 

if  more  reverenced,  its  ranks  would 

be  fuller, ....292,  293 

MINISTRY,  EDUCATION  FOR  :  ITS  PRIN- 
CIPLES AND  ITS  NECESSITY, 294-391 

a  divine  appointment, 294,  295 

requires  a  special  education, 295 

Christian,  and  Mosaic  priesthood  dis- 
tinguished,   295 

must  be  abreast  of  life, 296 

of  a  past  generation,  ineffectis^e  now,  296 

requires  education  because  of  skepti- 
cal tendencies  of  the  day, 296 

requires  special  discipline  because  of 
intensity  of  modern  life, 297 

requires  special  training  because  the 
age  one  of  organization, 298 

requires  its  members  to  be  consecra- 
ted and  ardent  students  of  truth, 
298,  299 

training  for  it  should  be  supplied  by 
our  churches,-- - 299 

parents  no  longer  anxious  that  their 
children  should  enter, 299 


INDEX. 


615 


Ministry,  Education  for:  its  dignity,. ..  399 

Archbishop  Leighton  on, 299 

according-  to  George  Herbert, 299 

Baptist,  specially  requires  knowledge 

of  original  Scriptures, -.  300 

MlMSTIJY.  KlMTATION  KOH,  ITS  IDEA 

AND  ITS  KEQUISITKS, 302-313 

requires  special  educational  institu- 
tions,   - 303 

not  numbers,  but  quality  wanted,  309,  544 
dearth  of  candidates  for,  explained, 

319,  320 

rule  of  admission  to,  narrower  than 

that  (it  church  inenilK'rship, 440 

special  qualifications  required  for, ...  440 
candidates  for,  must  be  'blameless,' .  440 
a  man  is  disqualified  lor,  whose  earli- 
•  r   sin    shows   traees   in  his  present 

conduct. 441 

a  man  is  disqualified  for,  who  has  de- 
fied'the  powers  that  be,' 441 

•good  report'  necessary  to, 441 

candidate  for,  must  be,  if  husband  at 

all,  husband  of  one  wife,    _ 441 

its 'three  onlies,'. 545.  546 

the  word  of  (Jod,  its  only  weapon,  ...  545 

its  true  success. '..  545 

faith  in  Christ,  its  energy, 546 

aideil  by  Holy  Spirit,  ..  546 

manhood  a  condition  of  success  in.      :.is 

must  have  power, 552 

enthusiasm  needed  in, 553 

a  prophetic  office,      553 

for  the  period,  spirit  suitable  to, 559 

meets  a  crying  want  of  humanity,...  567 

Minnesingers,  their  rise, 500 

Miracles,  not  impossible  or  improbable,     in 

MutAi  i.i  s.  Tin:  Cincis!  IAN. 129-147 

MIRACLES,    AS   ATTESTING    A    DIVINK 

KEY  ELATION, 1  :.".<- 147 

Miracles.   Christian,    furnish    principal 

evidence  for  Christianity,. 129 

the  external  certification  which  they 

furnish  evidential, 130 

must  lie  defended  as  being  in  the  very 

substance  of  Scripture,. 131 

cannot  be  sundered  from  the  internal 

evidences, 131 

prove  doctrine  and  doctrine  miracles,  131 

not  a  burden,  but  a  support, 132 

why  so  generally  ignored,. 133 

defined,. 132,  133 

not  described  in  Scripture  as  viola- 
tions or  suspensions  of  natural  law,  133 
do  not  necessarily  suspend  or  violate 

natural  law, 134 

may  be  instances  in  which  lower  laws 
and  forces  in  nature  are  transcend- 
ed and  merged  in  higher  ones, 134 

are  possible  if  God  be  possible, 136 

do  they  require  immediate  volitions  of 

God  at  time  of  their  occurrence,  136-139 
*  providential,'  what  ? T 13f5,  137 


Miracles,  Christian,  Babbage's   theory 
of. 137 

provided  for  in  the  original  plan  of      • 
nature, 137,  138 

'unusual,  while  natural  law  is  habit- 
ual, divine  action,' 138 

results  of  immediate  divine  operation, 
reason  for  preferring  to  regard  them 
as, 138,  139 

recurrence  of,  unproved, 139 

if  fully  known  to  us  we  could  not  ex- 
plain them, 140 

are  they  probable? 140,  143 

presumption  against  them  on  account 
of  general  uniformity  of  nature,...  140 

uniformity  of  nature  does  not  render 
them  impossible,.. 140,  141 

principle  of  final  cause  will  account 
for  them,. 141 

shown  to  be  not  impossible  by  occur- 
rence of  geologic  cataclysms,. 141 

probable,  because  physical  universe 
exists  for  moral  ends, 142 

probable,  because  an  exigency  worthy 
of.  such  an  interposition  has  oc- 
curred,   142,  143 

are  they  supported  by  sufficient  evi- 
dence?   143,  144 

the  tnlitio  i>i-im-ii>ii  in  Hume's  argu- 
ment,   143,  144 

can  be  matter  of  testimony  like  other 
facts,..  .'-  144 

their  central  one,  the  resurrection  of 
Christ,  considered  in  detail, 144,  145 

censed  probably  with  first  century,  ..  145 

ceased  with  completion  of  canon, 146 

how  distinguished  from  false, 146 

the  only  miracles  that  rationally  jus- 
tify credence, 147 

civilization  has  not  destroyed  belief 

in  them, 147 

Missionaries,  should  respect  the  inde- 
pendence of  native  churches, 381 

are  evangelists  from  home-churches,  382 

should  inculcate  on  native  churches 
duty  of  self-support  and  self-propa- 
gation,  ^-.  ..  382 

should  have  a  double  faith, 382 

should  develop  native  agency, 383 

the  character  of  the  men  who  should 
be, 383 

should  serve  apprenticeship, 384 

should  be  brought  home  frequently,.  384 

should  have  interviews  Avith  home 
Committee, : 384 

should  be  amenable  to  discipline  at 
at  hand  of  executive,.. 384 

Jesus  Christ,  the  greatest  of, 388 

Missions,  rest  upon  a  conviction  of  the 
oneness  of  the  race.  - 179,  373 

are  paralyzed  by  the  teaching  of  a 
future  larger  opportunity  for  the 
heathen, - 179 


616 


INDEX. 


Missions,  must  follow  lines  of  secular 

effort, 370 

.  rest  on  a  self-imparting  love, 371 

commenced  among  a  lapsed  Semitic 

race, 372 

of  apostles,  did  not  overlook  out-of- 
the-way  places, 372 

to  barbarous  Britons, 372 

re-creative  in  their  influence, 372 

a  century,  a  brief  time  to  test  them,..  373 
a  universal  devotion  to,  would  hasten 

millennium, - 375,  376 

their  present  danger  not  enthusiasm, 

but  self-indulgence, 375 

safety  of  church  lies  in, 375 

MISSIONS,  ECONOMICS  OF, 378-386 

Missions,  seventy  years   of  American 

Baptist, 378 

economics  of, 378 

should  be  established  among  degrad- 
ed and  weak  tribes, 378 

to  Burmans  and  Karens  contrasted,..  379 
must  not  overlook  intellectual  and  re- 
fined peoples, 379 

should  have  persistent  reinforcement,  379 
must  be  an  exhibition  of  Christian 

life, 379 

find  a  help  in  lack  of  individuality 

among  heathen, 379 

evangelization  the  principal  branch 

of, 380 

medical,  not  much  needed, 380 

education  need  not  precede, 380 

their   converts   should   be   gathered 

into  churches  without  delay, 381 

their  churches,  character  of, 381 

must  not  develope  into  episcopacy,..  381 
their  converts  not  to  be  kept  in  per- 
petual tutelage, 382 

their   slow  progress  in    France   ex- 
plained,  382 

importance  of  visiting-deputations  to 

their  various  fields, 385 

separate  fields  should  be  assigned  to 

individual  churches, 385 

are  the  greatest  argument  for  Chris- 
tianity.,  388 

are  the  distinctive  mark  of  Christian- 
ity,    388 

the  record  of,  has  enlarged  the  con- 
ception of  humanity, 388 

show  what  Christianity  really  is, -.388,  389 
based  upon  four  fundamental  doc- 
trines,  389 

Christianity  is  an  argument  for, 389 

love    for,    connected   witii   love    to 

Christ, 389 

our  attitude  to,  a  test  of  character, ...  389 
Missions,  modern  theory  of,  founds  it- 
self on  laws  of  civilization  and  pro- 
gress  369 

pays  little  attention  to  commands  and 
promises  of  Scripture, ...  369 


Missions,  modern  theory  of,  would  con- 
fine its  efforts  to  the  intelligent  and 

advancing  races, 369 

adduces  apostolic  missions  as  planted 

mostly  in  centres  of  influence, 369 

would  confine  missions  to  America 
since  best  races  represented  here,..  370 

an  element  of  truth  in,. 370 

wrong,  because  it  would  not  preach 

gospel  to  every  creature, 371 

violates  that  instinct  of  Christian  love 

which  stoops  to  the  weakest,  _ 371 

is  opposed  to  the  method  which  has 

been  historically  successful, 372 

ignores  the  solidarity  of  the  race, 372 

contemns  the  elevating  grace  of  self- 
abandonment, 374 

contravenes  the  plan  that  gives  most 

glory  to  Christ, 375 

deserts  the  example  of  our  Savior,. . .  376 
hesitates  to  cast  itself  absolutely  upon 

the  divine  power  and  promise, 376 

MISSIONS,  THEOLOGY  OF, ....387-390 

Moffat,  Robert,  his  mistake  as  to  athe- 
ism of  certain  African  tribes, 78 

Mohammedanism,  to  an  extent  a  mis- 
sionary religion, 388 

its  moral  teaching,. 388 

Money,  not,  of  itself,  root  of  every  evil,  461 
Monism,  in  eVery  form,  fatal  to  theol- 
ogy,       7 

is  either  Materialism  or  Pantheism, . .      7 

false  in  every  form, 24 

adopted  by  Spencer, 47 

its  fascination  for  philosophic  mind..    55 

Mont  Blanc,  illustration  from, 5 

Moody,  D.  L.,  an  example  of  consecra- 
tion,  565 

Mount  of  Penitence,  its  discipline  of 

souls, 516,  517 

Moral  argument  for  existence  of  God, 

see  Anthropological 

Moral  inquiry  as  valid  as  physical  re- 
search,   20 

Moral  feelings  affirm  not  advantage  but 

obligation, 53 

ideas  latent  in  mind  of  a  child, 77 

obligation,    according     to     Spencer 

founded  in  utility  or  happiness, 54 

quality  of  an  action,  in  what  it  resides, 

according  to  Hopkins  and  Ernmons,  117 
Moral  truth,  as  '  positive '  as  physical, . .    20 
demonstrable  by  its  own  evidence, ...    20 
has    its   place   in   every    system    of 

thought, 22 

Morality,   Christian,   its  rules  co-inci- 
dent with  those  of  utility, 451 

Morals  and  science,  complementary, ...    20 

Mosaic  cosmogony,  evolutionary, 45 

Motion  of  matter,  its  source, 33 

what  implied  in  its  existence, 44 

evolutionary,  requires  co-ordinating 
intelligence, 44 


INDEX. 


617 


Motive  is  the  man, 133 

Motives,  by  which  an  unregenerate  per- 
son may  be  led  to  give  preliminary 

attention  to  truth, - 119 

not  causes  but  occasions  of  an  action, 

121,  123 

free  agency  power  to  choose  between, 

121,122 

compounded   of   external   presenta- 
tions and  internal  dispositions, 122 

do  not  determine  will,. 123 

will  obeys  them,  yet  is  active,  elec- 
tive, sovereign  in  its  obedience, 123 

Mozley,  on  the  two  ruling  ideas  con- 
cerning: God, - 143 

Mtiller,  Julius,  his  modified  determin- 
ism,  - 122 

on  the  attributes  of  God, 189 

on    Christ,  if  only    human    nature, 

necessarily  sinful, 205 

Mulford,  Elishti.  his  theology  tends  to 
make  God  in  human  spirit  the  only 

ran*', 167 

Munger,  Theodore  T.,  his  New  Theol- 
ogy,   167 

Murphy  on  conscience  as  an  evidence 

forGod, 84 

^<tti  c»n*\tme,re  fruges,  who  in  Political 

Economy, 449 

Natural  Realism,  Reid  an  advocate  of,.    61 
Nature,  adaptations   in,  according   to 
Positivism,  results   of   mechanical 

laws,.. ---.    12 

alone  gives  us  no  conception  of  mind 

or  of  God,.. 23 

must  be  interpreted   by  our  know- 
ledge of  mind, 24 

its  conquest  by  man,  the  idea  of  mod- 
ern civilization, 24 

becomes  a  revelation  of  God,  if  in- 
terpreted by  what  we  find  within 

ourselves, 29 

the  terra  defined, 132 

Nature,  its   uniformity,  not  absolute 

and  universal, 140 

not  a  truth  of  reason,.. 141 

not  supported  by  science, 141 

amenable  to  moral  law, 142 

the  garment  of  Deity  from  which  he 

can  '  make  bare  his  arm,' 390 

conquered  by  man's  obedience, 553 

Naville,  Ernest,  on  human  liberty, 95 

Nazareth,  its  prominent  features,.. .482,  483 
Neaves,  Lord,  his  witty  lines  on  Mill 

and  Hume, 11 

Nebular  hypothesis,  illustration  from,.      2 
'  Necessary,  the,'  and  '  customary '  can- 
not be  confounded, 11 

Necessary  laws  of  mind  must  be  as- 
sumed in  the  very  attempt  to  deny 

them, 49 

Nero,  Paul's  direction  to  obey  him,  how 
to  be  understood, . .  . .  402 


Nero,  the  philosophy  of  Nescience  com- 
pared to,. 8 

Nescience,  the  philosophy  of,  denies  di- 
rect knowledge  of  mind, 8 

demolishes  all  philosophy, 8 

denies  existence  of  mind, 8 

how  it  explains  what  is  called  *  mind,'      8 
regards  thought  as  mere  cerebration,      8 
looks  upon  religious  and  moral  con- 
ceptions as  only  diseased  imagina- 
tions,       8 

Comte,  its  coryphaeus, 9 

its  stock  argument  against  Theism, . .    51 

Nestorianism,  nominalistic, 164 

Newman,  John  Henry,  his  history  af- 
fected by  his  idealistic  notions, 7 

on  miracles,. 138 

Newton,  his  idea  of  gravitation, 33 

Niger,  the  river,  an  illustration  from,..    16 

Nile,  description  of, 47& 

NINETY  AND  NINE,  LEAVING  THE, .368-377 
usual  interpretations  of  the  parable,.  368 

ant  hor's  interpretation, 369 

Nominalism,  what? 164 

its  two  principal  applications  in  the- 
ology,   164 

atomistic,  .v 164 

as  regards  divine  nature  involves  vir- 
tual tritheism, 164 

conceives  of  the  divine  attributes  as 

mere  names, 164 

regards  mankind  as  a  collection  of  in- 
dividuals, ..-- 165 

inconsistent  with  a  common  Fall  and 

e.immon  Redemption, 165 

Non  t'lt'iii  inifi-iiiiiir, 101 

Non    posse  pcccare,   characteristic   of 

whom, 107 

Non  posse  non  peccare,  characteristic  of 

whom, 107 

Noumena,  testified  to  by  reason,. 60 

Oberlin  "China  Band," 385 

Obligation  founded  in  the  moral  char- 
acter of  God, 55 

Occam,  an  early  Nominalist, 164 

'Occasional  cause,' what?. 92 

CEdipus,  his  fate  that  also  of  evolu- 
tion,     46 

his  fate  an  unchristian  conception,. . .  120 

Olives,  Mount  of,  its  appearance, 478 

Olshausen,  on  the  word  of  God, 16S 

on  divine  knowing  being   equal   to 

willing, 165 

Omar,  the  Saracen  Caliph, 485 

Omar  Khayyam,  his  teaching, 533 

Oneness  of  self,  origin  of  idea  of  unity 

in  nature, 22 

ONLIES,  THE  THREE, .544-546 

Ontological  argument  for  existence  of 
God,  founded  on  abstract  necessary 

ideas  of  mind, 84 

is  now  generally  abandoned, 84 

its  false  assumption, 84 


618 


INDEX. 


Orchids,  Darwin  on  '  design '  in  arrange- 
ments for  their  fertilization, '  12 

Order,  idea  of,  jts  origin, 22 

Ordinances,  their  form  significant, 247 

their  mutual  order  significant, 247 

because  monumental,  must  have  form 

carefully  preserved, 247 

ORDINATION,    COUNCILS    OF,    THEIR 

POWERS  AND  DUTIES,. 259-268 

Ordination,  its  importance, 260 

of  deacons, - 2»50,  268 

its  preliminary  stage, 260 

its  complementary  stage, 260 

the  act  of  the  local  church, 260 

council  but  assistant  in, 260 

may  be  attended  to  in  extreme  cases 

without  or  in  spite  of  a  council, 260 

its  nature  explained,... 265 

certain  accompaniments  of....... 265 

import  of  prayer  and  laying-on   of 

hands  therein, 265,  266 

ministers  coming  from  other  bodies 

should  receive, 266 

involves  three  things, 266 

the  public  service  in,  its  order  de- 
tailed,   267 

to  whom  should  it  be  granted, 268 

Ordination,  councils  of,  they  guard  en- 
trance of  ministry, 259 

called  into  existence  by  local  church,  259 

have  advisory  power  onl y, 259 

have  moral  influence, 259 

neglect   of   their   advice,  a   serious 

step,.... 260 

confer  no  special  grace, 260 

help  local  churches  to  determine  upon 

call  and  qualifications  of  candidate,  260 
grant  authorization  to  exercise  gifts 

within  denomination, 260 

may  have  unordained  members, 261 

should  discharge  their   duties   most 

solemnly  and  scrupulously, 261 

should  be  effectively  constituted, 262 

ministerial  and  lay  elements  in  them 

should  be  properly  balanced, 262 

their     examination     of     candidates 

should  be  public, 262 

their  deliberations  subsequent  to  ex- 
amination should  be  private,. 262 

proposed  rules  of  procedure, 263-264 

Organization,  only  explicable  on  hy- 
pothesis of  an  organizing  force  su- 
perior to  matter, 34 

"  Orients  himself,"  the  expression  al- 
luded to, 302 

Origen  on  •  development '  in  Genesis, . .    45 
Othello's  treatment  of  Desdemona  re- 
ferred to, 580 

Ought,  more  imperative  than  self-inter- 
est,   54 

Oung-pen-la,  its  influence, 374 

Outness,  what  it  is  and  what  it  sup- 
poses,    .  67 


Overbeck's  picture  of  the  child-Christ,  202 

Ox-like  character,  what? 396 

P.,  impressed  upon  forehead  of  each 

penitent  in  Purgatory, 526 

Palaestra  of  the  Greeks  referred  to, 307 

I'ah-siine,  recollections  of, 474-179 

method  of  travelling  in, 474,  475 

extent  and  accessibility  of, 475 

its  advantageous  situation, 475,  476 

a  sample  land, 476 

Mediterranean  route  through, 47*5,  477 

its  mountaiuousness, 477 

objects  of  visiting,. 479 

what  it  was  to  the  Crusaders, 496 

Paley,  utilitarian  and  materialistic, 5 

did  not  sufficiently  recognize  divine 

immanence, 167 

Paradise,  of  the  Diviu<  dnncdji, 520-522 

its  description  the  poet's  loftiest  ef- 
fort therein, ...518,519 

its  nature  too  elevated  for  popular 

appreciation, __  519 

is  a  state  of  will  freed  from  earthly 

desire,.... 519 

in  it,  the  capacity  of  perfection  varies,  519 
its  law  one  of  upward  gravitation,...  519 

Beatrice,  Dante's  guide  in, 519 

its  outward  surroundings  accompani- 
ments of  character,.. 519 

its  heaven  of  the  moon, 519 

its  heaven  of  Mercury, 520 

its  heaven  of  Venus, 520 

its  heaven  of  the  Sun, 520 

its  heaven  of  Mars, 520 

its  heaven  of  Jupiter, 520 

its  heaven  of  Saturn, 520 

its  heaven  of  the  Fixed  Stars, 520 

its  heaven  of  the  Primum  Mobile, 520 

among  its  privileges,  a  revelation  of 

the  Trinity  in  Unity, 520 

its  ruling  conception,  light  qualified 

by  love,... - 521 

in  it,  nearness  to  God  and  service  to 

his  creatures  are  com  bined, -  522 

rank  in,  determined  by  strength  of 

vision  of  God, 522 

'The  Rose  of  the  Blessed,'  its  connec- 
tion with  the  lower  heavens, -  522 

constituted  by  a  combination  of  holi- 
ness and  love,.. 523 

perfect   sympathy   and   communion 

between  the  spirits  in 523 

Parcimony,  the  law  of,  urged  by  Ham- 
ilton against  Berkeley's  views, 64 

Park,   Dr.,   of  Andover,   on   Original 

Sin, 169 

on  Will, 169 

on  Atonement,.. 174 

llappT»<7ia,  its  meaning  enlarged  on, 555 

Pascal,  on  the  mutual  dependence  of 

miracles  and  morals,- 131 

PASTOR,  MENTAL   QUALITIES   lfK<,>rr- 
SITE  TO,...  560-569 


INDEX. 


G19 


••Paul,  by  inspiration  reached  a  point 
where  divine  sovereignty  and  hu- 
man freedom  appeared  in  harmony, 

115,116 

his  speech  on  Mars'  Hill,.. 181 

his  designations  of  himself  in  his  ear- 
lier and   later   epistles  a  mark  of 

growth  in  grace, 210 

Peabody,  Kphraim,  his  illustration  of 

miracle, 139,140 

Pelagian  view    of   original   depravity 

arises  from  a  false  view  of  will, 101 

Pelagius,  his  error  according  to  N.  W. 

Taylor, 169 

Penance,  its  three  elements, 516 

IVmiy,  parable  of,  its  meaning, 160 

Perception,  internal,  a  dual  cognition,      4;> 
I'd -fectum   the  fundamental  attribute 

of  <Jod, 51 

Persian  controversial  maxim, 244 

Personality,  the  grounds  on  which  it  is 

at t  r United  to  God, 52 

consistent  with  the  uniformity  of  his 

operations,... 52 

Petei  of  Picardy, 487 

pn-aeln'S  erusades, 487 

at  Council  of  Clermont, 487 

.  St.,  at  Rome,  alluded  to, 3,  »'4^ 

Phenomena,  the  narrower  and  larger 

meaning  of  the  term, 

Philippians:.':  K,  H5,  eominented  on,  115-117 

PHILOSOPHY  AND  KKI.HJION, 1-18 

Philosophy,  at  the  basis  of  religion  as  a 

science. 2 

answers  the  questions  of  the  logical 

understanding  as  to  religion, 3 

deals  with  underlying  facts, 3 

analytic  in  its  method, 3 

it  demies  and  correlates  primary  con- 

eeptions  of  revelation, 3 

furnishes  with  scientific  accuracy  the 
facts  of  man's  mental  constitution 
which  are  required  by  Theology,...  3,4 
has  given  Theology  its  logical  order, .       4 
its  modern  contributions  to  religion,      5 
through  Theology  it  affects  the  prac- 
tical life  of  church  and  nation, 5 

its  dangers  are  also  those  of  religion,  5 
and  religion,  both  inclined  to  a  vicious 

monism, 5,  6 

Idealistic,    its    influence      on     John 

Henry  Newman, 7 

Materialistic,  its  influence  on  Joseph 

Priestley, 7 

Sensational,  its  influence  on  France, . .  7 
Kantian,  its  influence  in  Germany, ...  8 
•of  Nescience,  altogether  antagonistic 

to  Christianity, 8,  9 

an  impartial,  essential  to  the  perfect 

triumph  of  religion, 14 

a  true,  a  weapon  for  subduing  the 

world  to  Christ, 14 

will  exist  while  world  stands  .    14 


Philosophy,  a  source  of  discipline  and 

strength  for  the  preacher, 14 

a  true  and  false  have  been  side  by 

side  in  all  ages  of  the  world, 15 

is  now  being  prosecuted  according  to 

inductive  methods, 16 

a  true,  secured  by  retention  of  the 

fundamental  facts  of  consciousness,    16 
vitiated  by  Hamilton's  doctrine  of  the 

relativity  of  knowledge, 16 

finds  its  highest  province  in  the  inter- 
pretation and  defence  of  the  intu- 
ition of  God, 17 

of  Hegel,  its  influence, 31 

the  Mechanical,  its  present  influence 

accounted  for, 31 

the  fashion  of,  changes,.. 31,  39,  283 

false,  bears  relation  to  periods  of  na- 
tional decadence, 31,32 

every  false,  has  its  modicum  of  truth,    32 
PHILOSOPHY  OF  EVOLUTION,  THE,. ..39-57 

Philosophy,  Cosmic, 39-57 

Physical  research,  undue  prosecution 

of,  its  influence  on  our  age, 32 

Physician,  the   proper   characteristics 

of 19 

in  danger  of  materialism, 20 

a,  who  learned  the  divinity  of  Christ 
while  praying  to  him  on  behalf  of  a 

patient, 211 

Physicians  admonished, 30 

Piacenza,  Council  of, -  487 

Picture,  a,  not  explained  by  an  inven- 
tory of  the  colors  which  compose  it,    23 

Pilgrimage,  its  history, 484 

Pilgrims  to  Holy  Sepulchre,  their  fanat- 
icism,  478 

washing  in  Jordan, 478 

Pisans  invade  Syria,.. 486 

Pitti  Palace,  a  suggestive  combination 

of  heathen  and  religious  art  in, 413 

Poet,  his  three-fold  function, 326 

can  only  take  up  a  department  of 

poetry, 528 

must   show  the   essential    truth    of 

things, 528 

must  have  a  large  knowledge, 532 

must  have  right  views  of  human  na- 
ture,...  .....532,  533 

must  have  proper  views  of  God, ..533,  534 
must  have  right  views  of  the  rela- 
tions between  man  and  God, 534 

POKTRY  AND  ROBERT  BROWNING,. -525-543 

Poetry,  a  new  definition  of, 526 

deals  with  the  universe, 527 

cannot  be  compassed  by  any  one  finite 

mind, 527 

must  idealize, 531-536 

does  not  yield  its  full  meaning  to  cur- 
sory perusal, 539 

requires  lucid  construction, 537-539 

requires  rhythmical  and  musical  ex- 
pression,    541 


620 


INDEX. 


Political    Economy,    its     relation     to 

Christianity, 443 

what  it  is  not, 443 

includes  moral  influences, 443 

Storch's  definition  of, 443 

De  Quincey's  view  of  it,. 443,  444 

its  great  pi'inciples  have  been  gener- 
ally settled, 444 

co-extensive  with  humanity, .' 444 

it  seeks  to  discover  the  methods  and 
results  of  the  principle  of  self-in- 
terest,  444 

recognizes  self-love  as  a  rational  prin- 
ciple,   444 

allied  to  Moral  Philosophy, 444 

a  branch  of  Christianity  in  the  con- 
crete,  445 

recognizes  manhood  as  supreme, 446 

gives  an  honorable  place  to  human 

labor 446 

is  not  materialistic, 447 

its  idea  of  service,. 448 

benevolence,  inherent  in,. 450 

a  witness  to  Christianity, 458 

not  against  wealth, 462 

Political  Economy  and  Christianity, 
connected  by  their  innermost  prin- 
ciples,   444 

their  mutual  influence,... 445 

any   apparent   antagonism    between 

^hem  is  hurtful, 445,  446 

their  relation  one  of  pre-existent  har- 
mony,  446 

are  parts  of  one  great  system, 446 

a  human  element  in  both, 446 

both  make  man  king  of  this  lower 

world, 447 

a  social  element  in  both, 448 

both  recognize  men's  mutual  needs 

and  interdependence, 448 

both  insist  on  value  of  '  service,' 449 

both  estimate  labor  according  to  men- 
tal and  moral  elements  which  enter 

into  it, 449 

both  teach  that  the  service  of  others 
is  compatible  with  one's  highest  in- 
terests,  449 

they  differ  mainly  in  their  points  of 

view  and  fields  of  activity, 450 

application  of  their  common  princi- 
ples to  Capital  and  Labor, 451-457 

their  rules  will  yet  regulate  mankind, 

456,457 

some  questions  to  which  their  joint 

principles  might  be  applied, 458 

they  give  the  same  truths  on  differ- 
ent planes, 458 

one  illustrates  the  other, 458 

stand  to  each  other  as  Mosaic  lavv  to 

Christianity, 459 

are  indissolubly  connected, 459 

-    are  not  co-ordinate, 459 

their  connection  illustrated  by  ban- 
yan-tree,   460 


Polo,  Marco,  his  travels, 500 

Pompeii,  frescoes  of,. 56 

Pope,  the,  'a  servant  of  servants,' 210 

Porter,  his  criticism  of  Hamilton, 62 

on  efficient  causes  subordinate  to  final 

causes, 141 

Positivism,  denies  knowledge  of  human 

mind,. *....      8 

denies  metaphysics, 8, 13 

admits  only  a  spontaneous  vegetative 

life, 8 

denies  God,  freedom,  conscience,  im- 
mortality,   8 

accepted  by  minds  of  much  erudition 

and  acumen, 8 

has  permeated  the  literature  of  the 

day, 8 

has  effected  in  many  cases  uncon- 
sciously our  theological  views, 9 

its  coryphreus,  Auguste  Comte, 9 

its  postulate,  nothing  known  but  ma- 
terial phenomena, 9 

denies  both  efficient  and  final  causes, 
10,12 

its  teachings  contradict  conscious- 
ness,.  9 

its  teachings  invalidate  all  knowledge 

and  science,.. 9 

teaches  that  cause  is  merely  regular- 
ity of  sequence, 10 

teaches  that  law  is  an  arbitrary  suc- 

session  of  phenomena, 10 

teaches  ex  nildlo  omnia  limit, 10 

denies  causal  judgment, —    11 

abolishes  inductive  logic, 11 

immolates  the  intuitions, 11, 13 

makes    mathematical    truth    purely 

phenomenal, 11 

makes  morality  mere  matter  of  con- 
vention,.  11 

denies  conscience, 11 

denies  purpose  in  universe, —  11 

makes  biology  a  part  of  physiology,.    11 
relegates  theology  and  metaphysics  to 
the  infancy  of  the  race, ...  13 

denies  God, 

insists  on  mere  uniformity  of  nature,    13 

its  new  cult  described. 13, 14 

in  its  crude  f  orm,  rejected  by  Spencer,    49 
Positivists,  numerous,  intelligent  and 

of  all  shades, 

deny  purpose  in  universe, 11, 12 

merge   final    causes    in    totality   of 

secondary  causes, 12 

their  inference,  that  supposed  imper- 
fections in  design  implies  absence  of 

purpose,  replied  to, 12 

unconsciously  use  language  which 
implies  the  adaptation  they  expli- 
citly deny, - 12 

beg  the  question, 20 

Posse  non  i/cccare  aii'l  jx>**e  j>ccc«r'\ 
Augustine's  formula  of  man's  in  on;  1 
state  in  Eden,..  107 


INDEX. 


Pounds,  the  parable  of,  its  meaning-,...  161 
Poverty,  not  required  by  Christianity,.  461 
Powell,  Baden,  denies  the   literal  de- 
struction of  the  world  by  fire, 9 

Power  behind  phenomena,  an  irresist- 
ible,   - 11 

its  type  and  proof  in  the  action  of  our 

will  on  our  organism, 11 

Power,  has  its  seat  in  mind, 25 

Power  in  unregenerate  to  avoid  certain 

sins, 118,  119 

to   make   himself   more  or  less   de- 
praved,.  119 

to  suspend  evil  action  and  give  atten- 
tion to  considerations  which  urge 

obedience, 119 

a  reward  of  heaven, 161 

Preacher,  should  set  forth  true  philo- 
sophical principles, 15 

and  audience,  their  casual  relations, . .  21 1 

and  audience,  sure  to  meet  again, 211 

iiER's  DOUBTS,  THE,.. 578-580 

Preaching,   a  development  of  the  re- 
vealed word, 545 

why  supposed  by  some  to  have  lost  its 

power, 551 

'  Prelude,  the,'  of  Wordsworth,  quoted,     1 ; 

Preset-  vat  ion,  self-,  the  law  of  life, 191 

PIJKSIIIENT,  THE  DKATH  UK  TIII:,..  347-357 

i  he  weapon  of  the  church, 243 

Pressure,     requires     something    that 
presses    and    something    that     is 

pressed, 43 

4  Priesthood,  a  Chronic  Disorder  of  the 

Human  Race.' 566 

Priestley,  Joseph,  hie  philosophy  affects 

his  theology, 7 

Priests  more  powerful  and  universal 

than  kings, 77 

Primogeniture,  Dr.  Johnson's  sarcastic 

eulogy  of, 462 

Priinuin  mobile,  according  to  Dante,  ...  509 
Principles   often    assumed    which    on 
formal  statement  would  be  repudi- 
ated,  245 

Probation,  individual  as  well  as  racial,.  119 
sinner's  individual,  not  removed  by 

inborn  character, 125 

after  death,  its  relations  to  New  Eng- 
land Theology, .  1 126 

a  fair  one  in  Adam  prevents  inference 

of  a  further  one  after  death, 127 

individual,  is  of  grace,... 127 

according  to  Scripture,  ends  with  this 

life, 127 

second,  doctrine  examined, 174-177 

is  the  phrase  correct? 174,  175 

is  the  present  a  proper  one  for  all  ?. . .  175 
rests  on  nominalistic  individualism,  .  175 
is  neutralized  only  by  Scripture  doc- 
trine of  organic  unity  of  race, 175 

virtually  denies  guilt  of  mankind, . . .  175 
second,  Scriptures  oppose, 177 


Production,  we  are  bound  to  the  utmost 

possible, 463 

Christian,  ultimately  that  of  holiness 

in  the  earth,. 463 

economical,  may  be  as  extensive  as 
you  please,  if  subservient  to  relig- 
ious production 464 

Productive  and  unproductive  labor,  Dr. 

Chalmers  on, 449 

Professional  man,  the  worthy,  his  char- 
acteristics,     19 

Professions,  the  three,  their  mutual  re- 
lations     19 

learned,  not  now  three  but  a  dozen,  283, 284 
PROFESSOR'S  CHAIR,  LEARNING  IN  THE, 

344-346 

Promise,  the  first, 391 

Propagation,  science  recognizes  more 

than  one  way  of,  in  same  species,  . .  205 
Prophesying,  New  Testament, what?...  553 

Protoplasm,  its  relation  to  life, 34 

living  and  dead, 34 

Providence,  Guizot's  comparison  of,  to 

Homer's  gods, 390 

Providence  and  Holy  Spirit,  mutually 

supplementary, 557 

I'riitli-ii*  </""*''"'  its  value  in  science,..    82 

Psalm  104,  its  main  thought, 181 

Psychical   processes,  their  relation  to 

physical, 46 

'  Psychology  without  a  soul,' 69 

Ptolemy,  his  astronomical  views, 508 

Publication  Society,  American  Baptist, 

its  origin, 238 

based  on  a  conviction  that  truth  is  an 

organic  whole, 238 

based  on  a  conviction   that   special 
truths  have  been  entrusted  to  the 
keeping  of  the  Baptist  denomination  242 
based  on  a  conviction  that  modern 

needs  require  modern  measures,...  243 
the  success  which  has  attended  its 

publications, 243 

Punishment,  what? 192 

the  impulse  in, 194 

never  referred  to  love, 195 

of  wicked,  consent  of  saints  thereto,.  195 
a   manifestation  of  self-vindicating 

holiness, 195 

Punishment,  future,  alleged  beneficial 

effects, 196,  197 

Beecher  on, 196 

teaching  of  Universalists, 196,  197 

Parker,  Joel,  on, 197 

Patton,  F.  L.,  on, 197 

its  reason  lies  in  divine  holiness, 197 

Purgatory,  according  to  Homish  doc- 

trine,.... 515 

according  to  Dante, 515 

and  Hell,  how  related  in  Divine  Com- 
edy,  516 

is  divided  into  Ante-Purgatory  and 
Purgatory  proper, 515,  516 


622 


INDEX. 


Purgatory,   a  process  rather    than  a 

place, 517 

has  clear  analogies  in  our  every-day 

life, 518 

in  the  sense  of  a  post  mortem  purifica- 
tion, unscriptural, 518 

faith  in  it  often  leads  to  fatal  procras- 
tination,   - 518 

its  purifications  unscripturally  repre- 
sented as  penal,... - 518 

Purity,  what? - 189 

of  soul,  gives  clear  instinct  of  immor- 
tality,   191 

Purpose  in  nature,  denied  by  Comte,-.    36 
Pyramid,  the  Great,  ascent  and  entrance 

of, 471-473 

Qualities,  secondary,  what  ? 62 

primary,  what? 63 

Quality,  Mill's  definition  of, 32 

Quatrefages,  on  limited  geographical 

distribution  of  Atheism, 78 

Quenstedt,  on  the  human  element  in 
Holy  Scripture  being  due  to  inspi- 
ration,   148 

Quincy,  President  of  Harvard,  anec- 
dote of  his  opposition  to  co-educa- 
tion,  425 

Quincy,  Mass.,  educational  revolution 

there, 426 

Race,  modern  idea  of  its  solidarity  an- 
ticipated in  Scripture, 103 

according  to  nominalism, 165 

atomistic  account  of , 165 

realistic  doctrine  of, 165 

a  tree, 165 

Adam  once  the  race, 165 

the  doctrine  of  its  oneness,  an  anti- 
dote to  the  exaggerated  individual- 
ism of  theday, 178 

oneness  of,  its  relation  to  ministry 

and  missions, 179 

Race-sin,  ignored  by  New  Theology,...  166 
Rangoon,  prayer-meeting  in  heathen 

temple  at, 279 

Realism,  Natural,  as  held  by  Reid, 61 

as  held  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 62 

and  Idealism  compared, 63-71 

its  simplest  form, 66 

possesses  the  universal  belief  of  man- 
kind,   66 

represents  the  facts  of  experience,.. 67-69 

an  objectionable  form  of, 164 

its  teaching  on  the  divine  attri- 
butes,    165 

mediaeval, 165 

asserts  real  historical  connection  of 

race, 165 

Reason,  a  system  whose  order  satisfies, 
must  have  sprung  from  a  designing 

intelligence, 34 

Redeemed  in  heaven,  may  render  ser- 
vice to  God's  creatures, 526 

Reflection,  what?  according  to  Locke,.    58 


Regeneration,  the  only  parallel  afforded 
in  experience  to  the  apostasy  of  the 

Fall, 110 

not  a  mechanical  work, 125 

not  produced  by  mere  moral  suasion,  12* 
produced  by  Christ's  entrance  into 

soul, 125 

its  relation  to  conversion, 135 

man's  will  active  in, 125- 

not  a  miracle, 132 

and  union  with  Christ, 234 

Reid,     Dr.    Thomas,     his     contention 

against  Hume, 61 

advocated  'Philosophy  of   Coinuion 

Sense,' 61 

his  Natural  Realism, 61 

his  inaccuracies, 61 

his  services  to  philosophy, 61 

Sir  W:  Hamilton's  annotations  on, 62 

Relativity  of  knowledge,  consequences 

of  doctrine  of, 16 

Religion,  speculative  and  practical, 2 

as  it  exists  in  mind  of  child  and  of  the- 

logian,  Z 

each  of  its  sides  tends  to  reproduce 

the  other, 2 

its  debt  to  philosophy, 2-5- 

rests  on  philosophy,  .. 2,3- 

owes  to  philosophy  the  defining  and 
correlating  of  its  primary  concep- 
tions,   3-5 

its  relations  to  Scholasticism, 4 

its  relations  to  Platonism, 4 

its  relations  to  Aristotelianism, 4 

its  relations  to  modern  philosophy, ...      4 
and  science,  condition  of  their  har- 
mony,     20 

and   science,  the  truth   common  to 

both,  according  to  Spencer, 52 

what,  according  to  Spencer, 53 

not  a  mere  sense  of  mystery  and  de- 
pendence,    5S 

men  must  have, 77 

faculty  of,  disclosed  by  presence  of 

superstition, 79 

true,  what  it  is? 334 

its  origin  not  in  fears, 391 

Remarriage,  prohibition  of,  ^nly  pen- 
alty for  adultery  in  American  law, .  433 
of  a  person  who  has  a  former  husband 

or  wife  living,  felony  in  Tennessee,  433 
of  a  woman  divorced  in   Kentucky 

upheld  by  a  Tennessee  court, 433 

of  a  woman  in  New  York  State,  mar- 
ried in  New  York  State,  but  divorced 
in  Ohio,  declared  void  in  New  Vork 

courts, 437 

not  permitted  by  Paul,  even  in  cases 

of  willful  desertion, 438 

Remarriage  of  guilty  party  to  a  divorce, 
forbidden  during  life-time  of  inno- 
cent complainant  by  Revised  Stat- 
utes of  New  York  State  until  1879,. .  433 


INDEX. 


623 


Remarriage  of  guilty  party  to  a  divorce, 

though  contracted  outside   of   New 

York  State,  declared  in  one  case  by 

New  York  courts  null  and  void, 433 

if  divorce  decreed  in  Massachusetts, 
though  contracted  outside  of  that 
State,  by  Statute  declared  null  and 

void, 433 

no  express  declaration  in  New  York 
State  Statutes  that  even  if  con- 
tracted outside  of  State,  it  is  null 

and  void.. 433 

it'  valid  according  to  laws  of  any  State, 

valid  in  New  York  State, 433 

dictum  of  .Justice  .Johnson  in  Court 

of  Appeals  regarding, 435 

puts  the  contractor  under  legal  bun 

in  New  York  State, 436 

a  misdemeanor  in  Ne\v  York  State  but 

not  bigamy,  polygamy  or  adultery,  436 
contractor  guilty  of  contempt  of  New 

York  courts, 436 

prohibition  of,  has  no  effect  outside 

New  York  State. 436 

Remarriage    in    case    of    divorce    on 
ground  of  adultery,   permitted  to 

innocent  party, 439 

that  it  is  not  permitted  to  guilty  party 
an  inference  from  the  silence  of 

Christ,. 440 

its  permissibility  to  guilty  party,  Dr. 

Woolsey  on, 440 

of  guilty  party,  a  violation  of  law  of 

Scripture  ami  of  State,... 440 

Remorse,  more  than  sense  of  untitness 

to  surroundings, 53 

Renan,onth"  Ueatitmtes, 415 

Reparation,  the  desire  to  make,  illus- 

t  rations  of , 216 

Representative  Mea,  Reid  upon 61 

'Respect  the  dreams  of  thy  youth,'.  19,  544 
Responsibility,  coextensive   with   our 

range  of  active  being, 97 

for  native  depi-avity, 101 

for  human  nature,.. 101 

Resurrection  of  Christ,  the  central  mir- 
acle of  Christianity, 144 

ir«  evidence, 145 

its  probative  value, 145 

main  subject  of  apostolic  preaching,.  145 

teaching  of  ordinances,. 145 

Revelation,  an  external,  affords  mate- 
rial for  science, 75 

internal  and  external,  their  connec- 
tion,  172 

book  of,  significance  of  fact  that  Scrip- 
ture ends  with, 363 

Revolution,    French,    its     connection 

with  philosophical  teachings, 7 

Revolutions,  break  out  from  below, .. 

488,  489 

Revue  Chretienne,  on  will  as  a  choice  be- 
tween pre-existent  motives, 97 


Reward,  a  peculiar,  for  each  Christian 

worker, 160 

of  duty  done,  power  to  do  more, 161 

Rewards,  are  'according  to  works,' 160 

in  what  sense  the  same, 160- 

in  what  sense  differing, 161 

of  heaven,  what? 161 

Rhine  steamer  and  barge,  illustration 

from, 465,  466 

Richardson,  the  extreme  sentimental- 
ity of  his  Clarixga, 536 

Richter,  Jean  Paul, 156 

Right,  and  wrong,  reduced  to  conven- 
tionalism by  Positivism, 11 

never  confounded  with  advantage,  in 

language  of  world,. 53 

as  a  result  of  ancestral  experiences, . .    5& 
as  the  adaptation  of  constitution  to 

circumstances, 55 

an  idea  not  inherent  in  things  or  ac- 
tions, but  brought  to  them  by  the 

mind,.. 54 

an  intuition, 54 

ami  wrong,  knowledge  of,  is  an  orig- 
inal cognitive  power  of  mind, 77 

binds  because  it  is  the  nature  of  God,  197 
its  full  significance  known  only  at  the 

the  judgment, 197 

Righteousness,  the  supreme  attribute  in 

man, 196 

'  Ring  and  the  Book,'  quotation  from,    36 

its  subject  described, 529-531 

its  method  defended, 538,  53£ 

Ritual    of    divine   appointment,   pro- 
foundly spiritual, 247 

Robertson,  F.  W.,  on  the  make  up  of 

truth, 5,  & 

his  compassion  for  the  sincere  doubt- 
er,   2a 

his  impatience  with  self-complacent 

infidelity, 33 

on  the  folly  of  attempting  the  recon- 
ciliation of  truths  which  though  ap- 
parently contradictory  are  yet  both 

true, 11& 

on  the  doubt  of  God's  personality  be- 
ing more  terrible  than  that  of  one's 

immortality, 186 

Robinson.  Dr.,  his  anecdote  of  a  moth- 
er's consecration  of  her  boy  to  the 

ministry. ..291,  292 

Rochester,  N.  Y.,  a  city  of  revivals, 387 

Rochester   Theological    Seminary,   its 

curriculum  described, 305,  306 

addresses  to  graduating  classes  at,  544-586 
author's  address  on  occasion  of  grad- 
uation of  his  first  theological  class 

at, .546-548 

allusion  to  its  first  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury of  existence, 554 

Rockefeller  Hall,  its  dedication, 302 

Rome,  as  depicted  in  Revelation, 358 

Roscelin,  a  mediaeval  nominalist. 164 


INDEX. 


'  Rose   of   the   Blessed,'  according-  to 

Dante, 509 

Rossetti,  Miss  F.  M.,  her  "  Shadow  of 

Dante," - 501,  506 

Rothe,  his  conception  of  the  divine  at- 
tributes,  '- 164 

Royce,  an  American  Hegelian, 61 

Safford,  Daniel,  his  idea  of  benevolence,  464 

Sakkara,  Apis-cemetery  at, 470 

Salvation,  entirely  of  God, 103,  104 

Indian's  view  of, -  105 

Arminian  view  of 105 

man's  ability  in,  from  God, 113 

recognition  of  God's  working  in,  tends 

to  practical  religion, 117 

limitations  of  divine  agency  in, 117 

Samaritan  Pentateuch, 482 

Samuel,  Second,  2  :  23, 347 

Saracenic,  invasion  of  Europe, 485 

civilization  threatened  Europe, 485 

Satan,  Milton's  and  Dante's  conceptions 

of,  compared, 513 

Savings-Banks,  an  accompaniment  of 

civilization, 462 

.Schelling,  his  view  of  human  know- 
ledge,  - 8 

held  a  direct  intuition  of  self  and  God,    60 
how  his  system  differs  from  Fichte's,    60 
Scholasticism,  its  influence  on  Theology,     4 
Schools,  large,  their  advantages  and  dis- 
advantages,  -. 429 

Schopenhauer,  a  valuable  contributor 

to  facts  of  man's  nature, 97 

Science,  what  it  is, 9 

a  pre-equipment  of  mind  necessary 

to, 9 

involves  mind  as  well  as  matter, 9 

ideas  as  well  as  facts  essential  to, 10 

larger  than  observation  and  classifica- 
tion,     20 

its  terms  derive   value  from  meta- 
physics,      21 

has,  according  to  Spencer,  a  truth  in 

common  with  religion,... 52 

assumes  order  and  useful  collocation 

in  the  universe, * 82 

faith  at  basis  of  all  science, 88 

how  related  to  religion, 459 

Scriptures,  Holy,  place  of  reason  in  re- 
lation to, 572-574 

Sects,  their  place  in  the  dissemination 

of  truth, 241,  242 

Selenology,  the  assumed  science  of,  on 

what  dependent? 75 

Self,  its  cognition  necessary  to  the  idea 

of  unity  in  mental  phenomena, 68 

Self -consciousness,  a  valid  source   of 

knowledge, - 20 

the  nature  and  value  of  its  testimony 

to  existence  of  the  ego, 68 

Self-denial,    its    reflex    influence     on 

church, 374 

moves  the  heart  of  God,...  ..  376 


Self-interest,  the  fundamental  law  of 

Political  Economy, 444 

has  its  morals, 444 

its  relation  to  universal  benevolence, 

.444,  445 

Bascom  on, 459 

man's  highest,  often  at  war  with  low- 
er principles, 458 

man's  highest,  its  attainment  requires 

a  power  outside  human  nature, 459 

Selfishness,  not  the  best  policy, 456,  457 

Self-limitation  of  God,  in  design  and 

creation, 12 

makes  knowledge  of  him  possible,...    51 
as  to  his  moral  nature,  the  complet- 

est, ....51,  76 

imposed  only  from  within, 76 

in  the  person  of  Christ, 186 

Self-love,  its  place  in  Christianity  and 

Political  Economy,... 450,  451 

SELF-MASTERY, 562-566 

Seljuks,  conquest  of  Palestine  by, 488 

treatment  of  Christian  pilgrims  by, . .  488 
Seminary,  Theological,  its  site  should 

be  a  large  city, 298,  311 

should  be  liberally  supported  by  the 

churches, 301 

what  its  departments  should  be,.. 303,  304 
requires  the  ablest  instructors  pos- 
sible,   304 

Seminaries  of  Hamilton  and  Rochester, 

their  relations,.. 3U 

Seminary.  Theological,  the  salaries  of 

its  professors, 305 

should  be  a  store-house  of  literature,  308 
should  have  a  library,  museum,  and 

lectureships, 306 

training  of  the  vocal  organs  should 

be  a  part  of  its  course 307 

support  of  students  at, 307,  308 

relations  between  its  professors  and 

students, - .310,311,  318 

its  chapel  services, 312 

its  influences  most  permanent, 313 

trains  leaders  for  the  churches, 316 

must  not  become  a  kindergarten, 3J6 

should  combine  practical  with  theo- 
retical teaching, -.*317 

should  insist  on  highest  and  widest 

culture, 318 

seeks  to  ground  in  the  revealed  word,  545 
its  educators  do  not  require  servile 
acquiescence  in  their  instructions,.  547 

the  twofold  aim  of  its  discipline, 547 

seeks  to  develop  habits  of  earnest,  in- 
dependent investigation, 547 

seeks  to  encourage  a  spirit  of  love,. . .  547 
should  not  cultivate  the  intellect  ex- 
clusively,   547 

its  teaching  should  set  forth  a  definite 

body  of  truth, 558 

Seneca,  on  innate  depravity, 101 

Sensations,  Berkeley's  view  of,  — 58 


INDEX. 


625 


Sensations,  may  be  caused  by  God  di- 
rectly,  - 58 

only  objects  of  knowledge, 58 

only  deal  with  points  in  external  ma- 
terial, mind  cognizes  substance, —    68 
Sensation  proper,  according  to  Hamil- 
ton,  -    62 

Sensational  school,  French,  Locke's  re- 
lation to - -  58 

Sensationalism  of  Locke,  its  outcome,.      7 

Sensationalism,  rhetorical, 571 

its  cure, 571 

Sense-experiences  of  past  generations 

the  alleged  source  of  (t  i>rinri  ideas,  49 
Sense-perception,  according  to  Kant,..  60 
Sentimentality,  its  definition  by  Mill,..  536 
Separation  of  an  illegally  married  pair 

not  always  expedient, 440 

Sepulchre,  Church  of  Holy,  scene  at,  on 

Good  Friday, 478 

description  of,.. 479 

'  S<  'i-vice,'  its  place  in  Political  Economy,  448 

Seth,  a  Hegelian, 61 

"  Seven  'Togethers,'  " 234 

Shakespeare,  on  complementary  rela- 
tion of  the  sexes,.. 204 

hides  his  personality  in  his  dramas,  . .  527 

Shelley,  his  musical  expression, G41 

Shepherd,  good,  Christ  as,  painted  on 
communion-cups  and  walls  of  cata- 
combs,   368 

Signality,  the  determining  feature  of 

miracles, 138 

Simony,  its  future  punishment  accord- 
ing to  Dante, 612 

Sin,  according  to  Hegelianism, 61 

Romish  view  of, 102 

its  origin  discussed. 108-111 

its  source,  an  evil  disposition, Ill 

racial  as  well  as  personal, 124 

self-isolating, 217 

contemptible,  the    teaching   of   the 

symbolism  of  the  Divine  <'<>iin-<ii/,...  513 
self-perversion  of  will,  according  to 

Dante, 513 

Its    future     penalty,     according    to 
Dante,  not  essentially  external  to 

the  sufferer, 514 

according  to  Dante,  tends  to  perma- 
nence,   514,  575 

Sinful  nature,  why  man  is  responsible 

for,.... 118 

'Sinner,  the,' why?... 158 

Sins,  of  each  individual  peculiar  to  the 

transgressor, 257 

their  three-fold  division  according  to 

Dante,  511 

seven  capital, 516 

SKEPTICISM,  MATERIALISTIC, 31-38 

Skepticism,  modern,  its  drift  and  char- 
acter,   29,31 

Smith,  Adam,  taught  Political  Economy 
in  connection  with  Moral  Science,..  443 
40 


Smith,  Adam,  the  founder  of  the  sci- 
ence of  Political  Economy, 443 

Smith,    Goldwin,    on     the    automatic 

theory  of  human  nature, -27,  28 

Smith,  H.  B.,  on  causes, 92 

Smith,  Sydney,  his  witticism  on  Berke- 
ley and  Hume, 59 

his  opinion  on  the  difference  between 

men  and  women, 403 

Smyth,  Dr.  Newman,  on  a  fair  proba- 
tion either  in  a  pre-existent  state  or 

after  death, 127 

Social  questions,  the  problems  of  the 

present, 452 

Social  Unions,  their  best  functions,....  461 
Solipsism,  Idealism  logically  leads  to,..  169 
Son  of  man,  the  term  implies  more  than 

humanity, 206 

'Song  of  Moses  and  the  Lamb,'  why 

the  redeemed  sing, 366 

Sorcery,  its  future  punishment  accord- 
ing to  Dante, 512 

Soul,  what  in  opinion  of  Humist, 50 

present   in   every   part  of  body  at 

once, 51 

a  mental  image  of,  impossible, 51 

as  defined  by  Berkeley, 59 

God  can  work  in, 152 

Southern  cross,   according   to   Dante, 

shines  on  Mount  of  Penitence, 516 

Sovereignty,  divine,  and  human  free- 
dom, both  facts,  though  irreconci- 
lable by  our  powers, 6 

Space  an  a  priori  truth,  cannot  be  fig- 
ured to  the  imagination, 48,  61 

Speculation,     however     lofty,     filters 

down  to  the  people, 5,  55 

Spencer,  Herbert,  advocate  of  philoso- 
phy of  Nescience,  8 

materialistic  in  his  philosophy, 31 

his  one  postulate,  the  persistence  of 

force, 40 

his  vicious  use  of  a  priori  reasoning,    41 
does  not  regard  force  as  connected 

with  will, 42 

is  logically  an  Absolute  Idealist, 43 

sets  forth  a  method   of  the   divine 

working, 44 

ignores  or  denies  important  facts, 44 

fails  to  explain  origin  of  life  and  mind 

44,  46 

deserves    thanks    for    emphasizing 

truth  of  development  in  creation, .    45 
regards  universe  as  consisting  only  of 

one  substance, 47 

his  theory  of  knowledge  unsatisfac- 
tory,   .* 47,48,  49 

not  a  Positivist, 49 

recognizes  a  priori  elements  in  human 

knowledge, - 49 

the  origin  he  assigns  to  a  priori  ele- 
ments,     49 

makes  cognition  to  be  recognition,  . .    49 


626 


INDEX. 


Spencer,  Herbert,  his  explanation  of 

existence  of  intuitions, 50 

a  materialistic  idealist, 50 

aHumist, --50,  59 

declares  God  to  be  inconceivable  and 

unknown, 50 

his  idea  of  'conceive,'..- 50,51 

on  the  absolute  and  Infinite  as  un- 
known,      50 

attacks  personality  of  God, 52 

on  the  truth  which  is  common  to  re- 
ligion and  science,. 52,  53 

his  explanation  of  the  existence  of 

the  feeling  of  obligation, 53,  54 

makes  an  action  right  because  useful, 

54,  55 

what  he  considers  conscience  as, 65 

regards  the  will  as  externally  necessi- 
tated,     55 

is  a  monist,  55 

his  system  delusively  simple, 55 

his  teaching  acceptable  to  those  who 

dread  a  personal,  holy  God, 55 

his  teaching  destructive  to  morality, 

artand  literature, 56 

his  system  open  to  a  reductio  ad  dbsur- 

durn, 58 

on  the  cognition  of  self , 70 

his  explanation  of  idea  of  God, 87 

on  advantages  of  varied  environment,  428 

hisdi'ctwm  of  style, 537 

Spending  and  giving,  a  test  of  character,  467 
Spinoza,  on  design  implying-  imperf  ec  • 

tion  in  designer, 12 

Spirit,  Holy,  some  of  his  influences  may 

be  resisted, 128 

some  of  his  influences  sufficient  to  se- 
cure acceptance  of  Christ, 128 

helps  us  to  think  ourselves  into  God's 

thoughts, 254 

helps  to  believing  utterance  of  truth,  254 

communicates  contagious  zeal, 255 

associates  laborer  in  sympathy  with 

God's  heart, 255 

grants  matter  and  manner  of  speech, 

255,256 

his  stimulation  healthy,.... 256 

makes  the  teacher  a  magnet, 256 

uses  agents  sometimes  unconsciously,  256 
bestowed  by  the  Savior  in  recompense 

for  his  sufferings, 257 

from  him  who  receives  him  he  in  turn 

flows  forth  toothers, 257 

his  ordinary  illumination  of  believers, 
its  relation  to  proper  Inspiration, ...  170 

makes  us  understand  truth, 171 

he  revives  and  applies  a  past  revela- 
tion,   172 

turns  the  outer  into  an  inner  word,..  172 
is  the  organ  of  internal  revelation,.  172,  251 
his  office  must  not  be  exalted  at  ex- 
pense of  work  of  Christ, 172 

every  true  teacher  his  assistant, 250 


Spirit,  Holy,  brings  spiritual  blessing  to 

the  true  teacher, 251 

is  not  the  invisible  presence  of  Christ,  251 
as  sunlight  on  a  darkened  landscape,.  251 

as  oculist  who  removes  cataract, 251 

in  him  is  the  returning  activity  of  the 

Godhead, 252 

is  necessary  to  God  himself, 252 

manifests  the  secrets  of  eternity, 252 

an    inexhaustible    reservoir    always 

available, 253 

sensitizes  the  heart, 253 

Spoils-system,  Garfleld's  assassination 

due  to, 352 

the  system  explained, 352 

its  unwholesome  influence, 352,  353 

its  operation  at  New  York  Custom 

House, 352 

its  wide  extent, 353 

occupies  unduly  the  time  of  President 

and  Cabinet,.. 353 

defended  by  Garfleld  as  Republican 

nominee,... 353,354 

Garfleld,  as  President,  carries  it  out,.  354 
its  monstrosity  will  secure  its  aban- 
donment,   356 

State,  the  individual's  relation  to,  ac- 
cording to  modern  view, 207 

should   leave   trade   and    commerce 

alone, 450 

Stephen,  the  protomartyr,  first  philo- 
sophic historian, 337 

Stoics, 15 

Strikes,  wholesome  change  of  feeling  in 

relation  to, 451,455 

Stuart,  Moses,  his  influence  on  Bible 

study, 331 

Substance,  an  a  priori  truth,  _  - 48 

cognized  by  mind, 60 

known  to  God  and  man, - 60 

its  cognition  necessary  to  idea  of  unity 

in  material  phenomena, 68 

material,  its  cognition  as  inevitable 
an  act  of  reason  as  the  cognition 
of  mental  substance  or  conscious 

self, 68 

Suicide,  its  future  punishment  accord- 
ing to  Dante, -  - 512 

Superintendence  of  universe,  God's, ...    46 
God's,  its  existence  and  nature  set 

forth  by  facts  of  creation, 46,  47 

Support  of  theological  students  vindi- 
cated,  308 

Sweden,  progress  of  Baptist  principles 

in,.. --- --  243 

Swinburne,  Algernon,  his  sensuous  pa- 
ganism,      56 

deifies  the  body,. 536 

Swiss  valley,  illustration  from  incident 

in,.. 376,377 

Sword,    Edenic,    a    manifestation    of 

wrath,.: 392 

Sychar,  a  Sunday  at, - 482 


INDEX. 


627 


Sympathy,  not  a  sufficient  explanation 
of  man's  responsibility  for  Adam's 

sin, 118 

its  nature, 568 

its  excellencies, -  - 569 

Sy nergism,  unscriptural, 105 

denied  by  Paul, 117 

Synthetic  conception,  what?... 60 

Systems,  delusive  sometimes  through 

superficial  simplicity, 6 

may  become  simple  through  mutila- 
tion,  6 

T(tJ»t!<i  m.xrr,  mind  at  first  is  not  a, 101 

Tahiti,  Ellis  on  the  condition  of  woman 

there, 44 

Taine,  his  materialistic  tendency, 31 

Tait,  on  thi>  impossibility  of  <t  prior/ 
reasoning  demonstrating  any  phys- 
ical fact,. 40,41 

Talbot,  on   metaphysics   dealing  with 

realities, 283 

Tandem-team  idea  of  salvation,  un- 
scriptural,   117 

Tastes,  God  cares  for  thorn, 465 

Taylor,  Isaac,  on  the  influence  of  tli«'ir 
physical  surroun<lin.<rs  on  the  au- 
thors of  the  Hible, 476 

Taylor,  N.  W.,  on  Imputation,. 169 

on  Depravity, 169 

on  Sin, 169 

on  Will, 169 

on  Pelagius, 169 

TEACHER'S,  THE,  GUIDE  AND  HELPKK. 

250-358 

Teacher,  the  true,  a  helper  of  the  Spirit,  ~.r><> 
dependent  on  Spirit  as  organ  of  in- 
ternal revelation, 

tic  pendent  on  Spirit  as  refluent  move- 
ment of  divine  activity, 252 

dependent  on  Spirit   to  reiidi-r  heart 

of  auditor  sensitive,    253 

dependent  on  Spirit  for  a  life  which 

may  incarnate  the  truth, 254 

dependent  on   Spirit  for  emotional 
intensity, 254,  255 


Teacher,  of  N.  T.  Exegesis,  should  ex- 
hibit boldness, 326 

should  cherish  independence, 327 

should  be  earnest, ,.  327 

should  be  reverent, 328- 

should  be  lovingly  studious  of  God's 

word, 328- 

Teaching  truth,  as  the   scattering   of 

perfumes  in  a  triumphal  progress,-  250 
Teleological  argument  for  the  existence 

of  God,... 81,  82- 

more  carefully  stated, 82 

invalidity  of  common  objections  to,..    82 

its  exact  value, 83 

its  limitations, 83 

Telescope,  as  an  illustration, 69 

Tennyson,  Lord, 21,  28,  28,  30,  38,  204,  204 

his  portrait, 525 

is  he  a  religious  poet? 535 

compared  with  Browning, 535 

Theism,  the  stock  objection  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  Nescience  to, 51 

THEISM,  SCIENTIFIC, 75-89 

Theism,  Scientific,  possible, 75 

its  assumptions  possible, 86 

Theodoric, 17 

Theologic  thought  like  a  pendulum, . . .  6 
Theological  education,  its  true  idea,...  302 
Theological  students,  their  support 

should  be  by  gift  not  loan, 309 

should  be  regulated  by  their  man- 
ifested activity  intellectually  and 

morally, 309 

Theological  students,  why  thought  ir- 
reverent?   312 

Theology,  its  beginnings, 3 

combines  facts  of  revelation  and  facts 

of  consciousness, 3 

how  far  it  gets  its  facts  from  philos- 
ophy,       3 

synthetic  in  its  methods, 3 

knowledge   of    its    history  requires 

some  study  of  philosophy, 5 

contains  factors  logically  irreconcil- 
able, . .  6 


dependent  on  Spirit  for  union  with  God  255  ]  Theology  and  Philosophy,  their  differ- 


dependent  on  Spirit  for  what  he  shall 
speak, 255 

dependent  on  Spirit  for  how  he  shall 
speak,.. 255 

dependent  on  Spirit  for  when  he  shall 
speak,... -. 255 

the  true.recei  ves  the  Spirit  from  Christ  257 

by  an  act  of  surrender  and  faith, 257 

to  make  him  a  blessing  to  others, 257 

Teacher,  in  a  theological  school,  why 
ordained  ? 324 

of  New  Testament  Language  and  In- 
terpretation, should  teach  thor- 
oughly,   325 

should  arrive  at  fixed  opinions  on 
difficult  questions, 325 

should  cultivate  breadth,...  ..  325 


ent  methods, 3 

their  mutual  influence  evidenced  in 
state      of      modern      Continental 

thought, 8 

Theology,  Comte's  view  of, 13 

its  relation  to  Revelation, 75 

THEOLOGY,  THE  WILL  IN, 90-113 

Theology,  the  two   principal  applica- 
tions of  Nominalism  in, 164 

THEOLOGY,  THE  NEW,.... 164-179 

Theology,  The  New,  exaggerates  indi- 
vidualism, .-. _ 164 

its  historical  connections, 164-170' 

has  a  source  in  mediaeval  nominalism,  164 

nominalist!  c,- 164 

false  by  defect, 16ft 

creatian, ..  166 


628 


INDEX. 


Theology,  the  New,  atomistic, .. 166 

has  a  source  in  modern  Idealism, 166 

is  indebted  to  Jonathan  Edwards, 167 

exaggerates  the  divine  immanence, . .  167 

its  prominent  specific  ideas, 170-177 

borrows     from    many    but    related 

schools, --  170 

its  doctrine  of  Christian  conscious- 
ness,   170 

its  practical  results, 178.  179 

its  teachings  affect  family  life, 178 

tends  to  rationalism  rather  than  mys- 
ticism,   172 

has  emphasized  the  Spirit's  work, 172 

its  doctrine   of  the   extra-temporal 

Christ, 172-174 

emphasizes  a  valuable  truth, 173 

obscures  the  historic  Christ, 173 

obscures   the   objective  Atonement, 

173,  174 

its  doctrine  of  second  probation,..  174-177 
teaches  that  sin  consists  in  sinning...  175 
teaches  that  dispositions  are  only  sin- 
ful as  leading  to  sin, 175 

weakens  our  convictions  of  guilt  of 

heathen, 176 

its  teaching's  affect  church-life, . .  .178,  179 

loses  some  sublime  conceptions, 179 

its  influence  on  ministry, 179 

its  influence  on  missions, 179 

Theology,  New  England,  its  teachers,  - .  169 

rejects  exercise-system, 

becomes  unrnitigatedly  individualis- 
tic,  

its  tendency, 170 

Theology,  Historical,  its  two  branches,  304 
Pastoral,  a  part  of  a  Theological  Sem- 
inary training,. 304 

Practical,  a  part  of  a  Theological  Sem- 
inary training,. 304 

Systematic,  a  part  of  a  Theological 

Seminary  training, 304 

Theology,  at  present  acquiring  a  whole- 
some realistic  spirit, 445 

is  insisting  on  analogy  between  nat- 
ural and  moral  law, 445 

Theology,  Scholastic,  a  sign  of  what?..  497 
"  Things  are  only  thoughts,"  a  Berke- 

leian  aphorism, 61 

41  Thinking  thinks,"  Hegel's  dictum,.. 61,  70 
Thomasius,   on   God   as  "the   simply 

one," 165 

on  nominalism  in  Theology, 165 

on  the  divine  attributes, 165,  189 

Thompson,  Sir  William,  his  theory  of 
the   introduction    of   life    to    this 

planet, 46 

Thorwaldsen,  his  group,  "  Christ  and 

His  Apostles." 233 

"  Thou  art,"  inscription  on  Temple  at 

Delphi, 4 

Thought,  in  philosophy  of  Nescience, 
what? 8,13 


Thought,  a  true  system  of,  recognizes 
the  existence  of  metaphysical  and 

moral  truth, 20 

its  monistic  tendency  towards  Ideal- 
ism or  Materialism,.. 23 

not  a  mode  of  motion, 46 

Tieck  on  Dante, 523 

Time,  an  a  priori  truth, 48 

"Time,  Death  and  Judgment,"  a  paint- 
ing by  Watts, ' 525 

Titus,  his  treatment  of  Jerusalem, 484 

To  anrAws  ev,  GrOd  is  not, 165 

Toplady's  hymn  on  Christ's  substitu- 
tion,  219 

Totux  in  omni  parte, 51 

Tourmaline,  the,  illustration  from  its 

polarization  of  light, 446 

Tours,  defeat  of  Saracens  at, 485 

Trade,  rests  on  law  of  reciprocal  benefit,  450 
Trades-unions    and    similar   combina- 
tions, what  objectionable  in, 454 

Trench,  Archbishop,  on  "Providential 

Miracles," 136 

Troubadours,  their  rise, 500 

Truth  in  solution,  tends  to  crystallize, . .      2 
Truth,  often  consists  of  two  opposite 

propositions,  not  in  their  via  media,      6 
in  Theology,  contains  the  true  but  ir- 
reconcilable factors  of  divine  sov- 
ereignty and  human  freedom, 6 

in  consciousness,  involves  in  one  du- 
ality two  different  things,  matter 

and  spirit,... 6 

sacrificed,  if  either  of  its  factors  ig- 
nored,  6-8 

absolute,  denied  by  Positivism, 11 

a  globe  with  two  opposite  poles, 23 

anorganic  whole, 239 

cannot  deny  any  part  of,  with  impun- 
ity,  239 

Baptist  tenets  are  part  of, 239 

special  parts  of,  committed  to  special 

keepers, 241 

two  possible  plans  of  its  dissemina- 
tion,   241 

in  spiritual  things  defined, 547 

influence  of  clearer  views  of, 546,  547 

and  love,  consistent  and  inseparable,  547 

TRUTH  AND  LOVE, 546-548 

Tyndall.  his  materialism, 31 

on  "  the  passage  from  the  physics  of 
the  brain  to  the  facts  of  conscious- 
ness,"   36 

a  Humist, 59 

on  scientific  imagination, 28 

Tyrian  Ladder,  its  ascent, 477 

Ulysses,  his  fate  according  to  Dante,...  508 

Unbelief,  a  stream  of  many  eddies, 31 

UNCONSCIOUS  ASSUMPTIONS  OF  COM- 
MUNION POLEMICS, 245-249 

Uniformitarian  theory  of  geology,  re- 
cently modified, lA 

Uniformity  of  Nature,  see  Nature 


INDEX. 


629 


UNION  WITH  CHRIST,  THE  BELIEVEK'S, 

220-225 

Union  with  Christ,  believer's,  has  re- 
ceived little  formal  treatment, 220 

its  neglect  a  reaction  from  exagger- 
ations of  mysticism, 

is  taught  variously  and  abundantly  in 

Scripture,. 

illustrations  of, 

direct  teachings  of , 221 

its  scientific  definition  diflBcult, 221 

isafactof  life, 221 

a  stage  in  the  approximation  of  God 

to  his  creatures 221 

not  a  mere  natural  union, 221 

not  a  mere  moral  union, 221 

does  not  destroy  distinct  subsistence 

of  cither  of  the  persons  united, 221 

is  not  mediated  by  sacraments, 221 

as  described  in  Scripture,  222 

a  union  of  soul  with  Christ,  222 

represented  by  union  of  building  and 

foundation, : 

of  husband  and  wife, ! 

of  vine  and  branches, ..'. ! 

of  members  with  human  body, 220 

of  race  with  Adam, 220,  221 

differs  from  Clod's  natural  and  provi- 
dential concurrence  with  all  spirits,  222 
differs  from  unions  of  mere  associa- 
tion and  sympathy, 222 

differs  from  mere  moral  unions, 222 

is  a  union  of  life, 222 

preserves  personality, 

secures  the  energy 'of  the  Spirit  of 

Christ,.... 222 

is  organic, 222 

secures  reciprocity  in  the  parts  of  the 

organism, 222 

is  a  vital  union, 222 

is  indissoluble, 222 

sacraments  presuppose  it, 222 

is  inscrutable, 222 

in  what  sense  mystical, 222 

possessed  by  all  believers, 222 

not  consciously  possessed  by  all  be- 
lievers,  222 

its   knowledge   sometimes    acquired 

inadvertently, 222 

knowledge  of  it  as  a  personal  privi- 
lege elevates  Christian  life, 223 

is  the  focus  of  theology, 223 

explains  our  relation  to  Adam, 223 

throws  light  on  the  Atonement,. 223 

secures  believer's  subjective  reconcil- 
iation to  God, 223 

makes  justification  more  than  a  mere 

legal  formality, 223 

Luther  on,.. 223 

frees  the  Imputation  of  Christ's  right- 
eousness from  arbitrariness, 224 

is  the  essence  of  religion, 224 

its  relation  to  Regeneration, 224 


Union  with  Christ,  believer's,  is  cheer- 
ing,   224 

is  purifying, 224 

enables  believer  to  appropriate  proph- 
ecies and  promises  primarily  refer- 
ring to  Christ, 224 

assists  believer  to  reproduce  Christ's 

life, 224 

involves  fellowship  with  the  Savior,..  224 

sanctifies  the  soul, 224 

purifies  and  raises  up  the  body, 224 

by   it   Christ  gives   his   life   to  the 

church, 224 

conveys  assurance  of  salvation, 224 

communicates  courage, 224 

removes  indolence, 224 

checks  alike  impatience  and  faithless 

activity, 224 

assists  in  pra3rer, 225 

sets  forth  the  religion  which  can  save 

humanity, 225 

the  central  truth  of  all  theology  and     * 

religion, 362,548 

the  source  of  a  minister's  courage, ...  557 
Unitarians,  their  view  of  the  absolute 

simplicity  of  God,  its  results, 183 

many  advocate  the  eternity  of  mat- 
ter,  183 

tend  to  Pantheism, 188 

Unity,  an  unregulated  passion  for,  dep- 
recated,        6 

in  mental  and  material  phenomena, 

how  found, 68 

I'nin  r*tili(i  in  ;r,  true  though  not  inde- 
pendent realities, 164 

Universe,  the,  from  the  Positive  posi- 
tion,.     11 

denial  of  purpose  in, 11, 12 

can  produce  a  Comte  but  cannot  equal 

his  intelligence, 12 

a  godless,   any    superstition    better 

than  such  a  conception, 28 

"athought  of  God," 29 

contains  an  idea, 33 

an  expression  of  mind, 34 

of  one  substance,  according  to  Spen- 
cer,   47 

seeming  imperfections  in  its  order, 

discussed, 82,83 

its   broadest    signification   given   to 

the  word, 527 

Universities,     mediaeval,    revival     of 

learning  in, 500 

University,    the,    ever    hospitable    to 

ideas, 39 

a  teacher  of  philosophy,.. 39 

Unpicturable  things,  many,  are  true...    51 
Unregenerate,    certain    remnants    of 

power  lingering  with, 118,  119 

nevT),  its  meaning  enlarged  on, 555 

Usefulness,  each  Christian  has  his  spe- 
cial department  of, 160 

Ut  i7e,  Cicero  on, .56 


630 


INDEX. 


Valedictory  words  to  various  classes 
graduating  from  Rochester  Theo- 
logical Seminary, 

546,  548,  551,  554,  557,  559, 

560,  562,  560,  569,  572,  575,  577,  580,  583,  586 

Value,  lies  in  labor  constituting'  a  "ser- 
vice,"   448 

Values,  other  than  material  in  Political 
Economy,. 449 

Vedder,  Elihu,  his  illustrations  of  Omar 
Khayyam's  Ruhaiyat, 533 

Veitch,  on  Non-Egotistical  Idealism, ...    67 
on  the  intelligibility  of  externality  of 
object, 67 

Venus  de*  Medici  described, 413 

Violence,  its  future  punishment  accord- 
ing to  Dante, .. 512 

Virgil,  what  he  represents  in  Divine 
Comedy, 507,568 

Virgin,  house  of,  its  translation  from 
Jerusalem  to  Rome, 482,  483 

fataNuova  of  Dante,... 503 

Vitry,  James  of,  his  typical  ignorance 
of  foreign  lands,.. 500 

Volition,  conscious,  is  it  necessary  to 
sin? 101,102 

Voltaire,  his  explanation  of  the  pres- 
ence of  fossils, .--.  148 

on  influence  of  Purgatory, 525 

Wallace,  on  difference  between  human 
and  animal  intelligence, 46 

War,  the  hope  of  the  feudal  dependant,  490 
not  waged  from  mere  desire  of  ven- 
geance,  491 

Watts,  George  Frederick,  a  very  real- 
istic painter, • 525 

his  collection  of  pictures  at  the  Met- 
ropolitan Museum  of  Art, 525 

'  We  are  born  in  faith,'  Fichte's  aphor- 
ism,   21 

Wealth,  its  trials, 461 

Webster,  Daniel, on  "room  high  up,"..  282 

Weeping  at  the  grave,  Jewish  custom 
of, 477 

Wellington,  on  "the  finger  of  Provi- 
dence,"  29 

West  Point,  why  quality  of  students  at 
present  deteriorating  there, 292 

Whately,  Richard,  on  a  professorship  of 
Political  Economy  in  each  theologi- 
cal school, 443 

Whedon,  on  God's  making  himself 
happy  in  wrong,... 106 

Whispering-gallery,  illustration  from,.  551 

'White  Rose'  of  highest  heaven,  the 
resting-place  of  those  who  at  the 
same  time  are  working  in  the  sub- 
ordinate heavens, 522 

Wiberg,  Andreas,  his  usefulness  in 
Sweden, 243 

Will,  personal,  superior  to  nature's  laws,    25 
only  key  to  interpretation  of  nature, 

...25,26 


Will,  the  results  of  denying  its  freedom, 

36,37 

infinite,  need  not  manifest  its  whole 
power, 43 

infinite,  alone  necessarily  persists, 43 

WILL,  THE,  IN  THEOLOGY, 90-113 

Will,  the  difficulty  of  discussions  con- 
cerning,   90 

facts  regarding, 91 

what  facts  enter  into  the  liberty  of, . .    91 
the  liberty  of,  shown  in  mental  energy 

specially, 91 

its  freedom  held  by  Calvin, 92 

requires  some  reason  for  its  activity,    92 

requires  motive, _.    93 

its  liberty  not  dependent  on  indeter- 

minateness, 93 

its  motives  within  mind, 93 

its  strongest  motive,  the  ruling  pref- 
erence,   93 

its  completer  definition, 94 

its  freedom  consistent  with  fixed  di- 
rection and  form  of  its  volitions, . . .    94 
its  freedom  compatible  with  certainty 

of  action, 95 

as   a  faculty   of   volitions   is   cau*« 

causans 95 

as  related  to  character  is  causa  ca  n.<- 

ata, 95 

its  formal  freedom, 95 

the  origin  of  its  necessity  of  evil, 95 

its  civil  freedom, .    95 

as  treated  in  most  moral  philosophies,    95 
has  no  power  to  change  character,. . .    96 

cannot  disregard  motive, 96 

errors  of  philosophers  regarding, 96 

a  more  comprehensive  definition  of,  96,  97 
its  place  in  the  universe  according  to 

Schopenhauer  and  Hartmann, 97 

unconscious 97 

further  defined, 97 

Revue  Cbretienne  on 9T 

not  a  '  creative  first  cause, ' 97 

author's  theory  of,  required  by  a  true 
doctrine  of  divine  foreknowledge, 

98,  101 

author's  theory  of,  required  by  a  true 
doctrine  of  man's  responsibility  for 

native  depravity, K/l-103 

author's  theory  of,  recapitulated  and 

tested  by  Scripture, .98-113 

caprice-theory  of, 99-101 

author's  theory  of,  necessary  to  a 
Scriptural  sense  of  the  universality 

of  personal  guilt, 102 

author's  theory  of,  necessary  to  a  just 
view  of  the  extent  of  the  divine 

law, 102 

how  responsible  for  an  inborn  state 

of, 103 

author's  theory  of,  harmonizes  with 
Scriptural  teachings  on  the  divine 
initiative  in  salvation,...  ..  103 


INDEX. 


631 


Will,  author's  view  of,  agreeable  with 
Scripture  teaching  on  the  perma- 
nence of  character  in  God  and  the 

redeemed, 105-107 

author's  view  of,  defined  from  objec- 
tion,   107-111 

its  motives  never  equally  balanced,..  107 
may  remain  same  while  vast  subordi- 
nate improvements  take  place   in 

character, Ill,  112 

Jonathan  Edwards'  theory  of,  insuffl- 

eient, 120 

always  and  everywhere  acts  only  in 

view  of  motives, 122 

as  related  to  motive, 122 

its  own  determiner, 122 

considered  as  absolutely  originating1,  123 

obedient  yet  elective, 123 

an  undetermined  cause, 123 

chooses  direction  only, 123 

and  desire,  how  related, 123 

sinners  have  not  lost  all  natural 

power  of, 124 

its  natural  freedom  under  grace  be- 
comes a  higher  freedom, 126 

its  '  formal '  and  '  real '  freedom, 126 

use  of  its  '  formal  '  freedom  may  lead 

to  '  real  '  freedom, 126 

may  use  its  formal  freedom  till  habit 

is  incurable, 128 

human, can  act  on  nature  and  produce 

results  which    nature  alone  could 

not  accomplish, 134 

human. not  determined  t>\  natural  law,  HJo 
has  a  power  superior  to  nature's  laws,  135 
the  central  fact  in  personality,  human 

and  divine, 182 

an  independent,  granted  by  God  to 

man, 360 

strongest  thing  in  being,  save  God,  . .  550 
Withered  hand,  a  parable  of  salvation,  113 
Woman,  modern  view  of  her  dignity,..  207 

WOMAN'S  PLACE  AND  WORK, 400-409 

Woman,  her  place  and  work  according 

to  <Jen.~:  18, 400 

her  paradisaic  state, 400 

how  received  by  Adam, 400 

in  her  nature  equal  with  man, 400 

in  office  subordinate  to  man, 401 

one  with  man  in  life  and  work, 401 

her  head  is  man,  as  Christ's  head  is 

God,. 401 

her  position  not  determined  by  curse,  401 
divine  curse  upon,  what  does  it  mean?  402 
her  degradation  among  Hindus  and 

Jews, 402 

any  existing  relics  of  injustice  to  her 

in  laws  or  manners  should  be  put 

away, 402 

facilities  of  culture  should  be  as  free 

to  her  as  to  man, 403 

all  suitable  occupations  should  be 

open  to, ..403 


Woman,  her  remuneration  should  be 

equal  to  that  of  man, 403 

reform  in  all  things  injuriously  affect- 
ing, has  sympathy  of  Christian 

teacher, 403 

any  prominent,  entitled  to  fair  judg- 
ment,   403 

by  sex,  subordinated  in  office  to  man,  403 
her   subordination   to   man  not  ex- 
plained on  force  theory, 404 

fitted  by  constitution  for  subordina- 
tion,   404 

the  duties  of  maternity  preclude  at 

times  outdoor  labor, 405 

her  grandest  work, 405 

the  influence  of  Christianity  and  civi- 

li/.ation  upon  her  position, 405,  406 

the  aspirations  of  the  Buddhist, 406 

false  views  of  her  position  affect  the 

marriage  bond, 406 

and  the  franchise, 407,  408 

her  debt  to  Christianity, 409 

how  she  may  be  man's  helper, 409 

how  much  she  owes  to  Christ, 410,  414 

her  position  in  the  east, 410 

at  Athens  and  Rome, 410,  411 

in  heathen  lauds,.. 411,  412 

her  degradation  self-perpetuating, ...  412 
her  nature  consecrated  by  the  mater- 
nity of  Jesus, 413 

her  status  elevated  by  her  share 
equally  with  man  in  the  redeeming 

work  of  Christ, 413 

honored  by  being  made  the  first  her- 
ald of  the  gospel. 413 

Teutonic  reverence  for,  received  new 

impulse  from  Christianity, 414 

the  passive  virtues,  usually  deemed 
feminine,  specially  recognized  by 

Christ....  414 

her  work  for  women  in  heathen  lands 
a  modern  feature  in  Christian  activ- 
ity,  415 

WOMAN,  THE  EDUCATION  OF  A, 418-430 

Woman's  Rights  agitation,  its  funda- 
mental error, 405 

reasons  for  solicitude  concerning, 407 

Women,  heathen,  their  numbers  and 

condition, 412 

elevated  by  Christ, 413 

Christian,  can  to  some  extent  repay 
their  debt  to  Christ  by  seeking  to 
extend  the  blessings  they  have  re- 
ceived'to  their  sisters,... 415 

not  accessible  to  men,  in  some  eastern 

countries, 416 

heathen,  their  influence  as  wives  and 

mothers, 416 

Mohammedans  anxious  for  the  educa- 
tion of  their, 416 

their  future  missionary  movements 

forecast, 417 

the  writings  of,  their  characteristics,  420 


632 


INDEX. 


Women,  eminent  public,  are  exceptions 

not  examples, -  429 

Women's  American  Baptist  Missionary 

Society,  its  special  work, 416 

its  strength  in  1883, . .  416 

an   opportunity  for  women  to  take 

part  directly  in  mission  work, 417 

Woolman,  John,  his  sympathetic  suffer- 
ings as  a  member  of  a  sinful  race,. .  217 
Word,  the  spoken,  its  explanation  more 
than  a  reference  to  vibrations  of  air 

which  constitute  sound, 33 

of  God,  its  personality, 545 

the  only  weapon  of  the  Christian  min- 
istry,   545 

relation  of '  reason  to, 572 

Wordsworth,    his    poetry    contrasted 

with  that  of  Swinburne, 56 

his  lines  contrasting  the  fixity  of  the 
material  universe  with  the  errancy 
of  spirit, 60 


Wordsworth,  compared  with  Browning,  582 
deficient  in  a  sense  of  the  ludicrous,.  537 
sometimes   long-winded   and  weari- 
some,  537 

WORK  AND  POWER,.. 552-554 

Wundt,  and  his  new  German  psychol- 
ogy,     69 

Xenophon's  saying  concerning  Cyrus, .  564 
Youmans,   his    theory   that    so-called 
chemical  elements  are  but  modifica- 
tions of  a  common  ultimate  sub- 
stance,        6 

on  transformation  of  force  into  con- 
sciousness,     24 

ZEAL  FOR  CHRIST, 583-586 

Zeal  distinguished  from  fanaticism, 584 

Zenana  work,  what? 41ft 

its  advantages, 41tt 

whom  to  be  done  by, 416 

Zola,  his  literary  work  characterized, .  -  531 


UNIVERSITY 


SYSTEMATIC    THEOLOGY: 


COMPENDIUM    AND    COMMONPLACE  BOOK 

DESIGNED    FOR    THE    USE    OF 

THEOLOGICAL    STUDENTS. 

BY 
AUGUSTUS  HOPKINS  STRONG,  D.  D., 

PRESIDENT   AND   PROFESSOR   OF   BIBLICAL    THEOLOGY   IN   THE 
ROCHESTER    THEOLOGICAL    SEMINARY. 


EXTRACT  FROM  THE 

PEEFACE 


THIS  work  is  an  enlarged  and  amended  edition  of  the  author's  "Lectures 
on  Theology,"  printed  ha  1876  for  the  use  of  students  in  the  Rochester 
Theological  Seminary.  It  contains  nearly  four  tunes  the  amount  of  matter 
embraced  in  the  former  volume.  The  main  text  remains  substantially  the 
same,  although  important  additions  have  been  made  to  the  treatment  of 
the  intuition  of  the  divine  existence,  the  classification  of  the  attributes,  the 
statement  of  the  doctrine  of  decrees,  the  teaching  as  to  race-sin  and  race- 
responsibility,  ability  or  inability,  the  ethical  theory  of  the  atonement,  and 
the  final  state  of  the  wicked.  The  section  on  the  moral  nature  of  man 
( conscience  and  will )  is  new ;  a  few  minor  paragraphs  of  the  older  book 
have  been  omitted ;  and  the  work  has  been  somewhat  altered  in  arrangement. 

The  author's  aim  has  been  not  so  much  the  writing  of  a  theology  for 
theologians  as  the  construction  of  a  hand-book  for  the  use  of  students  for 
the  ministry.  The  main  text  is  intended  to  serve  as  the  basis  for  daily  reci- 
tation ;  the  matter  in  smaller  print  is  added  by  way  of  proof,  explanation, 
or  illustration.  To  save  labor  to  the  reader,  Scripture  passages  referred  to 
in  the  text  have  been  printed  in  full  in  the  appended  notes  —  the  Revised 
English  Version,  except  where  otherwise  indicated,  being  used,  and  the 
readings  of  the  American  Committee  being  generally  preferred.  Minute 
references  are  given,  under  each  head,  to  the  various  books  which  may  serve 
as  additional  sources  of  information  or  suggestion.  The  writers  referred 
to  are  not  mentioned  as  authorities  :  it  has  been  the  aim,  in  general,  to  indi- 
cate not  only  the  authors  whose  views  are  favored,  but  also  those  who  best 


represent  the  views  combated,  in  the  text.  The  editions  used  are  those 
found  in  the  Library  of  the  Seminary  for  whose  students  the  text-book  was 
originally  written  ;  fortunately  these  editions  are,  in  general,  the  latest. 

It  has  been  thought  well  not  only  to  give  references  to  the  best  writers 
on  the  subjects  treated,  but  also  to  introduce  brief  quotations  from  them, 
with  a  view  to  familiarize  the  reader  with  their  general  doctrinal  position 
and  to  stimulate  him  to  further  reading  of  the  works  themselves.  Many  of 
these  quotations  are  followed  by  explanatory  or  critical  remarks,  and  in  the 
smaller  print  considerable  space  is  not  unfrequently  given  to  notes  upon 
matters  that  could  not  be  fully  treated  in  the  text,  such  as  the  history  of 
systematic  theology,  the  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  heathen  systems  of 
morality,  heathen  trinities,  the  Mosaic  history  of  creation,  the  Sabbath, 
objections  to  the  evolutionary  theory  of  the  origin  of  man,  a  tabular  view 
of  theories  of  imputation,  notes  on  depravity,  guilt,  and  penalty,  the  hu- 
manity of  Christ,  the  Old  Testament  sacrifices,  the  doctrine  of  election, 
union  with  Christ,  ordination  to  the  ministry,  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
and  the  second  coming  of  Christ. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  books  are  sometimes  referred  to  which  can  hardly 
be  called  the  best  sources  of  information  :  in  such  cases  the  intention  has 
often  been  to  help  the  theological  student  to  use  intelligently  the  books  he 
has  ;  in  other  words,  to  enable  the  possessor  of  few  books,  and  those  not  the 
best,  to  get  from  them  all  the  good  he  can. 

Attention  is  called  to  the  element  of  Scriptural  exposition  that  has  been 
admitted.  Under  each  of  the  chief  doctrines,  the  main  passages  relied  upon 
for  proof  are  somewhat  fully  explained ;  while  the  attempt  has  been  made 
to  condense  the  results  of  the  best  modern  exegesis  into  the  few  words 
of  explanation  immediately  following  many  of  the  minor  passages  cited. 
Although  much  material  for  private  study  is  thus  added,  the  author  does 
not  regard  the  work,  even  in  its  present  form,  as  more  than  an  outline  which 
needs  to  be  filled  in  by  the  fuller  expositions  and  discussions  of  the  class- 
room. It  is  to  be  judged  by  its  aim  —  to  provide  a  basis  and  starting-point, 
a  source  of  elementary  knowledge  and  a  stimulus  to  thought,  in  preparation 
for  the  oral  instruction  of  a  Theological  Seminary. 


The  few  copies  of  Dr.  Strong's  "Systematic  Theology"  yet  remaining 
unsold  are  now  offered  to  ministers  and  theological  students  in  general. 
It  is  a  volume  of  780  pages,  including  an  index  of  158  pages.  It  comprises 
as  much  printed  matter  as  the  three  volumes  of  the  "  Systematic  Theology" 
of  Dr.  Hodge,  and  four  times  as  much  as  the  brief  Compendium  printed  by 
the  author  in  1876.  The  book  is  not  sold  at  bookstores,  and  there  is  no  dis- 
count to  any  one.  The  undersigned  is  the  only  agent  for  its  sale.  A  copy 
will  be  sent  postpaid  to  any  address  on  receipt  of  postal  order  for  FIVE 
DOLLAKS,  by 

O.  W.  JANSEN,  Agent, 

No.  6  Trevor  Hall,  KOCHESTEK,  N.  Y. 


3 

EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  AND  REVIEWS. 


PROFESSOR  WILLIAM  G.  T.  SHEDD,  D.  D., 
of  the  UNION  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY,  New  York  City. 

I  am  rejoiced  to  find  that  the  orthodox  faith  has  obtained  yet  another  lucid  statement 
and  powerful  defense.  You  have  made  a  manual  superior  to  any  that  I  am  acquainted 
with  in  the  English  language;  and  at  the  same  time  there  is  far  more  of  the  fulness  and 
sequence  of  a  theological  treatise  than  is  usually  attained  in  a  hand-book.  I  have 
recommended  it  to  my  classes  as  an  exceedingly  helpful  work  for  them  to  obtain  and 
study. 

PRESIDENT  ALVAH  HOVEY,  D.  D., 
of  the  NEWTON  THEOLOGICAL  INSTITUTION,  Newton  Centre,  Mass., 

in  the  Baptist  Quarterly,  October,  1886. 

Dr.  Strong  is  entitled  to  high  rank  among  the  true  knights  of  labor.  .  .  .  We  think 
of  his  Systematic  Theology  as  uniting  the  best  thought  of  the  past  with  that  of  the 
present,  the  Augustinianism  of  the  early  church  with  the  tempered  Calvinism  of  to-day 
....  The  part  which  treats  of  Christian  churches  and  ordinances  will  be  found  entirely 
satisfactory  to  Baptists,  and  at  least  profitable,  because  instructive,  to  Christians  of 
every  name.  We  rejoice,  therefore,  in  the  publication  of  this  volume,  on  account  of 
the  truth  which  it  teaches  as  well  as  on  account  of  the  scholarly  manner  in  which  that 
truth  is  taught.  It  must  fill  an  important  place  in  our  theological  literature.  Its  plan  is 
comprehensive,  its  analysis  thorough,  its  learning  sound,  its  style  lucid,  and  its  reasoning 
vigorous.  It  is  positive  without  being  acrid,  and  the  influence  of  its  teaching  will  doubt- 
less be  specially  useful  because  it  is  timely. 

PRESIDENT  ALVAH  HOVEY,  D.  D., 
in  a  letter  to  the  author. 

Allow  me  to  congratulate  you  upon  the  completion  of  so  valuable  a  work It 

seems  to  me  to  be  a  very  self-consistent,  scholarly,  and  complete  work.  With  nearly  all 
the  views  advocated  in  it  I  sympathize.  Certainly  there  is  no  "  Systematic  Theology  " 
which  I  would  sooner  place  in  the  hands  of  a  pupil,  or  of  a  son,  than  yours.  If  it  speaks 
with  slightly  more  confidence  than  I  feel  on  a  few  difficult  points,  I  am  almost  glad  that 
it  does ;  for  I  have  no  pleasure  in  hesitancy,  and  I  believe  that  your  views  are  not 
inconsistent  with  the  Scriptures.  But  every  one  must  speak  and  write  according  to  the 
grace  that  is  given  him. 

PROFESSOR  E.  D.  MORRIS,  D.  D., 

of  the  LANE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY,  Cincinnati,  O.,  in  the  New  York  Evangelist. 

This  volume  ....  is  much  more  than  a  hand-book  or  compendium,  as  it  modestly 
chums  to  be:  it  is  rather  a  broad  and  vigorous  discussion,  highly  creditable  as  such  to 
the  author,  and  well  worthy  of  a  place  among  the  standard  American  authorities  in 

this  department The  views  on  Inspiration  are  especially  clear  and  convincing,  and 

the  answers  to  current  objections  are  vigorous  and  conclusive We  find  in  it  no 

trace  of  sympathy  with  the  loose,  pernicious  theories  of  the  future  life  now  advocated 

in  certain  quarters We  recommend  it  as  not  merely  a  handbook  for  the  class-room, 

but  a  scholarly,  systematic,  able  treatise  on  the  greatest  of  ail  themes. 

REV.  A.  J.  F.  BEHRENDS,  D.  D., 
in  the  New  York  Independent. 

This  book  is  a  growth Its  wide  reading  and  careful  discrimination  are  stamped 

upon  every  page.  It  is,  with  its  full  indices,  an  admirable  handbook  for  the  preacher's 
study-table,  aiding  the  student  by  its  ample  references  to  push  his  investigations  in  all 

directions  and  to  the  utmost  limit There  is  a  wholesome  tonic  in  Dr.  Strong's 

masterly  discussion  of  Inspiration We  thank  him  for  his  able  defense  of  this 

citadel  of  the  Christian  faith The  conception  of  the  Divine  law  is  very  lofty,  and 

is  vigorously  carried  through  in  the  discussions  of  sin  and  atonement Of  course, 

on  the  doctrine  of  the  Sacraments,  the  author  defends  the  Baptist  views.  There  is  no 
taint  of  the  open-communion  heresy  in  him,  though  his  temper  is  admirable  in  its 

Christian  catholicity It  is  much  easier  to  criticise  such  a  book  than  to  write  it : 

and  we  regard  it  as  one  of  the  very  best  theological  manuals  in  existence. 


PRESIDENT  E.  G.  ROBINSON,  D.  D., 
Of  BROWN  UNIVERSITY,  Providence,  R.  I. 

I  fear  you  will  think  me  very  negligent  in  not  long-  ago  acknowledging  the  receipt  of 
your  admirable  volume  of  Theology.  The  truth  is,  I  have  been  crowded  with  work, 
and  wanted  to  get  a  little  time  to  examine  the  volume  before  writing  you,  but  the  fates 
have  been  against  me.  I  have  only  found  time  to  read  your  preface  and  to  dip  in  here 
ana  there.  I  see  you  are  eminently  orthodox  and  not  likely  to  lead  astray. 

PRESIDENT  M.  B.  ANDERSON,  LL.  D., 

of  the  UNIVERSITY  OF  ROCHESTER. 

Accept  my  sincere  thanks  for  your  elaborate  treatise  on  Systematic  Theology.  It  is  a 
monument  of  industry  and  learning,  and  a  conclusive  proof  that  no  labor  or  thought 

has  been  spared  in  the  discharge  of  the  responsible  duties  of  your  office I  beg 

leave  to  congratulate  you  on  the  completion  of  a  course  of  instruction  so  comprehensive 
in  range  and  so  complete  in  details. 

PRESIDENT  G.  D.  B.  PEPPER,  D.  D., 
of  COLBY  UNIVERSITY,  in  The  Watchman. 

Dr.  Strong  has  a  rare  power  of  making  just  such  clear,  concise,  exact  statements  of 
positions  as  a  student  ought  to  commit  to  memory,  and  he  appends  to  these  an  expan- 
sion, partly  in  his  own  language,  and  largely  in  quotations  from  others  and  references 
to  others,  as  gives  the  requisite  completeness  of  view That  the  author  is  preemi- 
nently an  artist  and  an  architect  appears  in  all  his  productions,  but  nowhere  else  so 

signally  or  impressively  as  here Solidity  and  strength  are  combined  with  grace 

and  beauty.    As  to  substance  of  doctrine  the  work  is  eminently  conservative The 

development  of  the  doctrine  of  the  church  is  in  both  form  and  matter  very  satisfactory. 
....  Catholic  and  fair  toward  other  denominations,  the  entire  discussion  is  unflinchingly 
Baptist.  Whatever  grounds  one  may  have  for  dissent  with  some  of  the  positions  taken 
in  this  volume,  it  must  be  conceded  that  the  work  has  signal  merit.  It  is  an  honor  alike 
to  its  author,  to  Rochester  Theological  Seminary,  to  the  Baptist  denomination,  and  to 
the  Christian  church.  It  has  a  future. 

REV.  HENRY  M.  DEXTER,  D.  D., 

in  the  Congregationalism 
One  great  preeminence  which  this  manual  has  over  every  other  which  we  recall  is  in 

the  fullness  and  completeness  of  its  indexes Another  valuable  quality  of  the  book 

is  its  expository  element.    It  has  some  features  —  mechanical  and  other  —  which  give  it 

unusual  value While  storing  away  into  a  large  octavo  page  an  extraordinary 

quantity  of  matter,  it  is  yet  beautifully  clear  and  readable Of  course  we  should 

be  more  edified  by  his  volume  if  eight  or  ten  of  its  pages  on  baptism  were  essentially 
modified,  but  — with  that  exception  — we  regard  the  book  as  one  of  very  great  value, 
and  to  be  warmly  commended  to  all  who  love  thorough  discussion  in  theology,  leading 
in  general  to  right  conclusions. 

PROFESSOR  A.  H.  NEWMAN,  D.  D., 
of  the  TORONTO  BAPTIST  COLLEGE,  in  the  Canadian  Baptist. 
It  would  be  quite  within  bounds  to  say  that  Dr.  Strong's  book  is  the  most  important 

contribution  ever  made  by  a  Baptist  to  systematic  theology We  will  go  further. 

It  is,  everything  considered,  the  very  best  work  in  existence  on  the  subject  of  which  it 
treats.  We  say  this  not  in  ignorance  of  the  great  works  of  the  Hodges,  of  H  B.  Smith, 

of  Dorner,  and  of  other  leading  German  theologians We  do  not  hesitate  to  give 

the  preference  to  Dr.  Strong's  book  as  a  well-balanced,  complete  treatise,  adapted  to  the 

wants  of  the  present  age It  should  have  a  place  in  the  library  of  every  student 

and  of  every  minister  who  wishes  to  keep  abreast  of  the  theological  thinking  of  the  age. 

METHODIST  REVIEW, 

November,  1886. 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  no  one  of  the  many  very  able  theological  writers  of  the 
Baptist  denomination  of  the  last  half-century  has,  until  now,  given  to  it  and  to  the 
church-public  a  comprehensive  treatise  on  Systematic  Theology,  though  a  number  of 
very  able  monographs  have  appeared.  But  this  lack  is  now  abundantly  supplied  by  the 
ls«ue  of  the  work  the  transcript  of  whose  title  is  given  above Now  that  they  have 


this  comprehensive  digest  of  Christian  doctrine,  they  may  be  said  to  have  contributed 

their  share  to  our  theological  literature The  author  seems  to  think,  and  in  this  we 

agree  with  him,  that  one  who  undertakes  to  teach  should  have  settled  convictions  of  his 

own We  may  speak  of  the  system  of  Christian  doctrines  here  given,  as  a  whole, 

as  thoroughly  biblical  and  eminently  evangelical.  The  presentation  of  the  doctrine  of 
sin,  of  atonement,  of  justification,  and  of  the  Christian  life,  are  all  most  excellent,  and 
with  these  wrought  into  his  thinking  and  experience,  the  Christian  teacher  will  not  be 

likely  to  lead  men  very  far  astray By  the  production  of  this  volume  the  author 

has  made  not  only  those  of  his  own  denomination,  but  the  whole  church  universal,  his 
debtors. 

PROFESSOR  J.  C.  LONG,  D.  D., 
of  the  CROZER  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY,  in  the  Examiner. 

Dr.  Strong,  as  is  well-known,  belongs  to  the  conservative  school  of  theologians 

He  writes  with  clearness,  vigor,  and  scholarly  precision.  His  definitions,  a  large  part 
of  the  book,  are  concise,  neat,  and  easily  intelligible.  His  statements  of  the  views  of 
others  are  candid,  and  as  full  as  the  circumstances  permitted  them  to  be.  The  notes 
on  the  history  of  particular  doctrines  are  valuable  and  stimulating.  The  citations  of 
authorities  indicate  a  very  extensive  and  unusual  acquaintance  with  the  literatures 
especially  the  recent  and  contemporaneous  literature,  of  the  subject  discussed.  If  Dr. 
Strong  holds  to  the  old  in  theology,  it  is  not  because  he  is  not  acquainted  with  the  new ; 
but  because  he  is  acquainted  with  it,  and  feels  that  the  old  is  better.  He  disclaims 
writing  for  theologians,  but  there  are  few  theologians  who  would  not  find  his  book 
exceptionally  valuable  and  helpful. 

LUTHERAN  QUARTERLY  REVIEW, 

January,  1887. 

Theological  science  has  produced  in  this  country  very  few  works  of  the  scope  and  merit 
of  this  solid  octavo.  The  only  previous  publication  of  the  kind  that  bears  comparison 
with  it  is  Dr.  Charles  Hodge's  "Systematic  Theology,"  in  three  volumes.  While  this  one 
volume  comprises  as  much  printed  matter  as  those  three,  it  has  the  advantage  of  smaller 
and  therefore  more  convenient  bulk,  having  the  whole  work,  including  a  copious  index 
of  158  pages,  in  a  single  book.  It  has  also  the  merit  of  greater  conciseness  and  conden- 
sation. It  excels  in  the  element  of  freshness.  It  is  a  comprehensive  survey  of  modern 
theological  opinions,  exhibiting  prodigious  and  well-digested  learning,  marked  by  an 
uncommon  faculty  of  analysis,  logical  arrangement  and  exact  definition,  and  stamped 

throughout  by  conservatism,  candor  and  charity Publications  of  this  kind  are 

very  much  needed  just  now  amid  the  general  haze  in  the  theological  world,  and  while 
this  may  not  solve  all  or  many  of  the  problems  that  are  rife,  it  will  help  students  to  clear 
thinking  and  scriptural  knowledge,  two  of  the  foremost  requisites  for  a  sound  theology. 

REV.  CHARLES  H.  SPURGEON, 
in  the  Sword  and  Trowel,  London,  November,  1886. 
A  remarkable  body  of  divinity  which  may  serve  for  Baptists  as  Hodge  does  for 

Presbyterians We  might  take  exceptions  [to  its  doctrine  of  the  Communion,  the 

Atonement,  and  the  Second  Advent],  but  when  we  have  said  all,  we  still  feel  that  this  is 
a  great  work,  and  that  men  who  study  it  will  be  men  indeed,  if  the  Lord  blesses  them. 
....  If  our  young  ministers  knew  more  of  theology  —  that  is  to  say,  of  the  Word  of 
God  —  they  would  not  be  so  easily  duped  by  pretenders  to  knowledge,  who  endeavor  to 
protect  their  own  ignorance  by  crying  down  a  thorough  and  systematic  study  of  revealed 
truth.  We  hope  Dr.  Strong  will  enable  the  English  reader  to  procure  his  invaluable 
Cyclopaedia,  for  it  is  nothing  less. 

PROFESSOR  A.  C.  KENDRICK,  D.  D., 

of  the  UNIVERSITY  OF  ROCHESTER. 

I  have  taken  occasion  to  dip  into  the  volume  here  and  there  and  to  assure  myself  of 
its  great  thoroughness  and  completeness.  I  anticipate  much  pleasure  and  profit  in  ita 
further  examination,  and  I  feel  sure  that  your  students,  as  well  as  theological  students 
in  general,  will  find  it  a  great  and  invaluable  aid  to  their  theological  studies.  It  is  in 
every  respect  an  elegant  book,  and  will  be  a  credit,  I  am  sure,  both  to  our  Seminary 
and  our  city.  Our  city  press  is  to  be  congratulated  on  such  a  specimen  of  book-making, 
and  I  cannot  doubt  that  you  will  realize  in  the  impulse  and  aid  which  it  will  give  to 
theological  study  a  rich  reward  of  your  labor. 


6 

PRESIDENT  JOSEPH  ANGUS,  D.  D., 
of  the  BAPTIST  COLLEGE,  Regent's  Park,  London. 

I  am  greatly  indebted  for  a  copy  of  your  Systematic  Theology,  which  reached  me  a 
couple  of  days  ago.  I  have  spent  some  time  in  looking  it  over  —  with  great  interest  and 
satisfaction.  It  is  clear,  sufficiently  full,  and  eminently  suggestive.  Mr.  John  Sheppard 
used  to  say  that  no  author  should  be  allowed  a  copyright  in  any  book  unless  he  added 
an  Index.  Even  if  his  notion  had  become  law,  your  title  to  proprietorship  would  be 
complete.  The  Indexes  are  capital,  and  will  prove  of  great  value  to  all  students. 

REV.  SAMUEL  G.  GREEN,  D.  D., 
Secretary  of  the  LONDON  RELIGIOUS  TRACT  SOCIETY. 

I  like  it  [  Dr.  Strong's  book  ]  far  better  than  Dr.  Hodge's  "  Outlines."  I  agree  with 
it  more,  and  there  is  more  to  stimulate  thought.  Half  the  use  of  such  a  text-book  is 
in  stimulating  those  who  use  it  to  think  for  themselves.  I  sometimes  decidedly  dissent 
from  Dr.  Strong,  as  e.  g.  on  the  Communion  question,  but  I  like  the  book  none  the  less 
on  that  account. 

REV.  T.  WITTON  DAVIES,  D.  D., 

Professor  of  Hebrew  in  the  BAPTIST  COLLEGE,  Haverfordwest,  Wales. 
I  lately  received  a  copy  of  Dr.  Strong's  Systematic  Theology     Dr.  Davies,  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  College,  has  borrowed  my  copy,  and  he  is  so  pleased  with  it  that  he  has 
resolved  to  introduce  it  into  his  classes  as  a  text-book. 

PRESIDENT  W.  T.  STOTT,  D.  D., 
of  FRANKLIN  COLLEGE,  in  the  Indiana  Baptist. 

If  it  could  once  have  been  said  that  American  Baptists  have  no  representative  authors 
In  Christian  and  theological  literature,  it  can  be  said  no  longer.  Among  the  best  books 

on  Systematic  Theology  that  have  appeared  in  this  country  is  Dr.  Strong's The 

book  contains  more  matter,  possibly,  than  Dr.  Hodge's,  and  will  doubtless  take  the  place 

among  Baptists  that  Dr.  Hodge's  does  among  Presbyterians It  is  a  biblical  and 

scholarly  exposition  of  the  fundamental  doctrines  of  theology The  minister, 

though  he  be  not  educated  in  the  schools,  may  comprehend  the  drift  and  substance  of 
every  discussion,  while  the  man  of  learning  will  see  that  he  is  reading  after  a  mind  that 
is  broadly  familiar  with  the  present  sum  of  human  knowledge  in  science,  philosophy, 
and  history.  We  cannot  but  rejoice  that  so  able  an  exposition  of  Scripture  doctrines, 
as  Baptists  hold  them,  has  appeared.  We  are  sure  that  the  volume  will  be  a  standard 
for  a  long  time  to  come. 

PROFESSOR  E.  H.  JOHNSON,  D.  D., 

of  the  CROZER  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY,  in  the  National  Baptist. 

Cursory  examination  of  the  whole  and  closer  reading  of  various  parts  warrant  the 

prediction  that  Dr.  Strong's  "  Systematic  Theolog3' "  will  prove  to  educated  ministers 

and  to  theological  students  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  instructive  surveys  of  the 

field  yet  afforded  to  the  public.   It  has  the  advantage  high  in  any  science,  of  being  recent, 

and  of  being  at  once  concise  and  comprehensive The  general  arrangement  is 

logical,  often  especially  felicitous,  the  analysis  of  a  doctrine  thorough,  the  definitions 

clear  and  firm,  the  discussions  vigorous,  the  spirit  both  conservative  and  kind 

A  wide  sweep  of  theological  erudition  has  been  required  for  the  preparation  of  this 

volume The  friends  of  the  Seminary  presided  over  by  Dr.  Strong,  and  the  lovers 

of  a  wise  orthodoxy,  may  well  rejoice  at  the  appearance  of  this  exceptionally  able  and 
useful  work. 

REV.  HENRY  S.  BURRAGE,  D.  D., 

in  Zion's  Advocate,  Portland,  Maine. 

The  part  of  the  work  which  treats  of  the  church  is  very  full  and  satisfactory.  Here, 
as  indeed  in  the  volume  throughout,  we  have  clear  analysis,  careful  exegesis,  and  a 
sufficiently  elaborate  discussion  for  a  forcible  presentation  of  the  author's  views.  .... 
The  volume  is  a  storehouse  of  religious  truth,  a  complete  handbook  of  theology,  which 
should  be  in  the  hands  of  every  minister,  and  every  intelligent  layman.  To  such  we 
commend  it  most  heartily.  Its  publication  is  an  honor  to  the  Baptist  name,  as  well  as  to 
its  author. 


REV.  JUSTIN  A.  SMITH,  D.  D., 

in  the  Chicago  Standard. 

It  is  especially  desirable  as  a  'ibrary-book,  a  book  to  be  kept  at  hand  for  frequent  use 
by  those  ....  who  may  need  to  have  access  to  a  statement  of  Christian  doctrine,  which 
shall  be,  while  concise,  still  complete,  presenting  in  few  words  a  clear  statement  of  the 

truth  on  each  point Whatever  point  in  theological  discussion  or  inquiry  the  reader 

may  wish  to  consult  his  author  upon,  he  will  be  quite  sure  to  find  it  included In 

respect  to  its  general  treatment  of  the  great  themes  of  theology,  the  book  seems  to  us 
deserving  of  high  praise.  It  is  a  book  for  a  Baptist  to  name  with  pride  and  satisfaction 
as  he  compares  it  with  those  which  bear  the  names  of  eminent  theologians  of  other 
denominations.  The  signs  of  research,  and  of  careful,  scholarly  and  critical  study  of 

authorities  are  on  every  page At  the  same  time  one  feels  that  he  is  receiving  the 

instructions  of  an  independent  thinker,  whose  mind  works  along  the  lines  of  the  old 
and  orthodox  theology  because  study  and  reflection  have  seen  in  that  theology  all  the 
notes  of  ascertained  truth The  book  is  admirably  printed,  and  in  point  of  mech- 
anism, every  way,  is  perfect.  An  immense  amount  of  labor  has  been  bestowed  upon  it, 
in  the  mechanical  parts  of  which  Dr.  Strong  has  had  efficient  co-laborers,  yet  which 
must  still  remain,  in  his  own  case,  an  example  of  industry,  patient  research,  and  consci- 
entious fidelity. 

PRESIDENT  JOHN  H.  CASTLE,  D.  D., 

of  the  TORONTO  BAPTIST  COLLEGE. 

I  am  under  deep  obligations  for  your  courtesy  in  sending  me  a  copy  of  your  great 
work  on  Theology.  It  is  a  monument  to  your  industry,  wide-reading,  skillful  gleaning, 

keen  insight,  clear  statement,  and  above  all,  to  your  fidelity  to  God's  own  Book 

I  am  proud  to  see  this  rich  contribution  to  theological  science  emanating  from  one  of 
our  Baptist  Seminaries,  my  own  Alma  Mater. 

PROFESSOR  MOSES  COIT  TYLER, 

of  CORNELL  UNIVERSITY. 

I  am  deeply  impressed  by  the  greatness  and  nobility  of  the  work  you  have  thus 
achieved,  and  I  congratulate  you,  and  rejoice  with  you.  I  am  delighted  with  the  type, 
which  concentrates  a  vast  amount  of  matter  and  is  also  clear  and  beautiful.  But  the 
comprehensiveness  of  the  work,  its  analysis,  order,  great  learning,  and  reverent  spirit 
—  all  fill  me  with  admiration. 

REV.  G.  W.  LASHER,  D.  D., 
in  the  Journal  and  Messenger,  Cincinnati,  O. 

The  more  we  read,  the  more  we  admire  the  sincerity  and  exhaustiveness  with  which 
each  subject  is  treated,  the  frankness  with  which  objections  are  stated,  and  the  logical 

and  Scriptural  acumen  with  which  the  truth  is  vindicated This  volume  is  one  of 

the  most  exhaustive  and  satisfactory  treatises  that  has  ever  fallen  into  our  hands 

The  student  who  has  this  book  in  hand  is  put  into  communication  with  the  master  minds 

of  the  Christian  world A  second  feature  of  the  work  with  which  we  are  specially 

pleased  is  its  thoroughly  biblical  character The  final  appeal  is  to  the  word  of  God, 

and  the  work  is  what  the  title  of  the  author's  professorship  in  the  Theological  Seminary 
indicates  as  his  special  field  — "  Biblical  Theology." 

REV.  A.  E.  DICKINSON,  D.  D., 
in  the  Religious  Herald,  Richmond,  Va. 

While  this  book  will  be  specially  valuable  to  theological  students,  it  may  be  studied 
with  profit  by  others.  Such  a  work  needs  no  commendation  from  us.  It  will  take  its 
place  as  one  of  the  great  authorities  on  the  subjects  of  which  it  treats.  The  work  is 
dedicated  very  appropriately  to  John  B.  Trevor,  a  great  and  notable  patron  of  higher 
education. 

REV.  WILLIAM  C.  WILKINSON,  D.  D., 

of  Tarrytown,  N.  Y. 

I  have  received  your  monumental  volume,  and  I  thank  you  for  it.  My  own  experience 
in  book-making  enables  me  in  some  degree  to  appreciate  what  such  a  book  costs  to  the 
author.  I  have  not  yet  read  the  whole  of  it,  but  I  have  sampled  it  here  and  there,  always 
finding,  what  I  should  certainly  have  expected,  marks  of  clear  consecutive  thinking  and 
answerably  lucid  expression.  I  congratulate  you  on  this  great  work  happily  achieved. 
What  next? 


8 

REV.  T.  EDWIN  BROWN,  D.  D., 

of  Providence,  R.  I. 

I  am  sure  I  shall  enjoy  your  book,  and  I  hope  profit  by  it.  I  know  what  book-making 
on  a  small  scale  means,  and  I  can  imagine  what  a  herculean  task  it  was  to  get  such  a 
book  through  the  press. 

PRESIDENT  HENRY  G.  WESTON,  D.  D., 
of  the  CBOZEB  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY. 

I  was  just  on  the  point  of  writing  to  you  to  congratulate  you  on  the  deserved  success 

of  your  recent  work Every  one,  so  far  as  I  hear,  feels  that  pleasure  with  your 

Theology.  You  have  done  admirably  a  work  at  once  very  difficult  and  very  desirable. 
It  is  the  more  gratifying  because  of  the  influence  it  will  have  in  keeping  our  young 
ministers  walking  in  the  old  paths.  I  very  heartily  rejoice  in  the  favor  which  your  book 
everywhere  meets. 

THE  CENTRAL  BAPTIST, 
St.  Louis,  Mo. 

All  students  in  the  ministry  will  give  it  a  hearty  welcome  ....  The  doctrinal  state- 
ments are  brief  but  clear,  scriptural  proof-texts  are  printed  in  full  (a  great  convenience 
for  the  student ),  various  theories  are  characterized  and  discussed  with  sufficient  fullness, 
and  bibliographical  indications  are  given  for  those  who  may  wish  to  pursue  a  topic 

further There  is  a  freshness  and  breadth  in  the  illustrative  material  that  give  a 

pleasant  flavor  to  the  strong  meat  of  the  doctrine.  .  .  .  ,  While  we  congratulate  Dr. 
Strong  upon  his  excellent  work,  we  are  prouder  than  ever  of  the  denomination  that 
produces  such  a  scholarly,  pious  and  orthodox  exposition  of  the  doctrines  of  the  Holy 
Book.  Let  us  add  that  the  publisher's  work  has  been  beautifully  done ;  the  paper,  type 
and  binding  of  this  handsome  octavo  are  worthy  of  high  praise. 

REV.  A.  C.  CAPERTON,  D.  D., 
in  the  Western  Recorder.  Louisville,  Ky. 
This  is  for  Baptists  the  most  important  treatise  on  systematic  theology  that  has 

appeared  since  Andrew  Fuller Dr.  Strong  combines  brevity  of  statement  with 

clearness  in  a  remarkable  degree Instead  of  unfolding  his  views  and  supporting 

them  by  texts,  he  unfolds  the  Scriptures.  ....  On  the  great  doctrines  and  on  our 

distinctive  principles,  this  work  leaves  little  to  be  desired The  denomination  owe 

Dr.  Strong  a  debt  of  gratitude  for  this  great  work. 

THE  CHRISTIAN   HERALD, 

of  Detroit,  Michigan. 
It  would  be  an  excellent  gymnastic  for  any  one,  Christian,  Jew,  or  heathen,  to  work 

through  these  lucid  arguments  and  powerful  presentations The  typography 

adapts  it  for  lay  as  well  as  for  professional  reading The  indexes  of  this  great 

work  represent  something  like  fine  art.  They  are  six  in  number,  and  with  the  Table  of 
Contents  occupy  170  pages.  These  are  the  special  work  of  Rev.  R.  K.  Eccles,  M.  D.,  of 
Salem,  O.,  and  supply  all  probable  needs  for  ready-reference  of  any  kind  to  the  book. 

REV.  HENRY  E.  ROBINS,  D.  D., 

Jena,  Germany. 

How  shall  I  thank  you  for  sending  me  your  magnum  opus  to  cheer  me,  as  by  daily 
visits  from  yourself,  in  this  exile?  If  I  were  to  speak  without  restraint,  I  fear  that  I 
should  transgress  even  the  privilege  which  our  friendship  gives,  in  expressing  my  admi- 
ration of  the  book.  It  is  an  honor  to  yourself,  to  the  denomination  whose  peculiar  views 
it  states  with  admirable  clearness,  and,  above  all,  a  real  contribution  to  the  knowledge 
of  God  and  his  relations  to  man — the  sublimest  of  all  sciences. 

REV    CHARLES  J.  BALDWIN, 

Granville,  Ohio. 

The  work  is  intrinsically  of  the  highest  value.  I  am  astonished  at  its  comprehensive- 
ness and  minute  carefulness.  It  is  by  far  the  most  exhaustive  and  satisfactory  manual 
that  I  know.  The  style  of  publication  also,  in  typography,  paper,  and  general  arrange- 
ment, is  admirable.  The  Index  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired.  Taken  altogether,  it  is  a 
monumental  work,  and  I  shall  prize  it  as  such. 


REV.  A.  S.  PATTON,  D.  D., 
in  the  Baptist  Weekly,  New  York. 
The  appearance  of  Dr.  Strong's  "  Systematic  Theology  "  will  be  hailed  with  delight  by 

all  who  are  interested  in  the  study  of  Christian  doctrine  and  church  polity He  has 

no  sympathy  with  the  theory  of  a  pre-millennial  advent By  some,  Dr.  Strong's 

positions  will  be  regarded  as  too  conservative But  if  there  is  any  danger  to  be 

apprehended  to  our  doctrinal  basis  from  the  influence  of  the  "  new  theology,"  it  is  fit, 
perhaps,  that  those  who  are  charged  with  the  responsibility  of  training  young  men  for 
the  ministry  should  be  careful  to  keep  in  the  old  paths  and  not  expose  themselves  to 
the  charge  of  encouraging  dangerous  deviations.  The  mechanical  execution  of  this 
volume  is  superior,  reflecting  great  credit  on  the  Rochester  publisher.  It  is  appropri- 
ately dedicated  to  the  most  generous  friend  of  Rochester  Theological  Seminary,  John 
B.  Trevor,  Esq. 

PROFESSOR  N.  W.  BENEDICT,  D.  D., 

Rochester,  N.  Y. 

The  plan  of  the  work  and  the  untiring  labor  by  which  the  purpose  was  carried  out, 
merit  the  gratitude  of  all  who  desire  definite  knowledge  on  the  great  subject  of  which 
it  treats It  is  a  magnificent  thesaurus  of  learning  on  the  science  of  sciences. 

JOHN  B.  TREVOR,  ESQ., 

Yonkers,  N.  Y. 

I  see  that  at  last  you  have  launched  your  bark  "  Systematic  Theology,"  and  have  been 
kind  enough  to  inscribe  my  name  on  the  "  head-board."  I  hope  the  new  craft  may  have 
the  favoring  gales  of  God's  blessed  spirit,  and  in  due  time  make  a  return  voyage  to  you 
freighted  with  the  lading  of  precious  souls. 

PKOF.  GEORGE  B.  STEVENS,  D.  D., 

of  the  YALE  THEOLOGICAL*  SEMINARY,  in  the  New  Englander. 
It  is  a  work  of  long  and  painstaking  labor,  and  places  before  the  student  the  material 
of  theology  in  far  greater  completeness  than  mere  lectures  could  possibly  do.  The  only 
danger  would  be  that  the  mass  of  literature  and  detailed  exposition  of  theories  brought 
to  his  attention  might  quite  overwhelm  and  discourage  him.  But  as  a  Compendium 
which  places  before  the  student  in  comprehensive  form  almost  the  whole  "  Stoff"  of 
theology,  it  is  certainly  a  model  in  form  and  execution.  It  differs  from  such  compen- 
diums  as  Luthardt's  and  Base's,  in  giving  larger  place  to  the  dogmatic  development  of 
its  various  themes,  using  the  historical  material  as  illustrative  chiefly.  The  opinions  of 
the  author  are  developed  from  a  strictly  conservative  position.  He  is  a  Calvinist,  but 
not  all.  Though  following  mainly  the  lines  marked  out  by  Augustine,  the  mediaeval 
realism  and  Calvin,  the  author's  theology  has  bent  at  some  points  under  the  pressure  of 
philosophical  objections  to  these  types  of  doctrine.  In  his  exposition  of  the  views  which 
are  peculiar  to  his  denomination,  Dr.  Strong  appears  as  a  champion  of  the  high-church 
Baptist  theory 

REV.  TALBOT  W.  CHAMBERS,  D.  D., 

in  the  New  York  Observer. 

It  is  not  a  hasty  publication,  but  one  that  represents  the  labor  and  repeated  study  of  a 
lengthened  period.  This  is  likewise  apparent  from  its  fulness  of  matter  and  accuracy 
of  statement.  It  covers  the  whole  ground  of  dogma,  and  the  author's  views  are  ex- 
pressed with  precision  and  clearness,  and  with  entire  fairness  toward  opponents 

The  author  is  in  harmony  with  the  views  of  the  Reformed  Churches,  and  his  system  is 
substantially  what  is  known  as  Old  Calvinism,  but  he  is  not  fettered  by  any  symbol  or 

formula,  and  states  his  opinions  in  a  genial  and  attractive  form The  treatment 

of  God  and  the  classification  of  his  attributes  are  fresh  and  vigorous,  quite  an  advance 

upon  the  methods  common  half  a  century  ago The  discussion  of  the  decrees  of 

God  is  profound  and  thorough  and  careful.  The  true  view  is  maintained,  but  with  such 
a  wise  choice  of  terms  as  to  forestall  the  common  objections  which  confound  certainty 

with  necessity,  and  providence  with  fate The  chapter  o'n  the  consequences  of 

sin  is  very  discriminating  and  very  strong.  .  .  .  The  volume  closes  with  no  less  than  six 

elaborate  indexes,  and  in  this  respect  is  a  model  of  book-making The  book  is  a 

very  important  contribution  to  American  theological  literature,  and  is  worthy  to  stand 
on  the  same  shelf  with  the  stately  volumes  of  Dr.  Hodge's  Theology. 


10 

PROP.  M.  B.  RIDDLE,  D.  D., 
of  the  ALLEGHENY  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY,  in  the  Sunday  School  Times, 

Philadelphia,  January  15, 1887. 

It  is  but  natural  that  here  in  America,  where  Christianity  is  courageously  facing  some 
of  the  most  burning  social  and  ethical  questions,  there  should  appear  great  treatises  on 
Systematic  Theology.  Greatness  we  can  attribute  to  such  works  without  endorsing  all 
the  positions  taken  by  the  authors,  and  we  gladly  class  the  new  volume  of  Dr.  A.  H. 

Strong  among  these  great  treatises He  is  candid  and  consistent  in  his  ufte  ranees, 

and  may  well  win  praises  from  those  who  differ  from  him The  chief  excellence  of 

the  work  seems  to  be  the  happy  union  of  strictly  logical  method  with  human  interest, 
taking  that  phrase  in  its  widest  sense.  This  is  meant  to  be  high  praise,  and  it  may  en- 
courage some  of  our  readers  to  obtain  this  book  and  study  it The  volume  is 

dedicated  to  John  B.  Trevor,  Esq.,  whose  liberality  enabled  the  author  to  publish  it. 

The  worthy  Baptist  banker  cannot  have  made  many  better  investments Dr. 

Strong's  theology  is  "  up  with  the  times."  He  deals  with  living  issues,  and  can  be  used 
with  profit  in  forming  a  correct  estimate  of  the  most  recent  doctrinal  disturbance.  The 
new  aspects  of  truth  he  never  ignores ;  but  all  such  treatises  as  this  of  necessity  suggest 

how  old  the  main  issues  are If  any  of  the  readers  of  this  notice  suppose  that  all 

the  thinking  of  a  robust  type  is  done  by  a  few  literary  essayists  of  unevangelical  tenden- 
cies, let  them  get  this  book,  study  a  chapter  or  two,  and  if  they  are  capable  of  thinking 
deeply,  they  will  admit  that  systematic  theology  still  receives  the  attention  of  strong 
minds,  and  that  the  views  deemed  "antiquated"  by  some  elegant  essayists  have  still 
their  competent  defenders. 

REV.  PROF.  FRANCIS  L.  PATTON,  D.  D., 

of  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY,  in  the  Presbyterian  Review,  April,  1887. 
We  advise  theological  students  to  buy  this  book  and  keep  it  within  easy  reach  for 
reference.  It  is  a  handsome  octavo  of  758  pages,  of  which  the  last  158  are  indexes.  It 
is  a  marvel  of  compression  and  at  the  same  time  of  clear  statement.  The  reader  is 
greatly  helped  by  its  mechanical  execution  as  well  as  by  the  author's  skill  in  the  art  of 
expression.  By  judicious  use  of  large  and  small  print  Dr.  Strong  is  able  to  present  his 
arguments  adequately,  and  at  the  same  time  introduce  ample  references  to  the  litera- 
ture of  the  several  topics  with  which  he  deals.  Every  page  gives  evidence  of  his  wide 
reading  and  painstaking  scholarship.  He  evidently  wishes  his  pupils  to  be  reading  men 

and  to  theologize  for  themselves The  chapter  on  the  Existence  of  God  shows 

acquaintance  with  the  latest  phases  of  the  theistic  controversy,  and  is  very  discriminat- 
ing  The  apologetic  value  of  prophecy  and  of  miracles  is  vindicated  in  a  way  that 

exhibits  very  gratifying  contrast  to  the  hesitating  and  half-hearted  manner  of  some  of 
our  recent  apologetes.  The  defense  of  Inspiration  and  the  exhibition  of  the  various 

theories  regarding  it  is  the  best  that  we  have  seen  in  a  work  of  this  kind The 

chapters  that  deal  with  Sin  and  Imputation  are  among  the  finest  in  the  volume. 

BIBLIOTHECA  SACRA, 

April,  1887. 

This  is  one  of  the  most  important  contributions  made  in  recent  years  to  the  subject  of 
systematic  theology.  The  book  is  rendered  especially  valuable  by  its  methodical  arrange- 
ment, its  clear  and  condensed  statements  of  the  theological  positions  controverted  or 
maintained,  its  judicious  quotations  from  acknowledged  authorities,  and  its  abundant 
refen  nces  to  contemporary  and  standard  literature.  It  thus  will  fill  the  place  in  one's 
library  not  only  of  a  doctrinal  statement,  but  of  an  outline  of  the  history  of  doctrine  as 
well.  The  value  of  the  volume  is  greatly  enhanced  by  an  index  well-nigh  unexampled 
in  fulness,  occupying  no  less  than  156  pages.  Throughout  the  volume  the  author  defends, 
with  great  clearness  and  vigor,  the  main  positions  of  evangelical  theology,  especially  as 
held  among  the  Baptist  churches,  though  it  is  doubtful  if  the  majority  of  his  brethren 
will  go  with  him  in  his  advocacy  of  thetraducian  hypothesis  respecting  the  origin  of  the 

human  soul On  the  chapters  upon  the  Scriptures  a  Revelation  from  God  we  have 

little  but  unqualified  praise Dr.  Strong's  argument  for  miracles,  though  brief,  is 

admirably  conci-ived With  this  clear  and  correct  statement  of  principles,  short 

work  can  be  made  of  the  great  mass  of  objections  to  the  Bible,  and  the  student  will  do 
better  to  read  carefully  the  ten  pages  devoted  to  them  by  Dr.  Strong,  than  to  read  many 


11 

elaborate  volumes  that  could  be  mentioned  specifically  devoted  to  their  solution.  .... 

The  chapter  upon  decrees  Is  among  the  best  in  the  book Dr.  Strong's  chapter 

upon  Eschatology  would  be  admirable  at  any  time,  and  is  especially  so,  as  adapted  to 

correct  the  evil  tendencies  of  the  present But  in  a  single  article  scant  justice  can 

be  done  to  a  book  so  comprehensive  in  its  scope  and  so  elaborately  wrought  out  in  its 
details  as  this  of  Dr.  Strong's  is.  We  hail  with  gratitude  the  publication  of  such  works 
even  where  we  do  not  altogether  agree  with  the  views  of  the  author. 

PRESIDENT  JAMES  CULROSS,  D.  D., 
of  the  BAPTIST  COLLEGE,  BRISTOL,  ENGLAND. 

Its  "idea"  Is  patiently  and  finely  worked  out.  .  .  .  It  will  prove  of  real  practical 
value  to  theological  students  and  Christian  teachers  — being  clear  and  precise  in  style, 
fair  in  spirit,  wide  in  its  sweep,  and  full  of  information,  of  vigorous  and  reverent  think- 
ing and  tokens  of  personal  insight.  It  promises  to  meet  my  craving  for  an  ideal  book 
on  systematic  theology  —  that  shall  be  an  orderly  exhibition,  in  just  proportion,  of 
ascertained  truths,  by  a  good  man.  Too  often  the  systeraatizer  dictates  to  the  exegete, 
and  utters  his  imperious  "Stand/"  where  there  is  no  danger:  in  your  case,  so  far  as  I 
have  seen,  systematizer  and  exegete  are  in  partnership. 

REV.  WILLIS  A.  ANDERSON, 
in  the  Andover  Review,  July,  1887. 

Dr.  Strong's  method  enables  him  to  compress  into  a  single  volume  an  unusually  full 
discussion.  Large  use  is  made  of  historical  theology,  and  this  element  makes  it  a  very 

valuable  compendium  for  the  student  and  pastor Another  characteristic  is  the 

large  place  given  to  the  Scriptures.  Every  position  taken  is  fortified  by  Biblical  evi- 
dence, and  the  citations  are  printed  in  full  in  the  subordinate  text.  The  discussion  is 
carried  forward  in  a  direct  logical  manner  and  characterized  by  breadth  an«i  scholarly 
attainment.  We  note,  as  particularly  satisfactory,  Dr.  Strong's  vindication  of  the 
necessity  of  theology  and  its  importance  for  right  religious  life,  the  discussion  of  the 

existence  of  God,  the  Trinity,  and  the  Person  of  Christ The  severity  of  form 

with  which  this  treatise  is  cast  befits  the  type  of  theology,  which  is  thoroughgoing 
Calvinism.  The  new  theology,  ancient  or  modern,  receives  no  hospitality.  The  New 
England  improvements  in  their  diversity,  from  Edwards  down,  find  no  place  in  this 
consistent  Calvinistic  divinity.  Yet  it  is  so  tempered  with  a  Christian  catholicity  of 
spirit,  and  is  so  interpenetrated  with  the  suggestions  of  modern  thought,  as  to  be 

attractive  and  inspiring As  a  whole,  the  work  is  a  credit  to  the  intellectual 

strength  of  the  author,  a  monument  of  learning  which  his  friends  may  well  cherish. 
The  faults  are  mainly  those  of  the  theological  system  which  holds  the  author  in  its 
grasp.  However  much  one  may  dissent  from  his  positions,  he  must  admit  the  force  of 
his  logic.  We  regard  Dr.  Strong's  work  as  one  of  the  strongest  presentations  that  can 
be  made  for  the  extreme  Calvinistic  system  of  theology.  And  though  its  conclusions 
may  not  commend  themselves  generally,  even  to  his  own  denomination,  the  reverent 
temper  and  catholic  spirit  which  pervade  the  book  must  command  universal  admiration. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY, 
BERKELEY 

THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
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20m-ll,'20 


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